Education News for 07-20-2012

Statewide Stories of the Day

• Newark appears on track to meet 23 of 26 indicators on Ohio Achievement Assessment (Newark Advocate)

NEWARK - Although state report cards likely are a month away, Newark administrators said they are excited about preliminary Ohio Achievement Assessment results. According to preliminary results released by the Ohio Department of Education, Newark students passed more indicators than in 2011, including seventh-grade reading. Although nothing is final until report cards are released, Newark is on track to meet 23 of 26 indicators, said Maura Horgan, director of secondary curriculum instruction. Read more...

• Youngstown schools: Cost to update curriculum estimated at nearly $500,000 (Vindicator)

Youngstown - Getting the school district’s curriculum up to state standards will be an expensive proposition. One of the elements of the Academic Recovery Plan for the district updated by the state-appointed Academic Distress Commission earlier this year calls for up-to-date Ohio standards based pre-kindergarten through 12 plans in literacy, math, science and social studies. Teams of teachers and administrators determined the books, materials and supplies needed to accomplish that and the cost is nearly $500,000 for grades seven through 12. Read more...

Local Issues

• Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon says building, operating funds come from different accounts (WEWS 5 ABC)

CLEVELAND - It's been a monumental week for the Cleveland Municipal School District. Since last Friday, ground has been broken for four new, 21st century elementary schools: Paul L. Dunbar, Miles, Almira, and Orchard. Groundbreakings for the new Max Hayes and John Marshall high schools are coming soon. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the school board voted to seek a new 15 mill levy to finance the new education reform plan and avoid a huge budget deficit next year. Read more...

• Cleveland school district faces big challenge passing 15-mill tax increase, some councilmen say (Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND — Taxpayers can't quite wrap their heads around the 15-mill school tax the school board proposed Wednesday night, some Cleveland City Council members say, predicting the tax is likely to fail by a large margin. "It's going to go down in utter defeat," said Ward 2 Councilman Zack Reed. Councilman Mike Polensek, of Collinwood, said he and his office have received call after call from families shocked at a request that is twice as big as he expected -- an amount that he said families can't afford. Read more...

• Fostoria board OKs 2013 appropriations (Courier)

FOSTORIA - Fostoria school board approved fiscal year 2013 general fund temporary appropriations of more than $21.7 million at Thursday's regular meeting. The meeting was rescheduled from Monday to accommodate board members' schedules. The district finished fiscal year 2012 on June 30 with a carryover balance of $400,939, according to information from Treasurer Jaime Pearson, so the available general fund balance is more than $22.1 million on July 1, which is the beginning of the fiscal year. Read more...

Ohio E-Schools are catastrophically failing

The Quick & the Ed, in a follow up article show that Ohio's E-Schools are in serious academic trouble.

Ohio performance indicators for 2010-11 should cause some heartburn for E-school operators. Based on these indicators, the vast majority of Ohio’s e-schools are mediocre or poor academic performers. Only two of the 20 rated e-schools were considered “effective” in 2010-11, while 11 resided in the bottom two categories.

This situation has been highlighted before, by others. About six months ago, Innovation Ohio produced a report and stated

"Ohio's e-schools are an outrageous taxpayer rip-off, a cruel hoax for many students and parents, and a textbook example of the 'pay to play' culture that too often permeates state government," Butland said.

"At a time when Ohio's traditional schools are seeing unprecedented state cuts, most Ohioans have no idea how shockingly bad Ohio's e-schools are and how much state money is being funneled to the for-profit operators who run them."

Around the same time, the Governor's educztion Czar was asked “What is your vision of the future?”. His answer

• Technology will be integrated in such a way to personalize education via “mass customization.”
• Whole group classroom instruction — a teacher addressing an entire class — will be rare if nonexistent.
• Adult success will be judged in terms of student success.
• The use of technology and improved management will make education much more cost effective.

He should probably take a look at the failing E-Schools if he thinks simply adding more technology and removing teachers from classrooms is some panacea to quality education. It clearly isn't.

Teacher Town Hall Recap

Here's the video for the MSNBC Teacher Town Hall that occured over this weekend, in case you missed it

Part one:

Part two:

Here's a good recap of the event from the perspective of the pernicious effect billionaires like the Gates are having on public education discussions.

Mrs. Gates begins by acknowledging that good teaching cannot be reduced to a test score - or at least that this is often said. She then asserts that the half billion dollars they have spent on research in this area have uncovered a number of things that can be measured that allow us to predict which teachers will have the highest test scores. A great teacher is defined over and over again as one who made sure students "learned the material at the end of the year."

If you look closely at how she describes peer observations, the method at work is even clearer. Teachers tend to support peer observation, because it can be a valuable basis for collaboration, which yields many benefits to us beyond possible test score gains. But what does Melinda Gates say about it? It can be worthwhile, BUT: only the models of peer observation that have been proven to raise test scores should be used. And presumably we can count on the Gates Foundation to provide us with that information.

In spite of all the billions they have spent, it appears that the Gates Foundation is laboring under the same logical fallacy that doomed No Child Left Behind. In a way which employs circular reasoning, they have defined great teaching as that which results in the most gains on end of year tests, and then spent millions of dollars identifying indicators of teaching that will yield the best scores.

The most deceptive strategy is how they then try to pretend that these indicators are "multiple measures" of good teaching. In fact, these are simply indicators of teaching practices associated with higher test scores. In spite of Mrs. Gates' feint at the opening of her response, everything she describes, all these things that supposedly go beyond test scores - peer observations, student perceptions - are only deemed valid insofar as they are correlated with higher test scores.

Melinda Gates begins with the question "How do we know a teacher's making a difference in a student's life?" That is an excellent and complex question. However, when we look at her answer, we find she commits the logical fallacy known as "begging the question." One begs the question when one assumes something is true, when that is actually a part of what must be proven.

The question she begs is "what defines great teaching?" This is not answered by finding teaching methods associated with higher test scores. This question remains hanging over the entire school reform enterprise. Until we answer that question, we are devising complex mechanisms to elevate test scores assuming this will improve students' lives, when this is manifestly unproven. In fact, I would argue that many of the strategies used to boost scores are actually harmful to our students.

This episode should remind us of the crucial need to teach critical thinking in our schools - and apply such thinking to the dilemmas we face.

For more on the Gates Foundation you can read our 3 part series, "THE GATES FOUNDATION EXPOSED" Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Van Roekel: The NEA Plan for Teacher Accountability

By Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association

This summer, the National Education Association took a historic vote and adopted a new policy statement. It put us on the record, for the first time, as calling for a comprehensive overhaul of both teacher evaluation and accountability systems to improve professional practice and advance student learning.

Why now?

The myopic focus of the current education reform debate promotes lowering professional standards, finding quick and cheap ways to rate teachers based solely on tests, and making it easier to fire “bad” teachers while lowering the bar to enter the profession.

The irony is that teachers themselves have long complained that evaluation systems are broken. They have been some of the most forceful advocates for better evaluations linked to meaningful feedback and support. What’s been missing is sufficient guidance – developed by and for teachers – to help navigate this challenging and complicated environment.

The policy statement is an opportunity for NEA and our members to assert ourselves in a debate that has been raging for years. We know that current systems for teacher evaluation and accountability can be improved, but too often in the past we have simply taken a defensive posture, trying to prevent damaging policies instead of promoting those that will actually raise student achievement.

We have heard all of the bad ideas. Now it’s time for us to take the lead, and draw on our experience to propose policies that will actually work for students. This is our profession and our responsibility.

Our new policy statement lays out rigorous standards and delineates the multiple indicators of teacher practice that must be taken into account in an evaluation and accountability system. It clearly articulates the link between teacher accountability and student success and defines an appropriate evaluation system. And it signals a commitment to a new, more prestigious profession of teaching:

• It includes student learning and growth indicators as one of three key components of evaluation systems.  
• It calls for a well-designed system for improving a struggling teacher’s practice, and should that teacher not improve within a specific time, the policy statement provides for a fair and expedient dismissal process. 
• It calls for support for beginning teachers so that they will not just stay and survive, but thrive in the profession.

In adopting this policy statement, our members said loud and clear that we want to raise standards for the teaching profession, not lower them. And we want to provide leadership on one of the toughest education issues today.

Now the real hard part begins, as we start to translate this policy into action. We have a chance to define the teaching profession for the next generation, and we will not let that opportunity slip through our grasp.

Dennis Van Roekel is president of the National Education Association and a 23-year teaching veteran.

Proving SB5 unnecessary, public schools show significant gains

The freshly released 2010-2011 state report card has some great news to demonstrate that public schools in Ohio are not in some crisis, and radical, extreme reforms are not needed in order for our students to recevie a quality education.

The percentage of students scoring proficient on state tests increased on 21 of 26 indicators, with the strongest gains in third-grade math, eighth-grade math and 10th-grade writing. Overall, students met the state goal on 17 out of 26 indicators, one less than last year. The statewide average for all students’ test scores, known as the Performance Index, jumped 1.7 points to 95, the biggest gain since 2004-2005.

For 2010-2011, the number of districts ranked Excellent with Distinction or Excellent increased by 56 to 352. The number of schools in those same categories grew by 186 to 1,769.

76% of traditional public schools statewide have a B or better this year.

Value-Added results, which show whether students meet the expected one year of growth for students in grades 3-8 in reading and math. In 2010-2011, 79.5 percent of districts and 81.4 percent of schools met or exceeded expected Value-Added gains.

The Performance Index looks at the performance of every student, not just those who score proficient or higher. In 2010-11, 89.3 percent of districts and 71 percent of schools improved their Performance Index scores.

We'll be taking a closer look at this results and bringing you all the latest findings.

Students are not widgets

We wrote the other day about the bi-annual teacher observation provision in S.B.5 that if implemented, would cause a serious administrative strain on schools. Today, promoted by a Dispatch article, we want to expand our look at the other proposed teacher evaluation policies being pushed by the governor and his education Czar

Gov. John Kasich wants teachers to be paid based on performance: They should earn more if they can prove that their students are learning.

But the tool at the heart of Kasich's merit-pay proposals is reliable with only 68 percent confidence. That's why the state plans an upgrade to make "value-added" results 95 percent reliable.

With 146,000 teachers in Ohio, even at 95% accuracy, if that can be believed, 7,300 teacher evaluations would be based on inaccurate data. That's bad enough, if only that were the problem.

But let's just take a step back for a second. What is value added assessment?

Value added assessment assumes that changes in test scores from one year to the next accurately reflect student progress in learning. It evaluates teachers by tracking progress and linking it to schools and teachers. These estimates can be used as indicators of teachers’ and schools’ effectiveness. Sounds good, right ?

In theory. In practice many teachers do not teach classes that are tested, and in many schools, as is pointed out by this terrific article, who is responsible isn't so cut and dried either

In the school where I work teachers are expected to teach reading “across the curriculum” meaning that all teachers are supposed to teach reading. Also, all teachers are supposed to teach writing “across the curriculum.” So, students would have to be tested in those areas as well. But if it taught across the curriculum, how would we know to which teacher to attribute the child’s performance?

Indeed, how would we know?

When you get beyond these obvious problems with value added assessments, there are also serious methodological problems too, as is brought to light by this paper from the Economic Policy institute

there is broad agreement among statisticians, psychometricians, and economists that student test scores alone are not sufficiently reliable and valid indicators of teacher effectiveness to be used in high-stakes personnel decisions, even when the most sophisticated statistical applications such as value-added modeling are employed.

For a variety of reasons, analyses of VAM results have led researchers to doubt whether the methodology can accurately identify more and less effective teachers.

Oh.

Back to that Dispatch article

Robert Sommers, Kasich's top education adviser, said he thinks Ohio's accountability system is ready for merit pay. Value-added has been used in Ohio only to rate schools, not teachers.

"As far as I'm concerned, it is a very, very solid system," he said. "It has had lots of years of maturation."

The Governors education Czar is simply not correct. The system as it pertains to teacher evaluation is not accurate enough, has demonstrably problematic statistical issues, and requires deeper study.

Students are not widgets being processed on a production line by a single teacher. Modern education is a team effort, and attempts to isolate individual contributions to that team effort are going to require approaches far more robust.