Follow NY and Make Evaluations Public?

Earlier this week, the New York State Legislature passed a bill that will make teacher evaluations public information but keep teachers' names private. This is a new step towards holding teachers accountable for their performance by the public. As a large state such as New York begins to implement this reform, other states might follow. With this information available, the questions are: Who will use it? And what will it change?

It could be a useful indication of a school's success if parents could access teacher evaluations at a school, even without names. The parents who will access this information will first have to know that it exists. This will of course depend on how public access to the evaluations is publicized, and most likely the information will be online so those interested in reading the evaluations will need access to the Internet. What this all means is that less-informed parents, usually parents of the neediest children, will not be the primary readers of these evaluations.

If states and districts across the country begin to open their evaluation systems up to this scrutiny by the public, it will be important to make sure that the teacher evaluation process itself is improved so that those who end up accessing the evaluations see an accurate picture of the teacher. In Baltimore City, the teachers and administrators are still struggling to understand how to implement a new evaluation system, and as with any system there are learning curves and personal politics that surround the implementation. The new framework might help teachers improve their craft and view the evaluations in a less critical way, but the movement to publicize the information might reintroduce a punitive feeling.

It is unlikely that publicizing my effectiveness against the Baltimore City rubric is going to make me a more effective teacher. It is likely that I am going to feel that my abilities as a teacher are not fully represented in that medium and it is unfair, whether my name is attached to it or not, that the public display of my evaluation reflects my practice to someone who has probably never met me. Furthermore, parents who have other options of schools for their children might see the evaluations as a way to pursue those options. But for parents who do not know how to transfer their student, or are unable to transfer their child, will not experience that same interest in accessing the evaluations - because the results will not mean that choosing another teacher is even a possibility.

Evaluations are something that an administrator, as an instructional leader, should conduct to help teachers improve their craft. Similar to an annual review at a company, or even other parts of the public sector, it is about professional growth, and the qualitative evaluation material should remain between teacher and supervisor.

"Bloomberg: NY teacher evaluations should be public"
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP078f1fb1da0247fb94af47b9c48f1526.html

Student Debt Crisis

In March 2012, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that student loans in the U.S. hit $1 trillion.  The response spurred a series of news discussions about the negative effects of debt for what has been nicknamed the ‘student debt crisis.’ (New York Times “Degree of Debts”, Atlantic “The Student Debt Crisis We Don't Talk About”, CNBC “Price of Admission: America’s College Debt Crisis").

 In Congress, the debate has centered around student loan interest rates.  At the end of this month (June 2012), the interest rate on Stafford federal student loans will expire to resume an increased rate of 6.8%.  The rate, currently 3.4%, had been initially set as a temporary reduced rate in 2007 and was intended to resume the higher rate 6.8% in 2011 (extended to begin July 1, 2012).  Congress has been in a tumult of political foreplay and impasse about interest rates for federal student loans.  Just yesterday, President Obama has reportedly placed new pressure on Congress to keep student loans at a low interest rate.

 All of this points to a bigger question of the purpose and viability of a college education.  What is the purpose of a college degree?  Should students go straight into the workforce after high school or should they attempt postsecondary education no matter the costs?  Certainly these issues are not new.  What has changed though is the economic environment that students are now faced with, and the associated pressures of debt, unemployment and/or partial employment.  Not to mention the increase in students not graduating or taking longer to graduate and thereby accruing more debt.  The stakes in other words are much higher.      

 Given this heightened context of economic crisis, now translated into student crisis, what can we say about the financial aspects of a college education?  Is it worthwhile for a student to take on this much debt?  Will what the student losses be recouped in income and more intangibles, such as cultural capital and socio-economic standing?  Re Naush’s post yesterday, does this change how we approach public versus private education?

Finally, what is the purpose of a college education?   As educators, how does this impact the way we teach and approach college preparation?

 

Other Links:

 Wall Street Journal statistics on unemployment, college educated, and student loans:  http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/search/student%20debt/?s=student+debt 

 

Economist Gary Becker’s discussion on student debt: 

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2012/05/is-student-debt-too-great-becker.html

National Journal Education Experts Blog discuss debt: 

http://education.nationaljournal.com/2012/06/unpacking-1-trillion.php#comments

Challenge to Care in Charm City:  previous blog posts have made some insightful discussion points and sources about the question of student debt:   http://bmorenotless.blogspot.com/2012/03/are-baltimore-students-degreeless-in.html

Baltimore Sun:  More Baltimore Graduate Attend 2 Year College Where They are Less Likely to Earn Degree

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bs-md-ci-college-completion-report-20110907,0,7483796.story

Public v. Private Sector Education

Is a high-quality education something that all Americans deserve? If so, is the public or private sector better equipped to deliver this education? This topic is front and center in the national discourse on education right now and Diane Ravitch commented on this topic in a recent blog post. The post was called "The Miseducation of Mitt Romney" and it derides Romney's plan to turn education over to the private sector. The post itself raises a number of salient points about the public v. private sector education debate and there are two specific points I would like to elaborate on.

Above all, one of the major points in her post was about school vouchers. Proponents of privatizing education love to point to the effectiveness of school vouchers. However, Ravitch points out that:

A Congressionally-mandated evaluation of the D.C. program found that students with vouchers made no gains in either reading or math. As the report stated, “There is no conclusive evidence that the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] affected student achievement.”

This data seems incredibly relevant, especially since it shows that students with vouchers made no gains in either reading or math. If the government is paying students to go to private schools (which could be for-profit, religious, or run by some other type of organization) that are not enhancing student achievement, why should we support a voucher system? Although this report is only a snapshot of data on one particular voucher program, it still raises a cautionary flag about the overall efficacy of vouchers. The efficacy of voucher programs need to be proven before hailing them as a panacea to correct problems within our current educational system.

The other major point that is incredibly important is how bipartisan these so-called "solutions" have become. As Ravitch explained:

Apart from vouchers and the slap at teacher certification, Obama’s Race to the Top program for schools promotes virtually everything Romney proposes—charters, competition, accountability, evaluating teachers by student test scores. If anything, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been as outspoken on behalf of charters and test-based accountability as Mitt Romney. And, like Romney, Duncan has disdained the issue of reducing the number of students per teacher.

If there is a growing bipartisan political consensus on the policies that should be in place to fix our educational system, what can opponents of these policies do? Some of these policies - namely the voucher system, charters, tying teacher evaluations to student performance - used to be extremely controversial. But because of this growing bipartisan consensus, these once controversial ideas have been mainstreamed and opponents of these ideas have been isolated and marginalized. This is extremely troubling to me as I see this as part of a broader push towards privatization in all sectors of the economy. Seeing as what privatization has done in other areas (e.g. military contractors in Iraq, parts of the prison system, parking meters in Chicago and New York, etc.), I maintain a healthy skepticism about the reliability - and intentions - of privatization in general. If privatization can really bring about better education for students in America, then this would be a great idea. However, I don't think it is wise to go down this path with as much chutzpah as our current political class is doing. We should be very wary of going down the path of privatization given its track-record in general and for educational reform in particular. This is especially relevant since even more controversial ideas - such as abolishing teacher tenure and unions - are also slowly being mainstreamed. Overall, the push towards privatization seems inexorable even though the true costs of this push are currently unknown.

On some level, we as corps members implicitly believe in TFA's mantra that "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." Whether these children actually get that excellent education depends a lot on the current debate over public v. private sector education.

The Miseducation of Mitt Romney, The New York Review of Books, 6-5-12, Diane Ravitch http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/05/miseducation-mitt-romney/

Effective Instruction

Earlier today (06/19/2012), the Baltimore Sun featured an article about the School Effectiveness Review (SER) process that Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPSS) is using to evaluate schools. Essentially Baltimore City contracted a third-party to come into BCPSS schools and using a pretty extensive rubric, evaluate the schools on a variety of measures. The Sun article focused primarily on measures regarding instruction, with the first round of SERs finding that 40 percent of schools were "not effective." With a large focus being put on instruction in Baltimore City by CEO Andres Alonso and CAO Sonja Santelises, as seen by the development of the instructional framework, these findings shine some light on the need for effective teachers.

In my mind, effective instruction is a trait teachers develop over years of being in the classroom. It takes trial and error, celebrating successes and learning from failures (a lot of them). To develop your practices as a teacher to be consistently effective takes time. Baltimore City is pushing to bring in young and talented individuals to teach and while that youthful energy is always necessary, these teachers are not going to be effective consistently for their first couple of years. It is going to take time to train these individuals to be effective instructors. During that time period it can only be expected that many teachers, and schools, will be rated as not effective. I know that many of the turnaround schools are staffed with a majority of teachers who have been teaching for less than 5 years. Of course there are some fantastic teachers who have not been teaching very long, but they are rare. Also, many teachers are leaving the profession from being simply burnt out. Many teachers leave the profession before they fully develop their skills. The time it takes to develop those skills is taxing and it is unfortunate that people burn out before they realize the fruits of their labour.


A quick note. My school was administered a SER this past May. The observers came into my classroom for a 20 minute segment of my 90 minute class, took some notes, and then left. They did this for all teachers, sans a couple whom they observed twice. While the observers did hold focus groups with students and staff and spent some time just observing the school, to base a review of a teacher on a 20 minute segment may not be the best method to determine if they are effective or not. If the observers do not know the context of the lesson in terms of the overall unit, or whether the lesson was a review lesson, or any of these other factors that determine the function of a specific lesson, then their ratings may not accurately reflect what the teacher is doing.

While the 40 percent figure given seems startling, we should not jump to conclusions just yet. Many of our teachers are not effective because they just have not had the time to develop effective teaching practices. Also, effective teacher instruction is being heavily linked to initiatives such as the adoption of the Common Core standards, and that will add another dimension to this debate of standards (and their assessments) as they relate to how teachers are evaluated. It may all seem a big mess but I do hope that the SER process will help to determine practices that work better than others so that struggling schools can be given opportunities to support their teachers to eventually be highly effective teachers.

The article can be found here: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-06-18/news/bs-md-ci-school-effectiveness-reviews-20120618_1_city-school-evaluations-sonja-santelises

"Worry About Yourself," not the College-Bound Immigrant Population

It is disheartening to read the perspectives of opponents to the Maryland Dream Act; I find my teacher voice echoing the mantra of my classroom: "Worry about yourself."

In a city where the population of immigrant students and families is growing exponentially, it seems unfair to deny illegal immigrant students the in-state tuition breaks their peers receive for identical requirements. The law would allow children of Maryland residents who lack official citizenship documents to receive the same in-state tuition rate their fellow Maryland resident peers receive, given they have attended a Maryland high school for three years and can prove that their parents filed tax returns to the state. 

As an ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher, I spend my days working with students who come from very diverse life situations. Regardless of the reason for their family's immigration from their home country, and regardless of whether or not that move was legal, I am unable to place any responsibility or blame on my ESOL students for their immigrant status. In fact, the very label 'immigrant' is perhaps the last on my list of characteristics for these students. My students are capable, intelligent, cultured, and bilingual. Their family's legal status has no bearing on that reality. The majority of my Latino ESOL students were born in the United States; the decision to immigrate was made perhaps while they were still a twinkle in their mother's eye. 

It is for this reason I urge the opponents of the Dream Act to worry about themselves. Children of immigrant families who attend high school in this state and whose parents pay taxes deserve the same tuition break as everyone else who lives in the state. There is not difference between these students and their peers (except, perhaps, the cultured, intelligent, and bilingual part).

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-dream-act-appeal-20120612,0,6701916.story

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-in-state-results-20110707,0,6104123.story?page=1

More KoolAid Please!

In the education reform debate, Teach for America (TFA) chooses to swoop in with not reform, but transformation.   The question is, who is this transformation for?  

"Teach For America is growing the movement of leaders who work to ensure that kids growing up in poverty get an excellent education."

While this mission seems brilliant in theory, I cannot help but see its connection to (white) Western imperialism.  It is no surprise that TFA hires predominantly white, middle to upper class, recent college graduates to spread a very specific message about how education needs to be to predominantly poor students of color.  Most corps members share little to no background or life experience with their students or colleagues, yet they are charged with the duty of "transforming" education, something most are ill prepared to do.

The brutal reality is that TFA teachers are not effective.  My MTLD (Manager of Teacher Learning and Development) gave me the figures for the Baltimore Corps, which has higher statistics than the national average.  Only a womping 3% of first year teachers make a transformational impact, and after their second year only 7% can be considered transformational.  That's six people out of the Baltimore corps.  Yet, TFA is looked at as being an answer to education.

Most TFA teachers leave after their two year commitment, feeling exhausted, yet pleased that they helped out a community of poor, troubled students.  However, the reality is that unless those teachers leaving were a part of that 7%, their students stayed at the same academic level or in some cases, worse.

If we really want to have transformation, we need to focus on training career teachers, rather than idealistic college grads that use TFA as a means of beefing up their resume.  This gives our students a chance to have a teacher that will be more than just novice, someone who will really stick around to see them through.  As it stand now, TFA's infrastructure isn't helping our kids, it's just making a bunch of predominantly white, middle-class kids feel good about serving a community that isn't theirs, while reaping the professional benefits associated with this "charitable" deed.  

And while I am not trying to discount the experience of any corps member, I think it is crucial to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and message that TFA is sending.  Anyone who has been to any of TFA's diversity sessions should know that TFA has an issue acknowledging the privilege that exists, and until that happens, the organization will continue to be inherently flawed.  Perhaps the transformation TFA so desperately seeks needs to first be realized within themselves.

http://www.teachforamerica.org/our-mission

**I readily acknowledge that there are many corps members from a variety of backgrounds and identities.  I wrote this blog to highlight social implications and theory to the general trend I see with the heavy recruitment of white corps members in TFA.  I by no means am trying to discount the fact that there are people who are doing great work and joined TFA to truly make an impact.