March 18, 2012

Survey Finds Teachers Don't Trust State Tests (And This is News?)

Earlier this week, USA Today published the results of a recent survey of 10,000 teachers in which only 16% believed that linking student performance and teacher pay was "absolutely essential" or "very important" in retaining good teachers, down from 28% in 2010. Barely half of the teachers felt like the policy would make any difference at all, down from 65% in 2010. Only 26% believed the tests were an “accurate reflection of student achievement.”

The survey was conducted by the educational publisher Scholastic, and was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

What’s Worse: Being Exploited by Capitalism or Not Being Exploited by Capitalism?
Sadly, the number of teachers who thought that higher pay was necessary to retain good teachers also declined from 86% in 2010 to 75% in the recent survey. This does not necessarily mean that they have given up on decent wages. Rather, it probably reflects their own insecurity about the economy and the fact that most have taken pay cuts over the past three years, either actual or de facto through wage freezes, but nonetheless continued to teach because the job prospects elsewhere were so dismal.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/survey-finds-teachers-dont-trust-state.html

March 18, 2012

Boston Teachers Mock Longer School Day With Stunt Plane

Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, has accused the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) of engaging in a publicity stunt by flying a plane over City Hall in mockery of the city’s plan to lengthen the teachers’ workday. According to the Boston Herald, the plane carried a banner proclaiming that City Hall would now be open until 6:00 pm (a half-hour longer than it currently is). The union also produced fliers and newspaper ads stating that City Hall’s 720 employees “have agreed to work an extended day without any additional compensation.”

Calling the union’s action a stunt exposes the hypocrisy of Ed Deform efforts. BTU wants to ensure that its members aren’t forced to work longer hours without compensation. This is a reasonable and conservative desire. The longer school day fad (already well under way in Chicago and other cities) could be called a stunt. Supporters argue that it is a necessary “reform” for improving student performance, yet there is little evidence to show that it will improve test scores or other, more meaningful measures of student learning. Furthermore, like all the other reforms du jour, it completely ignores the primary cause of low student achievement: poverty.

There are of course putative benefits to a longer school day. Providing more class time might help some students catch up when they are behind in academic skills like reading and math. Longer class periods can also allow teachers to teach at a more relaxed pace, address student questions more thoroughly, take advantage of “teachable moments,” or go deeper into content. More time in class also means less time to get into trouble at home or on the streets. But an extra 30-60 minutes a day is unlikely to put much of a dent in the achievement gap. It will do nothing, for example, to provide food, housing and healthcare to students who are lacking these things. It cannot reverse the damage caused by malnutrition, iron-deficiency anemia, lead poisoning, exposure to second smoke, and other environmental insults that cause cognitive impairment and learning disabilities for so many lower income children. It will not provide enriching extracurricular activities during summer, like travel abroad, camp, or art classes. It will not reduce absenteeism due to untreated illnesses or provide reading to children when they are infants and toddlers.

Furthermore, it is pedagogically unsound to impose longer work hours on teachers. Longer hours mean that teachers will be more tired, increasing burn out and attrition, while also decreasing the energy they have for helping students in class. They will have less time and energy for grading papers and exams, thus encouraging the use of Scantrons and multiple choice assessments, while decreasing their assignment of essays and lab reports. Teachers will have less time and energy to design, set up and manage complex student-centered activities, labs, and projects.

It is also unreasonable and unfair to impose increased work hours on teachers without their consent or reasonable compensation. It is, in effect, a public sector version of the factory speed up, squeezing more work out of teachers, without a raise, except here there is no tangible increase in profits on the horizon. The mayor has offered a 5% increase over four years—1.25% per year—which is not likely to cover the increased cost of living in that time and which provides nothing for the extra hours of work. The BTU is asking for a 10% increase over the next three years, with no increase in work hours, which would cover the increased cost of living over that time period, plus help recover some of the losses in earning power teachers suffered over the prior three years.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/boston-teachers-mock-longer-school-day.html

March 14, 2012

Teacher Morale Lowest in 20 Years

In a recent survey of the nation’s teachers, more than half expressed reservations about their jobs, according to the New York Times, the highest level of dissatisfaction since 1989. Nearly one-third said they were likely to leave teaching within the next five years (three years ago only 25% expected to leave teaching within five years). Many expressed concerns about job security, increased class sizes, cuts to programs and services.

The annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher revealed other anxieties and concerns pervasive among teachers. About 40% were pessimistic about achieving further gains in student test scores and many expressed anxiety about the increasing use of these scores to evaluate them. Over 75% of teachers said their schools had suffered budget cuts last year, with 50% experiencing layoffs at their schools. Nearly one-third said their schools lost arts, music or foreign language programs.

Considering the increasingly vitriolic attacks on teachers unions, the equally absurd accusations that teachers are to blame for every malady afflicting public education, real and imagined, along with the declining pay and working conditions, it is surprising that only 33% are planning on leaving the profession in the next five years. However, this is likely an artifact of the terrible state of the economy. There just aren’t a lot of jobs out there, making quitting a very risky prospect. Furthermore, teachers who have tenure and seniority have considerably more job security than they would if they found a new job, increasing the risks of quitting.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/teacher-morale-lowest-in-20-years.html

March 10, 2012

VAM, Blam, Thank You Ma’am

In a rare moment of lucidity, the New York Times published a piece this week pointing out how even the best teachers (or those with the “best” students) can end up with terrible Value Added (VAM) scores and potentially face reprisals or get fired as a result.

How is this possible?

If 85% of a teacher’s students are proficient in reading but 95% were proficient the prior year, she would earn a low VAM score because she is ostensibly doing a worse job than she did last year. Rather than adding “value” she has supposedly “lowered” the quality of education. Never mind that 85% of her students were proficient—a respectable number that should be honored, rather than punished.

Yet every year our students are different and their scores fluctuate for various reasons that have little to do with teaching, including variations in the tests themselves. Social class is the single biggest influence on test scores. So if a teacher winds up with a less affluent student population one year, test scores are likely to decline. Other nonteaching factors may come into play as well, like how the school structures the exams (e.g., all in two days, or spread out over 1-2 weeks; providing brunch for students; having teachers proctor their own students) or traumatizing social disruptions, like a tornado or earthquake.

One of the inherent problems with the current use of high stakes exams (aside from the fact that they tell us virtually nothing about the quality of teaching or what students have learned) is that they are based on moving targets. Rather than testing if students have reached a benchmark (e.g., being able to comprehend a short passage or use the Pythagorean theorem), they compare students to their peers, with some necessarily always being below the average.

Teachers at a low performing school could help their students make large gains from one year to the next, only to find that similar schools made the same progress, thus precluding them from achieving their NCLB progress goals. Likewise, there is only so far high achieving students can go, resulting in low VAM scores for their teachers when they hit this wall.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/vam-blam-thank-you-maam.html

March 10, 2012

Ohio To Retest Teachers for Low Student Performance

The Beatings Will Continue Until Test Scores Improve
In yet another idiotic attempt to force teachers to make poor kids excel on their exams, Ohio will start requiring teachers of core subjects at the lowest scoring 10% of schools to retake their licensing exams, according to Cincinnati.com. The move seems to be purely punitive, as the licensing exams provide almost useful no data on how well a teacher will perform on the job.

Scores on standardized tests are most strongly influenced by students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, with teachers accounting for as little as 7.5-30% of student achievement. (See here, here and here) Indeed, virtually every one of the schools in questions is located in a low income community.

Yet even if we ignore the socioeconomic factors influencing student achievement, as most politicians, pundits and administrators have done, and focus only on what the teachers contribute, forcing them to retake their licensing tests is still a waste of time and money. If a teacher truly isn’t any good at their job, it is most likely due to weaknesses in classroom management and discipline, developing positive relationships with students, designing good curriculum, or the ability to modify teaching to meet unique student needs, rather than a deficiency in content knowledge.

The teachers’ union has estimated that the testing will cost the state $2.1 million a year, money that would be much more effectively spent on professional development and peer mentoring.

Gov. John Kasich argues that retesting teachers will hold them more accountable and give districts and charter schools the ability to get rid of the ineffective ones. Yet if only teachers at the bottom 10% of schools are tested, then ineffective teachers at the other 90% of schools will remain. More importantly, most low performing schools are also low income, which means that teachers who happen to be at these schools will be much more likely to lose their jobs or face punitive and burdensome testing than their colleagues fortunate enough to work at more affluent schools.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/ohio-to-retest-teachers-for-low-student.html

March 9, 2012

Wealth Makes You a Jerk (and this is News?)

As people’s wealth increases, so does their tendency to engage in unethical behaviors, according to researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto, whose work was published in last week’s PNAS. (A summary of the report can be read at Wired).

The researchers conducted seven different experiments. In the first, they found that wealthier individuals were more likely to cut off other drivers and pedestrians at busy intersections in the San Francisco Bay Area, even when controlled for time of day, gender, age, and traffic conditions.

In one experiment, participants were asked what they would do if given change for $20 if they had paid with a $10 bill. Higher SES individuals were significantly more likely to keep the change.

In another experiment, participants played the role of job contract negotiators. They were told that applicants wanted job stability and would accept lower pay in exchange for longer contracts. They were also offered bonuses for hiring people at lower salaries. Under these circumstances, wealthier participants were much less likely to be honest with applicants about job stability.

In another study, researchers let participants play a computer game of chance and then report their results. They were told that there were cash prizes for high scores. Higher SES individuals were significantly more likely to cheat or misrepresent their scores.

One of the authors was interviewed by FSRN on Monday, 3/5/12. When asked how he knew that the rich weren’t already jerks or that being a jerk is what made them rich in the first place, he said that they also created simulations in which they made people of modest incomes feel rich and even they were more likely to take candy from a bowl designated for children than were people who were not wealthy nor made to feel wealthy.

Yes, wealth apparently makes people steal candy from babies.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/wealth-makes-you-jerk-and-this-is-news.html

March 9, 2012

Citizen’s United Leads to Bumper Crop of Lobbying by Corporations and Unions

Over the past year, corporations and unions spent a record $286.6 million to influence politics in California, according to the L.A. Times—a 6.8% increase over the previous year. (You can see the Top 10 spenders on state lobbying here).


The Times, like other media and pundits, has tried to equate union lobbying with that of corporations, suggesting, for example, that campaign contributions won California teachers an important victory with a bill restricting the issuance of pink slips. Yet the California Teachers Association (CTA), which spent $6.5 million, has so far failed to win (or even ask for) anything that would increases revenues sufficiently so that schools could afford to retain teachers and hire enough to lower class sizes, (e.g., end high stakes exams and Common Core Standards, increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations, end the 3 Strikes law, increase taxes on oil and marijuana).

California has slashed over $20 billion from K-12 education over the past three years. Under such conditions, it is inevitable that jobs will be lost, services and programs cut, class sizes increased, and pay and benefits reduced. CTA is supporting the Governor’s tax increase initiative on the November ballot, but this will be a bandage at best. It will not repay the $20 billion that has already been slashed, nor increase revenue to a level necessary to bring California up from the bottom five states in per pupil spending. Furthermore, it will provide almost nothing to higher education or services to the poor and disabled, while unfairly taxing the poor through a regressive sales tax increase.

While the CTA’s spending was paltry compared with what the corporations spent, it was monstrous compared with what it spent on organizing and mobilizing its members to take job actions, such as strikes, that would more effectively achieve its goals. Instead, it spent its members’ dues retaining a team of seven lobbyists and wining and dining politicians and their staffs.

It is true, as the Times points out, that they also paid the travel expenses for its members to visit Sacramento during the State of Emergency (SOE) protests last year. However, they actively discouraged members from engaging in civil disobedience, occupations or other confrontational tactics, instead encouraging them to meet with legislators and discuss their scripted talking points.

Predictably, the SOE protests and “citizen” lobbying yielded nothing meaningful for teachers or their students.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/citizens-united-leads-to-bumper-crop-of.html

March 8, 2012

Teen Harassed by School for Comparing Schools to Slavery

In a scathing indictment of public education, Jada Williams, a 13-year old eighth grader at School #3 in Rochester, New York, asserted that today's education system, like slavery, keeps children of color from meaningful learning. According to Good Education, Williams essay referred to a quote by Frederick Douglass, who said that his slave master, Mr. Auld, told his wife, "If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master."

Williams said real learning is precluded by overcrowded and poorly managed classrooms, yielding the same results as Mr. Auld's ban. She went on to point out that her teachers—the majority of whom are white in this white minority district—have the power to determine what she can and cannot learn. Rather than teaching, she said that most teachers give students packets to complete independently, which she argues is pointless since her peers cannot read or comprehend the material.

Indeed, only 19 percent of her school’s eighth graders were proficient in language arts last year. Good Education argues that since this is well below the state average of 60%, “it's clear that the school and its teachers need to change their approach.” What Good Education fails to recognize is that low test scores, literacy and graduation rates are caused primarily by poverty, so even if they do change their approach, they would likely see only limited improvement in test scores and literacy.

What is clear from Williams’ essay is that her teachers created a learning environment that bored her and stifled her curiosity. Relying entirely or mostly on packets and worksheets is a terrible (though convenient) way to teach, especially for children reading below grade level. However, even kids who are reading at grade level benefit from inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogies.

Williams’ teacher and school, needless to say, were not happy with her criticisms and engaged in a campaign of harassment that ultimately led to her withdrawal from the school. The conservative Frederick Douglass Foundation, however, was impressed with her essay and her courage and gave her a special award, saying that her essay demonstrated an understanding of Douglass’ autobiography.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/teen-harassed-by-school-for-comparing.html

March 8, 2012

LAUSD Lost Records of Accused Molester

Collective Punishment for Teachers and Children to Obscure District’s Culpability
As LAUSD continues its lame attempt at damage control, collectively punishing everyone at Miramonte Elementary School in a mass firing and banning blindfolding and food consumption throughout the district, more evidence is coming out that the district was asleep at the wheel, allowing potential molesters to continue working in its schools.

Paul Chapel recently pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of lewd behavior and sexual abuse of four students at his school. All were under the age of 14. In 1997, Chapel was accused of molesting an 8-year-old friend of his son who was sleeping at his house. LAUSD records show that the district alerted the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing CTC), which suspended his credential, while the district suspended him from work without pay. The jury couldn’t reach a verdict due to lack of physical evidence, prompting the CTC to reinstate his credential and LAUSD to give him back a job with back pay. Chapel’s LAUSD personnel records were incomplete when examined after the most recent allegations, as was the district’s response, according to the Los Angeles Times,

Personnel records of former Miramonte Elementary teacher Mark Berndt, who was accused this year of spoon-feeding his semen to blindfolded students, are also incomplete, containing no records of prior sexual abuse allegations, despite the fact that there were at least four unrelated past sex abuse allegations against him. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reports that LAUSD has no record that it ever conducted an internal investigation.

The Times article also mentioned the case of former Assistant Principal Steve Rooney, who allegedly waved a gun at a student's father. The Time suggests that a follow-up investigation would have revealed that Rooney was having sex with the student. Rooney eventually returned to work and was later convicted of molesting several students at Edwin Markham Middle School.

While the CTC and school districts have the obligation to honor teachers’ due process rights, they also have the obligation to fully investigate allegations of misconduct and to monitor the fitness of teachers. In Chapel’s case, his acquittal was due to incomplete evidence and the fact that it was only a child’s word against his—not a very compelling vindication. One would think that under these circumstances, LAUSD might have monitored the man closely and warned his site administrators to do likewise.

One would also hope that school districts would do a thorough job screening applicants prior to hiring them. This does not seem to be the case with Chapel, who was sued for making inappropriate and demeaning comments during a sexual education class at a school in the mid-1980s, prior to working for LAUSD. Though he eventually won a settlement with the school, he was compelled to leave. He listed the principal of his past school as reference when he applied to LAUSD, which either failed to talk to the principal or accepted incomplete or deceptive information.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/lausd-lost-records-of-accused-molester.html

March 7, 2012

Mock Test Woes From a Teacher Who Opts Her Own Child Out of State Tests

elp! My principal (new to the school) wants us to give the students a mock test to prepare for the CST. It’s supposed to show us which standards students are struggling with. The tests are the released test questions. The 6th grade Language Arts mock test has 114 questions and is 26 pages, front to back. The 6th grade math mock test has 96 questions and is 12 pages, front to back. The 3rd grade tests each have 96 questions with 13 reading passages on the Language Arts test. I was literally speechless when I saw the tests, though choice words quickly followed. If I found out that my own children were forced to take a mock test like this, I would be furious. I opt my oldest out of the CSTs every year (youngest is only in 1st grade) but I wouldn’t know about something like this until it was too late to do anything about it.

It is my opinion that these tests are abusive to children, a waste of money and instructional time, and a violation of test prep guidelines.

To read the rest, go to United Opt Out http://unitedoptout.com/uncategorized/mock-test-concerns-from-a-teacher-who-also-opts-her-own-child-out-of-the-state-test/

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/mock-test-woes-from-teacher-who-opts.html