Evaluating teachers on the scores of other teachers. How TN got Race to the Top money.

[madfloridian]

If you think that doesn't make sense, you are right. The powers that be hurriedly passed the evaluation system in order to get Arne's Race to the Top money. It is pretty ridiculous.

From the New York Times:

In Tennessee, Following the Rules for Evaluations Off a Cliff

Half of their assessment is based on their students’ results on state test scores, a serious problem for those who teach subjects with no state test. To solve that, the state is requiring teachers without test results to be evaluated based on the scores of teachers at their school with test results. So Emily Mitchell, a first-grade teacher at David Youree Elementary, will be evaluated using the school’s fifth-grade writing scores.

“How stupid is that?” said Michelle Pheneger, who teaches ACT math prep at Blackman High and is also being evaluated in part based on writing scores. “My job can be at risk, and I’m not even being evaluated by my own work.”

For 15 percent of their testing evaluation, teachers without scores are permitted to choose which subject test they want to be judged on. Few pick something related to their expertise; instead, they try to anticipate the subject that their school is likely to score well on in the state exams next spring.

Several teachers without scores at Oakland Middle School conferred. “The P. E. teacher got information that the writing score was the best to pick,” said Jeff Jennings, the art teacher. “He informed the home ec teacher, who passed it on to me, and I told the career development teacher.”

I am sure that the fact that Tennessee's Commissioner of Education is a Vice-President of Teach for America has something to do with the haste in which reforms are being done.

The Republican governor's selection is Kevin Huffman, vice president of public affairs at Teach for America, a program that has tried to improve classroom teaching by placing recent college graduates in low-income schools and is often criticized by teacher unions.

Huffman, 40, will manage the state's $500 million in federal Race to the Top education grants and its ongoing relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged $90 million to the troubled Memphis school system.

..."The 20-year-old Teach for America has been criticized by the National Education Association and other teachers' unions for putting inexperienced 20-somethings with just five weeks of training in classrooms and for letting top graduates experiment in public education for a couple of years before moving on to something else.

All of this change is going on so the states can win federal money from Arne Duncan's Race to the Top. It is really pure idiocy, yet so few even show concern. It is happening under a Democratic administration, which in my mind makes it worse. States must tie teacher evaluations to students' test scores or they will not qualify for the funding.

Looks like Florida is doing something similar....taking merit pay so seriously that even teachers whose kids don't take the high stakes test are just as vulnerable.

In fact it gets stupider. The merit pay grading formula gets so bad that "even a member of the state committee tasked with developing it abstained from a vote because she didn’t understand it."

More from the Miami Herald.

The formula—in what is called a “value-added” model—tries to determine a teacher’s effect on a student’s FCAT performance by predicting what that student should score in a given year, and then rating the teacher on whether the student hits, misses or surpasses the mark.

But Sarduy, like thousands of other Florida teachers, doesn’t even teach a subject assessed by the FCAT. So his value-added score will not come from his math teaching or his particular students. Instead, it will be tied to the FCAT reading score of his entire school in South Dade—a notion that infuriates him, even though he appreciates the level of objectivity the new system brings, and the ways it strives to isolate a teacher’s impact on student learning.

Florida is among 25 states that have turned to student scores on standardized exams to help evaluate teachers and set their pay. By 2014, it will become mandatory to do so under a new state law. The model will initially use results on the FCAT, which has gotten tougher, and will expand to include other tests that are being developed in every subject at every grade level.

Florida’s revamped teacher-evaluation system is part of the education reform agenda pushed by the Obama Administration, which is giving states $4.3 billion in its Race to the Top grant program to come up with new ways to grade teachers and tie student performance to their paychecks.

This reform agenda which requires many teachers to be graded by scores that are not even theirs....is part of this administration's reforms for education.

I thought of this national educational reform movement today when I read of Obama's words about the force being used against OWS protestors. He said it should be left up to the cities.

President Barack Obama's spokesman is suggesting the president believes it's up to New York and other municipalities to decide how much force to use in dealing with Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

Spokesman Jay Carney also says Obama hopes the right balance can be reached between protecting freedom of assembly and speech with the need to uphold order and safeguard public health and safety.

I am sure many teachers who are so discouraged and sickened under the new often nonsensical pressures from the federal Department of Education would likewise wish that in their cases the "right balance" could be reached.

Judging a teacher who is a math specialist by the grades of a writing teacher is most certainly not the right balance.

[Angry Dragon]

1. as the USA falls further down the hole

it will take generations to get back to where we were in education
and by that time the rest of the world will be generations ahead
but we will have plenty of really rich people on how to educate

[madfloridian]

2. I don't think we can make education public again once it's gone.

I really don't believe so.

A free education open to all of the public has been a tradition in this country. The public part is going fast, and the free may follow.

Breaks my heart.

[badhair77]

3. I'm afraid you're right.

Not only the "public" part but the not-for-profit part. I wish 60 MIn would do an expose on the profit angle for a lot of the so-called public schools. I think people would be amazed at whose pockets are getting filled with these programs, from instruction and assessment materials to the schools themselves. What a gold mine. Very depressing.

[madfloridian]

4. Never happen. Media and ed reformers often share common owners.

So the only ones calling attention to this mess are a few bloggers. And they don't get much attention for it....because to post about it one must criticize the president's policy. That is not popular, but it is necessary. :shrug:

It is depressing.

[midnight]

5. K&R

[madfloridian]

6. ...

Thanks for the rec. :hi:

People are tired of my posting about education. But they can relax, things will be different once DU3 is here. My posts will be not very noticeable then. Will make many happy. :) So I've been told.

[MaineDeadHead]

7. Emigrate!

It's the only solution. Our nation has gone insane.

[LWolf]

8. Until America is willing to stand up and demand that

high-stakes testing in all its different ensembles be permanently banned, it's not going to get better.

We know it's bad. So bad, that every time some politician suggests scrapping the current mess for a DIFFERENT WAY TO USE HIGH STAKES TESTS, something they suggest is "kinder and gentler," but is still destructive, people jump on the bandwagon.

I am so sick of hearing, "Well, we're going to have it in some format, so this at least might be better than...."

WHY DO WE HAVE TO PUT UP WITH SOMETHING WRONG, SOMETHING DESTRUCTIVE, AT ALL?

:grr:

[madfloridian]

10. Good point. They just keep thinking of ways to use high stakes testing...

never a thought of getting rid of it.

It's infuriating.

[LWolf]

14. I'm in the midst of parent conferences right now.

They keep asking why everything is so different, so stressful. I empathize with them, and then tell them that meeting benchmarks/"passing" standardized tests are now requirements for a high school diploma, and that, plus budget cuts, are driving all of the changes they are seeing.

[knitter4democracy]

9. In the school I just got done subbing in, evals are based on grades.

If you have higher than an 8% failure rate in any of your classes, it's grounds for a lower eval score which can lose you tenure or get you fired. So, standards have flown out the window because, even though test scores and pre- and post-test data are also part of the evaluation, the most important score is the teacher's failure rate.

So, you can imagine what's happening: teachers are looking the other way when students cheat. They give the kids the answers to the test the day before the test. They deliberately don't tell the kids how to do well on the pre-tests so it makes the post-test scores looks awesome. They give the same on-line quizzes over and over again until the kids all pass with 100%--when the quiz tells the kids the right answers after they submit. So, the kids just copy down the questions and answers and then take the quiz at home with their notes right there.

I'd never seen anything like that and refused to go along with it--my failure rate got as high as 30% overall. When I'd tell students that they had to turn in their work and study for tests and quizzes, I was asked for the answers, and once a student assured me that he'd pass without turning in anything because, as he said, I'd get fired if I failed him, so he knew I'd find a way to pass him even without that paper in the gradebook. I was horrified, and that, coupled with zero discipline support from the office and constant crap from the students, was part of the reason I quit.

It's far worse than anyone outside of education realizes.

[madfloridian]

11. You are right. It is far worse than most realize.

The goal is now evaluating, not learning.

[madfloridian]

12. Nice comments from an education administrator about these evaluations.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20111113/WILLIAMSON07/311130014/Imperfect-evaluation-system-creates-stress

"Late last Friday evening, as I was finishing up from a busy week, I glanced at the security camera system, which displays — among other things — the school parking lots across the district. I was inspired and saddened by what I observed.

First, I was inspired by the number of teachers whose cars were still there as sunset fell. That’s right: on Friday night, well past quitting time, hundreds of teachers were busy in their rooms, still working. In reality, such an observation could be made on just about any day in Williamson County and, I suspect, in many other districts across the State of Tennessee. As a group, teachers give freely, sacrificing personal time and commitments for the benefit of students."

.."I was also saddened by what I saw, because I know, despite their efforts and hard work, teachers frequently continue to go unrecognized. Where else do hundreds upon hundreds of professionals work off the clock on such a regular basis, even when their work is scrutinized, criticized and arguably unappreciated by so many?

..."The TEAM process, as currently designed, also created some unintended consequences. There is resentment and even anger over the many unanswered questions for which the state has yet to provide a good response. For example, by using TEAM, about 60 percent of teachers will be evaluated, in part, not on their own performance but instead on that of their peers (e.g. 35 percent of a first grade teacher’s evaluation is derived from third or fourth grade students’ performance).

It is terribly problematic for teachers to be evaluated on the performance of students they don’t teach. Comparatively, politicians ought to be held accountable for the votes of their counterparts with an opposing view, plumbers would need to be paid on how well electricians lay wire and bankers on the savings rates of bank customers. Simply stated, we can do better for our teachers."

[madfloridian]

13. The sad part is...

that this reform movement will succeed because there is no opposition. Fewer and fewer bloggers are speaking out, and no big media is at all.

When both parties do it and we are made to feel guilt for questioning....then it is a done deal.