Los Angeles wants new contracts to include 'value-added' data as part of teacher evals.

[n2doc]

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times
August 21, 2010


The Los Angeles Unified School District will ask labor unions to adopt a new approach to teacher evaluations that would judge instructors partly by their ability to raise students' test scores — a sudden and fundamental change in how the nation's second-largest district assesses its educators.

The teachers union has for years staunchly resisted using student test data in instructors' reviews.

The district's actions come in response to a Times article on teacher effectiveness. The article was based on an analysis, called "value-added," which measures teachers by analyzing their students' performance on standardized tests. The approach has been embraced by education reformers as a way to bring objectivity to teacher evaluations.

John Deasy, the recently appointed deputy superintendent, sent a memo to the Board of Education on Friday afternoon spelling out the district's value-added plans. He said he hopes that labor negotiations can be completed before The Times publishes a database containing the names and value-added rankings of more than 6,000 elementary school teachers. In the meantime, the district plans to use that data internally to help identify teachers who need extra training.

more

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-contract-20100821,0,7128579.story

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Well of course they do

He said he hopes that labor negotiations can be completed before The Times publishes a database containing the names and value-added rankings of more than 6,000 elementary school teachers.

Extortion anyone?

[baldguy]

2. Schools are factories. Teachers work on an assembly line.

Not.

[Recursion]

3. As an empirical question, are there or are there not certain teachers who consistently...

...are able to make students' test scores go up? (ie, over multiple years with different kids) The answer "yes" is assumed by one side and "no" assumed by the other, but this seems like a question that can actually be answered with data, and the first thing we should have asked before starting this whole argument.

[MadHound]

4. But you, like so many others, are conflating the idea that rising student test scores

Is indicative that students are getting a quality education. That simply isn't the case. Study after study has shown that standardized testing is doing immense harm to our students. They aren't being fully taught, since teachers are forced to teach to the test, leaving immense amounts of information on the table as they concentrate solely on the subjects and areas that are on the test. History, civics, art, music, and so much more is going by the wayside due to testing madness.

This is already showing up in colleges and in the real world, as the first generation of NCLB kids come to college, or go out into the working world and find themselves completely unprepared. Students are unsure how to take any sort of test other than a multiple choice test, they don't think as critically or analytically as those who weren't tested to death. The fact of the matter is all this testing is doing our children a huge disservice. We've already lost one generation to testing madness, how many more should we lose pursuing a failed policy?

The fact of the matter is that teachers are well assessed throughout the year. Observations, films, portfolios, etc. etc. There is no need to hook pay and promotions to test scores. It is not only unfair to the teacher, it does a huge disservice to students.

[Recursion]

6. You are mistaken; I am not making such a conflation

I do not confuse high test scores with a quality education. I do consider the ability to pass a test as an indication that one is capable of then receiving a quality education. There's a certain amount of rote learning (which can be tested) that a student needs before actual education can begin. And it's that rote learning that is too often not happening.

At least when I tutor math, of course I want the student to be able to "think in algebra", which I would take to be a sign of actual education. But if the student can't do addition and multiplication automatically, then I spend whatever time we have drilling that, because the concept won't help anything if the rote isn't underlying it. The tables are testable; thinking mathematically isn't. The latter is the end of the former. But that means the former is necessary.

[MadHound]

7. Then why should we be linking standardized, multiple choice tests to anything?

They are actually quite inadequate in measuring yearly progress. Many students simply don't do these types of tests very well. They can show you their progress via essays, portfolios and other such assessments, but when it comes to standardized tests, they flat out suck.

These sort of results give a very skewed picture of what is going on. Furthermore, you don't need to pass a test in order to show that one is "capable of then receiving a quality education." Every single student is capable of receiving a quality education, the question then becomes how is the material presented to these student in a way that they can relate to.

Let's look at Bloom's taxonomy. Depending upon what a student is learning, and how a student is learning, and remember, students learn in different ways at different rates, you can ask them an synthesis based question, and they will draw a blank. At younger ages, this is normal. Yet that blank answer is considered to be an indication of the student not knowing a particular area, when the truth is they probably do know, they simply haven't reached the developmental level where they can synthesize that knowledge. And you simply can't force them to that level, that is based upon the individual and their stage of intellectual and physical development.

There are simply far too many variables to have a single standardized test as a measurement of progress. As I mentioned earlier, we've already lost one generation to testing madness, how many more do you want to lose?

[Recursion]

10. Now wait a minute

A standardized test is a very good measure of questions like:

Can the student choose from a list of options the sum of two numbers?
Can the student choose from a list of options the first President of the United States?
Can the student choose from a list of options the quotient of two numbers?
Can the student choose from a list of options which is a mis-spelled word?
Can the student identify which of a list of diagrams is of a water molecule?
Can the student choose from a list of options the date of the Battle of Austerlitz?

(That's sort of roughly in the order we might expect a student to be able to do it, though the Battle of Austerlitz is probably a bad example.)

The claim, as I understand it, is that there are students who are capable of adding two numbers correctly, but cannot then choose that correct answer from a list of options. OK, if that's the case, do what it takes to make them able to choose from a list of options. That is actually an important skill in life.

Now obviously I agree the stress these all-or-nothing tests put on kids (and teachers) is horrible, and I'm not saying we should test at the insane rate we are testing at. But honestly I think the argument that standardized tests are truly meaningless is nonsense.

Furthermore, you don't need to pass a test in order to show that one is "capable of then receiving a quality education." Every single student is capable of receiving a quality education

Bollocks. That requires an engaged student, family, and community, which a whole lot of students don't have/aren't. But arguing about the possibility of a quality education when students can't identify correctly the sum of two numbers from a list of options is like talking about how much faster the Titanic could have been going.

you can ask them an synthesis based question, and they will draw a blank.

If standardized tests are asking synthesis-based questions, they are wrong (the closest I remember to that is the silly "reading comprehension" sections of standardized tests). Assess rote knowledge/skills. There's a huge body of those kids need.

[MadHound]

12. It is obvious that you've never dealt with lots of students

Students with dyslexia, students with ADD, students that place somewhere on the autism spectrum, students with ADHD, students with untold numbers of actual learning disabilities. All of these students have problems pick an option off of a list.

Furthermore, you have students who simply aren't verbally, visually, or mathematically intelligent. They might be able to give you a presentation on the first president of the US, but you ask them to pick from a list, and their skills go down the drain (research Gardeners Multiple Intelligence theory)

Furthermore, you have students with test anxiety, or students who simply don't care, which is most of them.

And again, since teachers are being forced to teach to the test more and more, how much information is being left out of today's modern curriculum? One hell of a lot. History, art, music, civics, literature, on and on.

Have you met any college freshmen lately? If you do, ask them to write a critical essay. Or to evaluate the role of some historical figure. They simply can't do it because their education has been stunted by so much test taking. Yes, they have certain basic knowledge, but frankly, due to this great leveling via testing, that's where their knowledge and growth level has stopped, at the first level of Bloom's. That's horrible, because critical thinking requires synthesis, evaluation, analysis, application. If you can't perform these actions then you are a stunted learner. Yet that is exactly what these tests are forcing upon our students, that they become stunted learners. We've done a huge disservice to one generation, how many more do you want us to destroy?

[Recursion]

13. Not at once, no

That's one reason I'm a tutor rather than a teacher; I don't want to deal with that many kids at once.

Have you met any college freshmen lately? If you do, ask them to write a critical essay. Or to evaluate the role of some historical figure. They simply can't do it because their education has been stunted by so much test taking. Yes, they have certain basic knowledge, but frankly, due to this great leveling via testing, that's where their knowledge and growth level has stopped, at the first level of Bloom's

Yes, I took some pre-recs when I was doing my Masters last year, including a freshman section (boy, that was weird). We disagree on the diagnosis. I think they can't write a critical essay primarily because they never learned to simply write a formal five-paragraph essay -- you know, the kind that's easiest to test because you just need to look for the right form. Sort of like my early-80s cohort who got multiple-base arithmetic thrown at us and can now incorrectly add in base 10, 2, or 8 (though I still do chisenbop sometimes). Trying to do too much winds up doing nothing. Then again, I went to a fairly elite college for my undergrad and I couldn't write after that either; it took working as a copywriter for a marketing firm for me to actually learn how to simply write at need -- but this is a skill that could be well within the reach of most teenagers (I'm not talking about synthesis here; present them an already-whiteboarded thesis and supporting arguments. Have them write that.).

I'm saying they didn't get to Bloom I because education theory is so obsessed with getting them past it they forgot you have to actually get them there first. And if students' disabilities are making them incapable of scaling that pyramid (is it still presented as a pyramid?) then the taxonomy itself needs to be scrapped and we need to find one that works for them. Or we need two (or more) parallel school systems.

But if we buy the taxonomy, and if we have a lot of students who are incapable of doing the "recall of information", then we need to drop everything and fix that before we worry about more abstract things. I was bored as hell in school because in most classes I was on 3 or 5 (4 is my weak spot) and they were still doing 1 and 2 -- but that's what most of the students needed, so it was the right thing to do.

Though before that, I had gone to a Montessori school through grade 4. That had its own problems (kids leaving after 8th grade unable to, say, read or add without manipulables).

[mzteris]

9. if you're a math tutor, then I hope you understand dyscalculia...

"the tables are testable; thinking mathematically isn't"...

People with dyscalcula are able to "think mathematically" but are usually extremely challenged with their "tables". These are the people who are conceptually gifted and computationally "challenged". You know, like Einstein.

[Recursion]

11. Einstein as a dyscalculic is a myth

He could certainly add, subtract, multiply, and divide two numbers. And he never actually failed math; he had high marks consistently through his academic career. His family moved right before he finished Gymnasium, and his new teachers and peers didn't like him because he was Jewish.

A better example might be Ramanujan, though his "unschooled" status was played up by Hardy: his teachers recognized he was way beyond them so they just gave him advanced math books and told him to go do his thing (though it's not clear Hardy knew this). But that's discalculia at a much different level: he was better at intuitively solving infinite sums than proving his solution correct.

But, anyways, yes: there are dyscalculic and dyslexic students. They will score lower on assessments of the skills their disability makes difficult for them. That seems right, doesn't it? I'm bad at pull ups, and I score lower on fitness tests in that category despite the fact that I have almost freakishly strong legs. But I don't know that the form of our education needs to be based around finding the rare genius mathematicians who are not capable of multiplying two numbers together when required.

Look, I'm with you that tests as they are are too high-stakes and high-stress. I don't buy the idea that they're meaningless. Most skills' distributions are more tail-heavy (and bimodal) than our Gaussian-happy education system likes to think, but there's still a very strong cluster around the mean.

[mzteris]

14. One can do those things

and suffer dyscalcula.

No one "knows" for sure, of course, but based on everything I've read - it strongly points to that. Being conceptually "brilliant" is a generally a tip-off. And dyslexia and dyscalcula are frequently comorbid.

Also it's not necessarily just "geniuses" who suffer - lots of (fairly) normal kids - okay - gifted at least - suffer from dyscalcula. I'm not saying change the entire methodology, but be aware of it. Don't force a kid who is incapable of learning in that way to try and fit into that mold, it can do considerable damage.

I speak from experience. My son basically taught himself multiplication at age four, to this day (he's almost 17) he is incapable of saying his "times tables". . . he's not a genius, but he's pds. (pretty damn smart). We pulled him from school mid-year at 8 due - in large part (and escalated school political sh*t) - to the gdamn "timed tables test" - you know the one - 100 multiplication problems in 10 minutes thing. He also suffered from dysgraphia - a writing disorder. The only two occasions he was able to "finish" in time - she couldn't read some of the answers. Even though she KNEW that HE KNEW his multiplication - in their oral "games" - he always finished as one of the top three in the room. If she had given him the test orally, he would have finished with 100% quickly, but he couldn't do the paper "test" in the time frame given. He developed major test anxiety that followed him until about age 13. But she WOULD NOT "do that". Even though he'd been diagnosed and had an IEP, they refused to accommodate via oral testing.


I'm frequently appalled at the number of teachers - especially math teachers - who've never even HEARD of this! So, I try and make sure the message gets out there every chance I get - no offense intended. (I do the same with dysgraphia - another little-known LD that can make a child's life absolutely miserable if the adults around them don't know they've got it.)

[Recursion]

16. I'd never heard of dysgraphia

Thanks for telling me.

And kydos to you for being so in charge of your son's education and doing what needed to be done. But in terms of general solutions, isn't there anything that can be done to help students who have problems with tables or writing? I understand it's how their brains work, but ISTM part of the point of education is, well, changing how your brain works. I mean, will your son just have trouble writing under time limits for life? (And if so, honestly, why shouldn't an assessment of skills reflect that?)

[mzteris]

17. on the tables

the suggestion is to let them use a times chart or calculators to do their work. Of course you do have to first MAKE SURE they understand the concept of what they are doing!!!

But if a kid really understands the concept, but just can't "immediately recall" the answers, then letting them use the chart or calc let's them proceed in development without the frustration. What happened for my son is he developed the "picture" of answer in his head from the calculator - and he was able to retrieve that faster.


As for writing - there are accommodations - laptops, extended time on any test involving writing, no points off for spelling, "messiness", even punctuation, grammar - when done quickly. My son used to misspell his own damn name!! He could spell just about any word you wanted ORALLY, ask him to write down what he'd just said, & he'd more than likely misspell it on paper. His hand just could not keep up with his brain. He "knew" grammar rules inside and out, but couldn't apply them in the process of "writing". He could edit them later - especially on a computer (no, not using grammar check - though later - after I knew he knew the rules - he did use it just to speed things up.) He still has "organizational" issues with writing. He has all of these wonderful ideas and beautiful imagery, he just has to work really hard at getting it all in the right order. Doing it on the fly is impossible.

The reason an assessment of skills should accommodate is because you may lose some of the most profound and wonderful writing "JUST BECAUSE" you can't do it "fast enough"! How ridiculous would that be?

Sometimes you can't "change how the brain works" - if a person is blind, you teach them braille, you don't insist they "read text" like others. Accommodations and retraining can help - a lot - but in the end Learning Differences - just means that a person may take in or "out-put" information "differently".

I suggest a few books for you on learning differences: A Mind at a Time, and The Myth of Laziness - both by Mel Levine. Also, try LDonline.org and LD.org.

Here's a good site to "see" what those LD's look like - from the sufferer's POV: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/

[Angry Dragon]

18. How do change how your brain works??

People are just wired differently.

You speak of using different systems for different students. If you are teaching to the test then the teacher does not have time to teach multiple systems.

[proud2BlibKansan]

21. From a professional sped journal:

Whether or not Einstein would meet a stringent definition for learning disabilities as we now define it, his own writings indicate that he experienced some academic challenges. About test taking, he wrote, “I would feel under such strain that I felt, rather than going to take a test, that instead, I was walking to the guillotine.” In addition, he related that teachers thought he asked too many questions and that he found learning difficult. Hence, amidst all of Einstein’s other great accomplishments, a piece his legacy can continue to be motivating other bright students who face learning challenges, regardless of classification.

http://www.ldail.org/einstei.cfm

[Raineyb]

5. Value added? WTF are they talking about that sounds like the type of shit you'd talk about

in manufacturing.

:wtf:

[mzteris]

8. "Teacher evaluation has been broken for years," Weingarten said.

teachers unions throughout the country have agreed to use value-added as one of several measures to evaluate instructors.

In a meeting with the Times earlier this week, Weingarten said she has negotiated 54 contracts with local unions and their school districts that include some form of value-added analysis. She also said parents have a right to know if their child's teacher received a satisfactory review.

Weingarten announced in January that her union would seek to revamp teachers evaluations. She said value-added accounts for 10% to 30% of teachers' performance reviews and it is one of multiple measures to evaluate teachers. In New York City, for example, 20% of a teachers evaluation is based on a value-added rating, she said.

"Teacher evaluation has been broken for years," Weingarten said. She said the current system is ineffective; most principals make brief, pre-announced visits to classrooms and merely fill out a checklist.

[Starry Messenger]

15. This is so fucking stupid.

I can't wait for all the people just creaming themselves over this see a distinct lack of results. Those tests are scored by private companies (using low-paid non-teachers to futz around with the numbers) who have to hit certain goals to be profitable. There is no "objectivity" to bring to this.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

19. This whole series makes me sick

I taught in LAUSD for 3 nightmarish years at a chronically low-performing elementary school in South Central. I was really unhappy there - dangerous neighborhood, several "lockdowns" every year, inaccesible administrators, abject poverty among students, a dirty, bleak campus, dogs running around loose...etc. But the day I decided I had to get out was during a grade level meeting that occurred about 2 months before "THE TESTING." The reading coach told a group of 7 or 8 of us teachers about a new strategy to get the test scores up. We were to identify 5 or 6 kids who were on the cusp, so to speak. They would get special extra attention and instruction during class time and in turn lift the entire class in the numbers racket. She said she wanted a list of names by the end of the day so that she could follow up on their progress and maybe put in a little extra time with them herself.

She didn't dream this up herself - she was merely following orders from higher up.

:mad:

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. That's common practice now

Schools can make AYP when a specified number of kids improve their scores.

[surrealAmerican]

20. How does this type of evaluation work?

Do they typically compare each child's test scores from the previous year to their scores at the end of the year, or are they testing the children at the beginning and end of the school year? I can see problems with each approach, but they are different problems.

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. It doesn't.