What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?

Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?” In this piece he writes about whether the emphasis that American school reformers put on “teacher effectiveness” is really the best approach to improving student achievement.

Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.

“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested. Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.

In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.

In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.

For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being. Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.

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10 reasons why VAM is harmful to students

[...]No one is asking how value-added assessments may affect the very students that this evaluation system is intended to help. By my count, there are at least ten separate ways in which value-added assessment either does not accurately measure the needs of a student or is actually harmful to a child’s education. Until these flaws are addressed, value-added assessment will be nothing more than a toy for politicians and headline writers, not a serious tool for improving learning.

1. The premise of value-added assessment is that standardized tests are an accurate and decisive measure of student learning. In fact, standardized testing is neither definitive nor especially reliable. City and state exams are snapshots, not in-depth diagnostic tools.

2. Value-added assessments will ultimately require all students to take standardized exams, whether or not such examinations are developmentally appropriate. Kindergarteners and first graders will be subjected to the same pressures of high-stakes testing as older children.

3. Value-added assessments will dramatically increase the number of standardized tests for each student. Children will need to take exams in subjects such art, music and physical education in order to evaluate the teachers of these subjects.

4. The most successful students will get less enrichment work and more test prep. It is actually more difficult to improve the scores of gifted students since they have already done so well on standardized exams.

5. Teachers will need to avoid necessary remediation in order to attain short-term gains in test scores. Most standardized English tests require students to demonstrate high-order thinking skills, yet a growing body of academic research indicates that many children—especially those growing up in poverty—require huge boosts of vocabulary to function well in school. Teachers may be forced to forego a vocabulary-rich curriculum that would have the most long-term benefits for their children. Instead, they will have to focus on the skills that might help students gain an extra point or two on this year’s tests.

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Obama's 2nd term plan for education

In a newly published policy brochure, the President outlines his second term plan for education

President Obama’s plan for America’s future: Highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020 so we can compete and win in the 21st Century economy:

1. Cutting tuition growth in half over the next ten years. We can make college more affordable by continuing tax credits to help middle-class families afford college tuition, doubling the number of work-study jobs and creating incentives for schools to keep tuition down.

2. Recruiting and preparing 100,000 math and science teachers. We can out-compete China and Germany by out-educating them. The STEM Master Teacher Corps and investments in research and innovation into the best ways to teach math and science will help improve math and science education nationwide.

3. Strengthen public schools in every community. Because we can’t compete for jobs of the future without educating our children, we must prevent teacher layoffs. We also must expand Race to the Top to additional school districts willing to take on bold reform. The President will offer states committed to reform relief from the worst mandates of No Child Left Behind, like incentives to teach to the test, so they can craft local solutions.

4. Train 2 million workers for good jobs that actually exist through partnerships between businesses and community colleges.

Nation's Report Card' Distracts From Real Concerns For Public Schools

Imagine you’re a parent of a seven-year-old who has just come home from school with her end-of-year report card. And the report card provides marks for only two subjects, and for children who are in grade-levels different from hers. Furthermore, there's nothing on the report card to indicate how well these children have been progressing throughout the year. There are no teacher comments, like "great participation in class" or "needs to turn in homework on time." And to top it off, the report gives a far harsher assessment of academic performance than reports you've gotten from other sources.

That's just the sort of "report card" that was handed to America yesterday in the form of the National Assessment of Education Progress. And while the NAEP is all well and good for what it is -- a biennial norm-referenced, diagnostic assessment of fourth and eighth graders in math and reading -- the results of the NAEP invariably get distorted into all kinds of completely unfounded "conclusions" about the state of America's public education system.

'Nation's Report Card" Is Not A Report Card

First off, let's be clear on what the NAEP results that we got yesterday actually entail. As Diane Ravitch explains, there are two different versions of NAEP: 1) the Main NAEP, which we got yesterday, given every other year in grades 4 and 8 to measure national and state achievement in reading and math based on guidelines that change from time to time; and 2) the Long-Term Trend NAEP given less frequently at ages 9, 13, and 17 to test reading and math on guidelines that have been tested since the early 1970s. (There are also occasional NAEPs given in other subjects.) So in other words, be very wary of anyone claiming to identify "long term trends" based on the Main NAEP. This week's release was not the "long term" assessment.

Second, let's keep in mind the NAEP's limits in measuring "achievement." NAEP reports results in terms of the percent of students attaining Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic levels. What's usually reported out by the media is the "proficient and above" figure. After all, don't we want all children to be "proficient?" But what does that really mean? Proficiency as defined by NAEP is actually quite high, in fact, much higher than what most states require and higher than what other nations such as Sweden and Singapore follow.

Third, despite its namesake, NAEP doesn't really show "progress." Because NAEP is a norm-referenced test, its purpose is for comparison -- to see how many children fall above or below a "cut score." Repeated applications of NAEP provide periodic points of comparison of the percentages of students falling above and below the cut score, but does tracking that variance really show "progress?" Statisticians and researchers worth their salt would say no.

Finally, let's remember that NAEP proficiency levels have defined the targets that all states are to aim for according toto the No Child Left Behind legislation. This policy that has now been mostly scrapped, or at least significantly changed, due to the proficiency goals that have been called "unrealistic."

Does this mean that NAEP is useless. Of course not. As a diagnostic tool it certainly has its place. But as the National Center on Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) has concluded, "NAEP is better than many state tests but is still far from the 'gold standard' its proponents claim for it."

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A primer on corporate school reform

“Corporate education reform” refers to a specific set of policy proposals currently driving education policy at the state and federal level. These proposals include:

• increased test-based evaluation of students, teachers, and schools of education
• elimination or weakening of tenure and seniority rights
• an end to pay for experience or advanced degrees
• closing schools deemed low performing and their replacement by publicly funded, but privately run charters
• replacing governance by local school boards with various forms of mayoral and state takeover or private management
• vouchers and tax credit subsidies for private school tuition
• increases in class size, sometimes tied to the firing of 5-10% of the teaching staff
• implementation of Common Core standards and something called “college and career readiness” as a standard for high school graduation:

These proposals are being promoted by reams of foundation reports, well-funded think tanks, a proliferation of astroturf political groups, and canned legislation from the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC).

Together these strategies use the testing regime that is the main engine of corporate reform to extend the narrow standardization of curricula and scripted classroom practice that we’ve seen under No Child Left Behind, and to drill down even further into the fabric of schooling to transform the teaching profession and create a less experienced, less secure, less stable and less expensive professional staff. Where NCLB used test scores to impose sanctions on schools and sometimes students (e.g., grade retention, diploma denial), test-based sanctions are increasingly targeted at teachers.

A larger corporate reform goal, in addition to changing the way schools and classrooms function, is reflected in the attacks on collective bargaining and teacher unions and in the permanent crisis of school funding across the country. These policies undermine public education and facilitate its replacement by a market-based system that would do for schooling what the market has done for health care, housing, and employment: produce fabulous profits and opportunities for a few and unequal outcomes and access for the many....

Standardized tests have been disguising class and race privilege as merit for decades. They’ve become the credit default swaps of the education world. Few people understand how either really works. Both encourage a focus on short-term gains over long-term goals. And both drive bad behavior on the part of those in charge. Yet these deeply flawed tests have become the primary policy instruments used to shrink public space, impose sanctions on teachers and close or punish schools. And if the corporate reformers have their way, their schemes to evaluate teachers and the schools of education they came from on the basis of yet another new generation of standardized tests, it will make the testing plague unleashed by NCLB pale by comparison.

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SB5 could turn Gov. Kasich into a lame duck

A short while ago we published an analysis piece to determine which of the Senators who voted for SB5 would be up for reelection in 2012. A number of readers asked us to perform the same analysis for those House members who voted for SB5, so here it is.

The Ohio House of Representatives is made up of 99 districts. Currently the Republicans control 59 and the Democrats 40. The House is quite different from the Senate. Representatives are elected every 2 years, not every 4 and every district will be contested in 2012. Representatives become term limited after 4 terms. So with that basic understanding, let’s look at the SB5 roll call.

We can eliminate all of the Democrats from consideration as not a single one of them voted for SB5.

While SB5 was passed on a party line vote, some Republicans did cross the isle to vote no too. They were Randy Gardner (R), Ross W. McGregor (R), John Carey (R), Terry Johnson (R), and Casey Kozlowski (R). That reduces the potential total to 54 Republicans who voted for SB5.

Five of these Representatives will be term limited, they are Louis W. Blessing, Jr. (R), Courtney Combs (R), William P. Coley, II (R), Joseph W. Uecker (R) and Danny R. Bubp (R). So we’re down to 49.

One other Republican who is unlikely to be on the ballot next year is Rep Mecklenborg (R). He was recently arrested for a DUI in Indiana enjoying the company of a young woman purported to be an employee of a nearby adult entertainment establishment. It’s quite possible he won’t serve out his term, as calls for his resignation continue to grow.

That then, gives us 48 potential Republican Representatives who will be on the ballot in 2012 who voted for SB5. They are, sorted by their 2010 votes for percentage:

District	Member	Percentage vote for	Percentage vote against
91	Bill Hayes (R)	47.06	52.94
41	Lynn Slaby (R)	49.9	50.1
21	Mike Duffey (R)	50.48	49.52
96	Al Landis (R)	51.04	48.96
42	Kristina Roegner (R)	51.69	48.31
18	Mike Dovilla (R)	52.41	47.59
1	Craig Newbold (R)	52.58	47.42
19	Anne Gonzales (R)	52.68	47.32
63	Ron Young (R)	53.14	46.86
93	Andy Thompson (R)	53.81	46.19
17	Marlene Anielski (R)	54.75	45.25
43	Todd McKenney (R)	54.99	45.01
81	Rex Damschroder (R)	55.31	44.69
85	Bob Peterson (R)	55.32	44.68
46	Barbara R. Sears (R)	56.34	43.66
86	Cliff Rosenberger (R)	59.46	40.54
16	Nan A. Baker (R)	60.19	39.81
50	Christina Hagan (R)	60.52	39.48
58	Terry Boose (R)	62.29	37.71
36	Michael Henne (R)	63.27	36.73
23	Cheryl L. Grossman (R)	63.41	36.59
34	Peter Stautberg (R)	64.81	35.19
38	Terry Blair (R)	67.49	32.51
98	Richard Hollington (R)	68.44	31.56
97	David Hall (R)	68.8	31.2
74	Bruce W. Goodwin (R)	69.01	30.99
51	Kirk Schuring (R)	69.2	30.8
71	Jay Hottinger (R)	69.31	30.69
84	Bob D. Hackett (R)	69.7	30.3
37	Jim Butler (R)	69.71	30.29
70	Jarrod B. Martin (R)	69.93	30.07
53	Timothy Derickson (R)	70.19	29.81
69	William G. Batchelder (R)	70.34	29.66
2	Andrew Brenner (R)	70.35	29.65
67	Peter Beck (R)	70.74	29.26
76	Robert Sprague (R)	70.78	29.22
75	Lynn R. Wachtmann (R)	72.05	27.95
90	Margaret Ann Ruhl (R)	72.26	27.74
4	Matt Huffman (R)	72.32	27.68
35	Ron Maag (R)	73.02	26.98
78	John Adams (R)	74.27	25.73
79	Richard N. Adams (R)	77.09	22.91
3	Ron Amstutz (R)	100	0
5	Gerald L. Stebelton (R)	100	0
77	Jim Buchy (R)	100	0
82	Jeffrey A. McClain (R)	100	0
83	David E. Burke (R)	100	0
94	Troy Balderson (R)	100	0

14 SB5 supporters could not survive a 5% swing from their margin of victory in 2010 (2 didn’t even reach the 50% threshold due to a third party taking significant support). With only a 10-seat margin to maintain control, it is quite possible that control of the Ohio House will swing away from the Republicans and back to the Democrats.

Such a swing, could put a halt to the Governors radical agenda and turn the remaining 2 years of his first term into a lame duck effort.