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Commentary: Diving deep into value-added study
Written by Robert Reichardt on Jan 30th, 2012. | Copyright © EdNewsColorado.org
So, let’s see–I’m an English teacher, but I’ll do some arithmetic here and see if we can see what those “increased lifetime earnings” look like:
Let’s look at $9244.00 divided by 30 years (although most people work far, far more than 30 years, we’ll use 30). That equals $308 dollars a year. Divide $308 dollars by 12 months and we get $25 and change a month. Divide that by 20 (the average number of working days in a month) and you get $1.25 a day more that these students will earn. They’ll outearn the others by 16 cents an hour.
If we figure it out for 40 years, which is more realistic, it comes out to an extra $231 a year, which is $19 a week, which is 95 cents a day. Work 40 years and make 12 cents an hour more. Twelve cents. Twelve.
Now, as I said, I’m an English teacher, but I did get the highest A in my stats class in college, so bear with me: If we have an error rate of 30%, that means that 30% of the time we’re misidentifying ineffective teachers. This means that there’s a nearly one-in-three chance that we’re either keeping an ineffective teacher, or firing an effective one. I get that it’s unacceptable to many of the people here that we fail to get rid of the ineffective teachers, but is it not also unacceptable to accidentally show the door to the wrong ones? How many good teachers will we accidentally let go because of bogus data (and VAM is bogus from top to bottom and inside out) and at what point does that concern the reformers? After twenty are wrongly fired? Thirty ? Forty? Six hundred? Never?
As far as reducing teen pregnancy rates goes, there is no way in the world that they can make a correlation between those two sets of data. None. That’s like saying people with green eyes are more likely to commit murder because we did this (enormously flawed) study and found that fully 65% of the people in prison for murder have green eyes! As a result of this remarkable finding, we are engineering green eyes out of the gene pool.
“The data suggests that high-income families were better able to translate higher test scores into attendance at a higher quality college.” Well, duh. Since higher income kids get higher test scores overall, why is this a “finding?”
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. The flaws in this analysis are huge. How the author can conclude that “this research supports many of the policy efforts in Colorado” is beyond any reasonable reading of the findings and makes me think that perhaps Mr.Reichardt knows more about what he wants the research to say than what it actually does ( or, more accurately, doesn’t )say.
Mary, the sample for this work was pretty big, which allows for identifying some small but measurable correlations. They have records from 1988 through 2008, for grades 3 through 8, totaling roughly 2.5 million children.
Income was measured on a yearly basis. The income calculations was based on a finding that a student who had a teacher who was 1 standard deviation better in math or English than the average teacher earned $1,815 per year more at age 28, then a person with an average teacher. This was then extrapolated to lifetime earnings. The $9,422 figure was based on correct identification of the lowest performing 5% of teachers. If the error rate predicted with 3 years of data is used (about 1 in 4 is not actually in the bottom 5%) the increase in salaries is closer to $7,700.
The changes in the probability of a teen pregnancy from having an effective teacher was small, a reduction of about .1 percentage points or a change of 1.25%.
The interpretation regarding students from high-income families was not that they had higher test scores. It was that the data suggests high and low income students with the same test scores went to different quality colleges. Those from high income families went to better colleges than low income students.
I think your key point is about our current policy direction focused on educator effectiveness and problems associated with accurately identifying in-effective teachers. I think this research (and other research) says focusing on educator effectiveness is a valuable policy focus.
I have argued in other posts that the system being set up by SB 191 faces some serious technical challenges. I do not advocate for value-added being the sole or even primary tool for judging teacher effectiveness. And as I said in this post, multiple measures should be used in evaluation systems.
However, the trade-off remains: should we create a system that occasionally accidently lets the wrong teacher go, or should we have a system that forces students to sit in classes with teachers we know are not effective but we allow to teach for fear of asking the wrong teacher to move on? There is a balance to be struck between these two un-desirable outcomes. Do you think our current system is in balance?
RE: your response to Mary– Well Robert, the results of the study were not surprising then, eh? Even trivial. The real question as you and Mary have addressed it is perhaps how any measurement should be used as an instrument of policy regarding teacher staffing. The authors advised caution in this area. More than once.
I think you have created a kind of false dilemma in your last paragraph. For it to be complete, I would think that we knowingly fire an effective teacher if we keep an ineffective teacher. There may be several reasons to retain an ineffective one but I suspect our unseen companion in this game of charades is the teacher’s union. I’d ask an ethicist on this one but I’d guess that even in your scenario, possibly ruining an adult’s career for no reason and perhaps as a sole bread-winner of a family causes more harm to the adult than the student who will have many more teachers and more opportunities to get over one bad teacher. It’s just about impossible to go through life without one poor excuse for an educator.
The authors also recommend a good VA teacher be paid $130,000 per year. (p 51) Why do we never hear that suggestion mentioned in any of the news about this study?
Jeffrey, I think the results of the study were very surprising and reinforce both the significant value of effective teachers and costs of in-effective teachers.
However, I do not think the dilemma is at all false. Any system, in any profession, will have error in measuring the effectiveness of employees. The question is what type of error should the education system tolerate: error that hurts adults or error that hurts kids?
I might add though, I don’t think your example of firing of a sole bread-winner is the most egregious outcome from senior teachers leaving thier jobs. An important problem is the interaction of PERA with Social security, which is sometimes called the “government pension offset”. It is possible for certain long-term teachers to lose their jobs before they qualify for significant PERA retirement but too late in their careers to build a reasonable Social Security retirement account. Fixing these offsets is important to treating teachers, effective or in-effective, fairly. A little more info on the offsets can be found here: http://www.coloradoea.org/advocacy/incongress.aspx
Robert, I still contend that the income disparity you point out is statistically insignificant and therefore, irrelevant. Merely having a lot of longitudinal data doesn’t mean that you’ve automatically pulled something important from it. In fact, a different coding of the data may have shown, for instance, that students from more fortunate socioeconomic circumstances earn more over their lifetimes, and it’s a lot more than nine thousand crummy bucks, too. The more affluent a child’s background, the more likely they are to do well in school, and in life, regardless of whether they’ve experienced an occasional teacher that isn’t up to their standards.
You cannot link teen pregnancy possibilities to past teachers. Suzie’s fifth grade teacher had nothing whatsoever to do with Suzie being in that back seat in her junior year. I don’t care what or how much longitudinal data you have, it just isn’t Mrs. Smith’s fault, and is a stretch by any measure.
We’ve always known that kids from more affluent homes go to better colleges. If anything, you’ve just bolstered what teachers say about SES being THE predictor of success in school, and life.
I absolutely agree with Jeffrey that you’ve created a false dilemma: “should we have a system that forces students to sit in classes with teachers we know are not effective but we allow to teach for fear of asking the wrong teacher to move on?” This sounds as if the schools are just lousy with ineffective, bad teachers–you can’t throw up your hat without hitting one. And this is patently false. I work in a low income, turnaround district, one in which I’m sure many will be found ineffective in a few years, because we teach poor children in an underfunded environment. The truth of the matter is, the teachers with whom I work are amazing. I have found very, very few that I would deem “ineffective.” As one of these teachers, I don’t mind at all working with these kids; in fact, I love them. I don’t mind spending literally hundreds of dollars of my own money every year for books, bananagrams, whiteboard slates, markers, pencils, paper, posters, pencil sharpeners, trackers for struggling readers, and daily snacks for the 22 kids in my fourth period special ed class so they don’t starve to death before they get lunch at 1:00. Hungry children can’t learn. I am happy to do these things. What I will not do is sit down and shut up when someone posts their interpretation of a study and insinuates, or flat-out claims, that it’s the lazy teachers who can’t make kids learn when the kids we’re talking about miss days of school every week, have incarcerated parents, live in food-insecure homes, or with gang influences in the home.
Do you really think the kids in Adams 50, Adams 14, or Aurora Public Schools are as easy to educate as the kids in Cherry Creek? When I was a new teacher, I was in an affluent Jeffco school (F and R percentage was under 2%). My scores were STELLAR. Guess I was pretty darn effective, wasn’t I, and brand new too. Then the strangest thing happened. I moved to a school five miles to the east, in an impoverished district (which is actually where I prefer to work) and suddenly I became a horrible teacher! My scores fell from 95% proficient and advanced to 48%. Who knew that a mere five miles was the difference between highly effective and ineffective? If I decided to work in Broomfield next, where I live, something tells me I would once again be a wonderful teacher.
Can you point out to me even one failing, affluent school? Just one will do.
But you think it’s fair to partly base our retention on some mathematical hocus pocus that’s supposed to intimidate and impress everyone–when even the authors of the study caution strongly against using the data that way. You cavalierly suggest that it’s okay to occasionally let the wrong teacher go–I argue that’s deplorable.
The real elephant in the room is that the reformers have manufactured a crisis, framed it very well, I grudgingly admit, and foisted it upon a public that really doesn’t think critically and is easily wowed by mathematical formulas they don’t understand, but look impressive. The end result is going to be a lot of poor kids in charter schools with TFA McTeachers.
I have spent too much time on this post. This probably ineffective teacher is going to sign off now and spend a several hours grading papers, making sure I have everything planned and prepared for tomorrow, and writing up my parent/teacher conference forms, as those are happening in a few weeks. Tomorrow, I will get to school an hour and fifteen minutes before contract time to make copies, get my warm up on the overhead, and enter grades into the computer. Tomorrow after school I will stay for another two hours, directing a rehearsal for the school play.
Being ineffective takes all my time.
VAM, indeed.
Mary (an actual ten-year veteran of an actual low-income classroom)
Mary,
Thank you for your ten years in the classroom and contributions in our impoverished schools. I apprecaite your engagement in the conversation but feel like we have progressed to talking past each other.
R2
Robert, I appreciate the PERA situation but I wasn’t really referring to senior teachers. You may well be correct about there existing more egregious ways teachers (of any level of seniority) are treated. Oh, let us count the ways! If the study authors are all that, first, I’d like to know why I’m paid less than half of what I am worth according to them.
About the dilemma: Yes, there will be error bars in most everything but that fact does not address the conditional statements you created. And then you offer what appears to me to be another false dilemma: “The question is what type of error should the education system tolerate: error that hurts adults or error that hurts kids?” Because the harm involved to the parties in question is disproportionate and of a very different nature, your dilemma cannot be fairly considered.
Mary,
When you ask “Can you point out to me even one failing, affluent school? Just one will do” – I’m sorry to say there are plenty.
Somewhat unfairly, the one that immediately pops to mind in Denver is Teller Elementary, which in 2011 had a FRL population in single digits (9.6%, compared to the DPS average of ~72.0%), yet finished in the bottom half of Denver’s School Performance Framework. Teller had a median growth score of 40% — well under the state median of 50 while proficiency was just 65% across all three core subjects — which pretty much ensures that at least 1 of every 2 students are behind grade level in at least one subject. In contrast, of course, there are a number of schools with high FRL which are doing very well indeed. Yes, SES makes a large difference, but no, it is not destiny — particularly when one looks at median growth and not just proficiency.
I do think you and Robert are talking past each other, and perhaps we will do so as well. It’s an odd proposition to say both that teaching quality matters a lot (which I assume you would agree with) but one cannot measure it with any accuracy (which you say as well). That’s a frustrating contradiction to inhabit.
I would agree with Robert also that the question about the mistaken dismissal of a effective teacher depends a lot on what error one wants, and what perspective one has (and I’ve written about this here: http://bit.ly/oXfvZw). I find your perspective clear: you talk about your teaching based almost entirely on the actions you perform: grading papers, planning, entering forms, etc. Nowhere in your comments do you say anything about the academic outcomes of your kids. Those two ships — your efforts, and their outcomes — seem to be passing in the night. I genuinely admire your efforts and the sacrifices you make for your students, and I have no idea if you are a good teacher or not, but I do think that what teachers do and the academic (and related social) outcomes of students need to be connected, and that is the core of both this study the central principal behind VAM. Either perspective by itself is insufficient.
Jeffery,
I think this study adds support to the argument for increasing the pay of teachers, particularly effective teachers.
It also appears to me that you accept the delima, but think the harm of letting teachers go far exceeds the harm of letting a poor teacher continue in the classroom. This study does not support your argument, since the trade-offs can be montized, nor your perspective.
Alexander, how interesting. I looked up Teller Elementary and found very different statistics. I found and read their improvement plan:
First, they have a FRL rate of 30%. Nowhere does it say any single digit number for that, so I’m not sure where that came from. They also hover around 72% P/A in reading. These scores are commensurate with the FRL rate. My school has a FRL rate of around 75% or 80% and our scores are proportionally lower–we’re around 48-50% P/A in reading. Cherry Creek, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs District 20 all have P/A numbers in the 80 and 90% range, and FRL rates that are practically zero. It makes perfect sense, given their stats, that they score right where they do.
There are kill and drill schools with high FRL rates that do well all right, for a few years. Bessemer comes to mind. They’re right back in their economic bracket now. Teachers at Bessemer never hid the fact that all they did was drill for the test, all day long. They stopped drilling, scores fell. Actually, they plummeted, right back down to where all the other poor schools are. Some charters score well, but they only take the kids they want and who have the most involved parents. The ones on this site that everyone drools over and goes on about–KIPP is one of them–get lots of private money. Those guys don’t even count. They get a whole different set of rules.
One of the favorite arguments is to say it isn’t destiny, but for many children, it darn sure is. It sounds wonderful to say that it isn’t, but to do so ignores reality. Look at any spreadsheet and find the low and turnaround schools and districts. There’s not a single affluent school or district in turnaround, or even threatened with it. They’re all poor, with minority majorities. Again, charter schools don’t count. They’re playing a different game, with different rules.
This is actually the second time I will have talked about the academic outcomes of my kids. I think you may have missed my point. My point wasn’t that I’m a saint and I work harder than anyone in the world. I’m TYPICAL of my school, and my district. Almost all of us work really long hours, many coach after school activities. My real point is that you can hit these kids with everything you’ve got–I have a B.A. in English, with a minor in Reading Instruction, plus an M.A in English, in The Teaching of Writing. Please believe me when I tell you that I follow research-based best practice every day of my life. My kids set goals, self-evaluate, monitor their progress…..whether we’re reading or writing, we spend every day up in top reaches of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Out of about 95 kids, all of whom came to me unsat or partial in reading, 18 hit proficient on CSAP last year and 16 moved fro unsat to partial. Some kids, according to the test–an important distinction–seemed to have profited very much, although I’m not sure if it was my instruction or their parents. Every one of the kids who did well have pretty involved parents. The other kids don’t have bad parents, but our parents are very busy just trying to survive. Many don’t speak English. They just can’t be as involved.
So my point, Alexander, is that we are connecting too much to the teacher. I hit my kids with some seriously thought-out best practice and get scores around 50%; a worksheet queen in Cherry Creek ends up with 95%. (Cherry Creek teachers, I don’t think you teach that way. I’m just saying that you could, and it wouldn’t be as harmful to your scores as it would be to mine). I will also go so far as to say that if you switched staffs between my school and a Cherry Creek school, the Cherry Creek scores would remain high, and the scores at my school would remain low. Nothing would change, because it has much more to do with addresses and parents than it does teachers.
And I disagree that we have to choose “which error we want.” Poverty is the problem with some of our schools, not the teachers. I fail to see how ruining the careers of the ONLY people actually in the schools and actually doing something to help fixes anything. According to VAM, many of my colleagues and I will probably be found ineffective, and I tell you that we are not, and I tell you that this is unfair.
And it’s the INTERPRETATION of the study, not the study itself, that fails to support Jeffrey’s argument. For the third time on this thread, the authors of this study have warned that it should not be used for staffing decisions. Why is that not addressed? Does it matter to anyone that the authors themselves don’t want VAM to make high-stakes decisions about people’s careers? That there is a whopping 30% error rate? Does that matter to anyone at all? Robert? Alexander? Robert seems to think that merely saying it shouldn’t count for the entire evaluation makes everything rosy, but something with a 30% error rate shouldn’t be used for ANY PART of anyone’s evaluation.
And here’s what’s really ironic–last August, when I saw my scores and realized that my kids didn’t do too badly given where they’d started, I actually felt guilty. CSAP is such a poorly written test, such a terrible measure of anyone’s knowledge, that I worried I had spent too much time on test prep. Testing and test prep isn’t teaching. It’s a grotesque mockery of teaching and learning, and good teachers try not to do too much of it.
Mary, the authors do not argue that value-added measures should not be used for identifying effective or in-effective teachers, instead they argue that information from principal evaluations and observations be used in addition to the value-added measures to improve the accuracy of the evaluation system.
I agree that proficiency rates are very highly correlated with poverty. Last year the statewide math Proficiency and Advanced rates for free and reduced lunch (FRL) students was 39% compared to 67% for the non-FRL students. That is why this line of research into value-added (and the related growth scores) is valuable in that it identifies an impact of schools and teachers beyond poverty. The median math growth percentile for free and reduced students (FRL) last year was 48 compared to 52 for non FRL eligible. VAM (and the growth model) bring new information to the system that identifies effective teachers across all schools.
I am sticking to my argument. There is value to creating systems that evaluate teacher effectiveness. There are teachers working in our schools that should be asked to move on because they are not effective AND there are teachers who should be rewarded and recognized because of their effectiveness. Any evaluation system that is created to identify effective and in-effective teachers (or any other profession) will not be perfect, and the evaluation system should be as accurate as possible. The arguments against creating this system appear to be either: the cost of those errors to adults in the system are too large to bear, OR there really are not enough bad teachers to remove (or good teachers to recognize?) to justify the costs of the errors on the adults.
Mary,
First, you are absolutely correct to point out my error. I was using Denver’s 2011 SPF (here: http://testing.dpsk12.org/public/spf/current/1SPF_summary_traditional.pdf) and read the adjacent ELL column. Teller’s FRL in 2011 was 38%. But FRL roughly half the DPS average does not disprove the point, and Teller’s growth percentile score of 40 (from CDE’s SchoolView.org) and RFL of 38 are in absolutely no way commensurate with each other. It is easy to graph schools with one axis of FRL and the other of median growth percentile to see the correlation (and I would insert this here if I could).
You focus almost all of your argument on proficiency scores as a measurement of school impact on academic achievement. But there is virtually universal agreement that growth percentiles are a far better indicator, and that comparing proficiency does not tell you much. There are many good schools with high-poverty populations that will have below average PPA and above-average median growth percentiles. Likewise, there are several affluent schools with high PPA and growth well below the median.
The ability to measure cohort growth, and adjust for SES of the population, gives us much greater insight into academic effectiveness. Judging schools purely by proficiency is specious, for many of the reasons you cite. So let’s not do it. Let’s talk about academic growth — which is at the heart of VAM models. Here is the correlation of growth and FRL for Districts back in 2009: http://bit.ly/qw0YAj. You will notice a very different pattern.
The contention that Chetty et all argue that value-added measures not be used for staffing decisions eluded me when I read the paper. Let me quote a few passages which argue the opposite:
“However, even after observing teachers’ impacts on test scores for one year, estimates of VA are reliable enough that such personnel changes would yield large gains on average.” (Summary) “We conclude that good teachers create substantial economic value and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers.” (Abstract) “We therefore conclude that our value-added measures provide unbiased estimates of teachers causal impacts on test scores despite the grouping of students on lagged gains ” (page 3) etc. etc.
The caution they give is not that VAM is not a useful personnel tool, but that it needs more refinement so that teachers don’t find a way around it:
“However, more work is needed to determine the best way to use VA for policy. For example, using VA in teacher evaluations could induce counterproductive responses that make VA a poorer measure of teacher quality, such as teaching to the test or cheating.”
Your overall interpretation on VAM is highly erroneous. No one is suggesting using proficiency scores — these do not measure cohorts and are explicitly not part of any responsible VAM use or SB 191. No one is suggesting we do not adjust for the SES of student populations. Teachers at a school with RFL of 90% will not be judged against those at a school with RFL of 10%. You are arguing against phantoms that don’t exist — do you really believe that this is how VAM works? That there will be no distinction between teachers in your high-poverty district and those in Cherry Creek? Your comments very diligent in other areas — why not here?
Now let me also say, really clearly, that I believe many teachers are high-poverty schools are not put in a position where they are able to be successful. For a school that has chronically struggled and sunk to a certain level, it is virtually impossible to make significant improvements quickly (as we see with the data on turnarounds). However this is a very different argument than the one that says poor kids simply can’t achieve academically (which is the impolite crux of your comments). There are schools in Denver proving this false every day — not just KIPP and West Denver Prep charters, but schools like Beach Court and McMeen and Hallett — all with high FRL, and all in the top quintile on Denver’s SPF. Indeed, out of the top 25 schools in Denver, seven (28%) have FRL higher than the district average.
The difficulty inherent in this work is all the more reason we need to be very concentious of the people who do it. You seem to believe, well in advance of any actual metrics, that VAM will find you ineffective. If you have not, I would look up the growth percentile scores of your school (or students) and compare them to schools with similar FRL populations. If you stop looking at proficiency and look instead at growth, perhaps you are doing better than you think.
But again, perhaps you are not, and then in all honesty, I fear your prophecy may be self-fulfilling. For I confess that I cannot help but feel that a teacher who says that “the reality” is that kids in poverty cannot achieve academically should probably not be teaching those same kids. There is no shame in that, and one may still have the very best intentions — but teaching in high-poverty schools is not work for everyone, and it’s hard to sustain. Not every good teacher will be good with all populations. But if you don’t believe in the efficacy of what you are doing, why on earth do it?
Teaching quality matters, and there are teachers out there doing remarkable work with high-poverty populations in supportive schools. We need we need ways of being able to measure what teachers are successful with those populations, and what they are doing that makes them so. Let’s respectfully argue the conclusions of Chetty and similar studies, but I hope we can agree on their intent.
Mary, thank you for sharing your perspective. I found your posts, especially your most recent one, heartfelt, eloquent, and powerful. I’m sorry that Alexander and Robert are choosing to ignore your main points and instead misrepresent your arguments in their rebuttals.
Alex, are you purposely misrepresenting Mary’s words or did you just fail to read her posts carefully? Honestly, after following you on this site, neither would surprise me. You pull a very nifty trick by quoting two words (falsely) of Mary’s post followed by your own interpretation that “kids in poverty cannot achieve academically”. Mary never wrote that. In fact, she didn’t even write “the reality” so, even though you only quoted two words, you misquoted her.
What she said was that you and the other “reformers” are ignoring reality. That reality is not that poor kids cannot achieve as you claim but rather that poverty is often the only problem facing underfunded schools and not the mythical horde of terrible teachers that you and others have invented for your little witch hunt. It is quite easy to see Mary’s true meaning if you take it in context with the rest of her post but that would require stepping away from your talking points and actually listening carefully to someone else’s opinion. You really do owe Mary an apology for misquoting her and for misrepresenting her beliefs although I doubt you’ll grant her one. Instead you’ll do the reformer shuffle and focus on another erroneous point.
Alexander, your dedication to this website and responding to our queries is sincerely appreciated. I suspect you understand there is a huge reservoir of teacher frustration, even anger that exists in Colorado districts and is really present across the country. If more teachers knew about this website, we’d probably hear more expressions of this frustration. I know I’m guilty of trying to give form to this sentiment and endeavor to stay on point. Thanks for hanging in there…here.
I am quite serious though in saying that I think we teachers feel that we are left out of the loop of decision-making and are increasingly becoming puppets to larger forces beyond our control. We see education being increasingly politicized and decisions made for the self-aggrandizement of non-educators. We are told it’s all for the children but when bills are passed like SB 191 with little time for discussion or teacher input without major parts of it even detailed, we wonder if it’s really for the children. And don’t even think about trying to tell me SB191 was well-considered. It was the outcome of political expediency and not of a thoughtful, systemic, research-supported process of consideration coupled to clearly-defined goals.
We see teachers laid off, marginalized, and faulted in many parts of the country and larger culture and wonder if it’s all worth it. The unions are really of little help in all this and I wonder why conservatives think the NEA/CEA is all that powerful. Most unions have been kneecapped since the 80s by political-media operatives who have successfully inserted a viral meme into our society that liberals, liberal causes, and labor unions are anti-American and the cause of many of our economic woes. The political rise of TFA, choice, and corporate-supported non-profits also give us pause to wonder what really is going on. Given all of this, it’s a wonder teachers are not more angry and willing to take to the streets. If our marginalized status and sense of powerlessness continue, I think we can all expect teacher frustration to reach some kind of Occupy Education level of outrage.
So, it really doesn’t matter how reasonable you or some number of studies are that address teacher effectiveness if some critical mass of teachers assume the game has been rigged. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not saying there is some larger conspiracy–in fact, quite the opposite. There are special interests at work and sociopolitical agendas in play but there is so little coordination among all the players that the education reform landscape is actually quite chaotic and that alone is responsible for some measure of our mistrust and frustration. Remove the politics and the corruption of money and allow educators to control their own destinies and make teaching decisions (as in Finland), and you will see real accountability from teachers and real gains in educational achievement.
Alex, extrapolating from a blog post to question whether a person should be teaching strikes me as going beyond the data.
Andy, I have tried to respond to Mary’s points with an eye to the policy implications of her arguments and the relationship of her arguments to the piece of research being reviewed. I don’t think a point-by-point rebuttal is valuable to the conversation. In her last post she said “So my point, Alexander, is that we are connecting too much to the teacher”…so I think her main point is she does not agree with the premise of the research. Ok, well we don’t agree on the premise of the research. I think the research is worthy of discussion and adds to our knowledge.
Jeffery, I agree there are some larger things going on. This is a huge period of (potentially) systematic change to our education system and teachers (along with a lot of other educators) are frustrated. And I think our system does need to change, I think our education system can do better. And as a public system, the arena where some of that change will occur is political, and it will be chaotic.
Andy,
Mary’s quote is thus: “One of the favorite arguments is to say it [poverty] isn’t destiny, but for many children, it darn sure is. It sounds wonderful to say that it isn’t, but to do so ignores reality.” I’ll gladly stand by my interpretation of it — that the impolite crux of her argument is that for many children, poverty is indeed destiny. It’s not that tough to follow.
I don’t ignore poverty at all — I argue quite clearly that it is because of poverty and other SES factors that we need to take this seriously (see “The difficulty inherent in this work is all the more reason we need to be very concentious of the people who do it.”) There are lots of schools making considerable strides with kids in poverty, and I suggest we learn from them. It’s ok if you disagree. I would prefer if you would avoid trite phrases like “witch hunt.” But again, if you cannot, that’s your prerogative – I just don’t think it helps move forward. It is because I found Mary’s comments worth of a response that I wrote a long reply. I think the dialogue is valuable – more so if respectful. But that’s your choice.
Jeff,
I appreciate your comments. I think there is enough frustration to go around – teachers, politicians, parents, business leaders, etc. I think there were some issues with 191, but in truth, I think elected representatives got tired of the inability of both principal groups (teachers and administrators) to act on their own for over a generation, so decided to do something, even if imperfect. I am heartened by the participation of many groups like CEA in moving forward to make it a sensible system.
I also wish more teachers would take advantage of things like the Innovation Schools act. There are now venues for teachers who believe they can do better to try something new. I would like to see more of them be proactive and even form their own schools, such as DCTA has done in Denver. Innovation and change is not limited to any one group, and I think we can all recognize that we need to do something different.
Alex, if suggesting to a veteran teacher that she ought to find another line of work is your version of respectful discourse then you can count me out.
Hmm, well we are far off topic here. Let’s look at exactly what I wrote:
“For I confess that I cannot help but feel that a teacher who says that “the reality” is that kids in poverty cannot achieve academically should probably not be teaching those same kids. There is no shame in that, and one may still have the very best intentions — but teaching in high-poverty schools is not work for everyone, and it’s hard to sustain. Not every good teacher will be good with all populations. But if you don’t believe in the efficacy of what you are doing, why on earth do it?”
I don’t think it is too hard to glean from this comment that my point is not that a person who believes that poverty is destiny should not be teaching at all, but that they should not be teaching a high-poverty population. This is not advocating a change in profession, and again, I really don’t think it is that nuanced a point to follow. Maybe it was.
We lump “teaching” too broadly. A good high school teacher may not be a good elementary school teacher; ditto for subjects (say science and english); ditto for high-poverty and affluent populations. Someone can be a very good teacher in certain circumstances, and a poor one in others. The underlying point here – on which I don’t think we have spent enough time and gets into all sort of other subjects such as employment mobility – is if we are doing a good job matching teachers with assignments. I don’t think we are, for all sorts of reasons.
There is plenty of research that talks about the importance of school culture and high expectations. Should we expect that teachers believe that children in their classrooms can succeed academically? I think that’s fair — I doubt parents want their kid in a classroom where the teacher does not think they will succeed – regardless if that is because they are poor, affluent, ELL, SPED or anything else.
So yes, I think that expectations and high standards are important, and an effective school requires that teachers in high-poverty classrooms believe that their students can be successful despite circumstances. I’d be interested if someone wants to argue the opposite.
Perhaps, teachers could be more valuable if they received better education, ongoing high quality training, helpful supervision and support from administrators, time to learn and work together with the team, plentiful and helpful support from assistants and special teaching staff, and time to assess progress and prepare and plan daily lessons.
Has any research been done on this? What increase in value would be realized through these?
“I also wish more teachers would take advantage of things like the Innovation Schools act.” Yes, I wish that as well. But you must know as well as I do that most classroom teachers simply don’t have the time in their lives to mobilize. The playing field for policy innovation is not level. Neither do classroom teachers have their union(s) to rely upon for reasons I detailed in an earlier post.
Did you see this in EducationNext? Rick Hess is interviewing Ohio Gov. Kasich’s education advisor: Advisor says, “You know, politics is like farming. You can’t harvest unless you sell and cultivate. And we just didn’t do a good enough job of explaining to the public the problem that we tried to solve. The public didn’t see the problem that we saw…We knew we had to have more flexibility to manage costs. Teachers have a right to collective bargaining over their wages and hours, but they shouldn’t be able to bargain class sizes and which curriculum.” Allow me to translate: The professionals in the trenches have no right to have a say about what they think is best for kids. http://educationnext.org/straight-up-conversation-departing-kasich-edu-advisor-bob-sommers-on-reform-in-ohio/comment-page-1/#comment-79386 This is why teachers are suspicious and angry. Politics now dominates education. Politics has no place in education! Read the rest of the interview. It’s very revealing.
Then, later in the interview the education advisor to the governor of a major state says this: “Number one, educators think the world is a non-competitive, fair place. And it isn’t. And if we’re going to have our kids ready, they need to recognize that effort doesn’t matter, results do. So, that’s the first thing.” This is insulting and demeaning on any number of levels. The real crisis in education is not just about student achievement, it’s about how political leaders regard teachers and the profession.
Robert, thanks for your input–you have a different perspective. But really, chaos is not a viable policy template for reform. Reform requires good questions. Good questions require deliberative consultations on goals, means, and ends. Standards are not goals. They are statements of delivered knowledge to be recalled, requiring little reflection. I’m not convinced our culture has any idea at all of what it wants the next generation of people to value and create meaning around which incidentally, is quite distinct from ‘knowing and being able to do’.
Robert,
In your post of Feb. 1 you state that the authors propose that “information from principal evaluations and observations be used in addition to the value-added measures to improve the accuracy of the evaluation system”.
This logic implies that principal evaluation and observation are MORE ACCURATE than value added measures. If that’s so, why use value added at all? Adopting a new process that may have a 30% error rate (calculated over three years, so quite possibly higher in a single year), then “improving it” by using the system that got us into this mess in the first place? AND adding a heavy bureaucratic burden to principals and teachers already struggling with time and resource deficits… help me understand.
Alex, thanks for posting the link. You couldn’t have proved my point better if you’d tried. Your link shows very clearly that the only schools showing proficiency with high poverty and minority populations are the charter schools who receive tons of private money, and cherry pick their students. Every single school in the red has the same demographic, but they’re public, so they’re suffering budget cuts, sanctions, layoffs. Could it be that if we adequately staff schools, if we adequately fund schools, if teachers aren’t dealing with disruptive students and are instead dealing with involved families, we could raise scores? Could it be?
Nah.
That only works for charter schools. If public schools can’t deal with disruption, families who are not, or cannot, be involved, after we’ve cut all that funding and FTE, plus added test after test, then those schools are failures.
I get it. I think Alex and Robert get it, too. And I think they got it a long time before the teachers who were busy working with kids got it.
And Don also asked some great questions in his post early this morning. I am disappointed that no one cares to answer him, because these sound like great ideas to me. I wonder why reformers don’t think these are great ideas. I wonder why reformers aren’t talking about doing these things. Well Don, maybe everyone is still shoveling (snow, I mean), and they just haven’t gotten back to you yet.
Alex, I’m sure you realize that you used a sophist trick to put words into my mouth; fortunately the people reading this and commenting so cogently recognize it as well. It’s one of the reformers’ very favorite accusations–the teachers say poor kids can’t learn! It’s so dishonest, on so many levels.
“Teaching quality matters, and there are teachers out there doing remarkable work with high-poverty populations in supportive schools.” Yes, Alex, there are and they’re in Adams 50 and DPS and Adams 14 and they’re in Montbello and several other places around the metro area. I wonder how much time you’ve spent in low income schools and classrooms. Or do you reform education from the dais at the school board meeting, and from your office, and in your (I bet) many, many meetings?
I wonder who does more for kids, teachers or reformers? How many tears have you dried off of little faces this week, reformers? How many bandaids and hugs have you supplied? How many children have you sat beside, listening to them read? How many lessons have you planned? How many pencils and books and even coats have you supplied (just in the last month will do)?
How many teachers have you bashed? How many schools have you bashed? How many accusations and insinuations that are all just part of the frame have you made? (Just in this thread will do)
Could it be that the reform movement exists not to improve schools but to destroy them? Not to educate the poor and minority populations, but to marginalize them? Not to help children but to profit from them?
Nah. They wouldn’t do THAT.
As to my suitability for my job, Alex, I think you would find that parents, colleagues, and the administrators in my district (all the way to the top) believe that I am teaching EXACTLY where I need to be teaching.
I am eager to read the answers to Mike’s questions, as well. I guess the snow has just slowed everyone down. I have also had points go unanswered, as Jeffrey and Andy pointed out, so I don’t know if we’ll ever get answers to all the really good questions and comments on here, as someone said they didn’t think they needed to go point by point. Why on earth would we debate by addressing points, anyway? It’s always better to debate by ignoring points.
Oh, and one other thing about VAM–there is no accounting for the fact that the content of a course changes each year, for instance, math teacher A teaches algebra this year to Group A and teacher B teaches geometry next year to Group B. Most researchers, and most reasonable people, consider such a comparison meaningless. BUT–it also has a 30% error margin AND we’re going to end up using it as 50% of many teachers’ evaluations.
Jeffrey, you’re absolutely right. If more teachers knew about this website, the conversations on here would be very different. I’ve lurked for months, and my fingers have itched many times before I posted in this thread. I think it’s a great idea to spread the word about this website to as many teachers as we can. I think I’ll bring it up at the union meeting. I’m sure many of our members would have plenty to say about some of the topics on here. Right now, it’s just the people on here and a few others (Andrea Merida is someone I admire).
Any website that plasters The Gates Foundation, The Daniels Fund and The Walton Family Foundation across the bottom of their page is in serious need of some progressive thought.
Don, this line of value added research is good at talking about where we want to go (i.e. teacher effectiveness), but not very good at saying how to get there (i.e. what should our evaluation system look like). If I see a good article to review on your questions I will do another deep-dive. There has been some recent work in these areas.
Jeffery, I am not saying chaos is the reform template. I am saying a bit of chaos (or at least a feeling that things are chaotic) will mark this period of competing visions of defining what a quality education system looks like and how we get there. I think our schools can do better, but we do not have a common vision or even the knowledge of how we can get there.
Mike, I am making the point that multiple sources of information improves the accuracy of effectiveness assessments. I don’t have a measure for principal error rates in identifying in-effective teachers. I am not sure the error rate for principals would be lower than the error rate for value-added measures. What I am sure of is that multiple measures can lower the overall error rate.
The error rate I cited (30%) used three years of data for a teacher to determine effectiveness. The authors of the report were trying to identify the tipping point for increasing the accuracy of effectiveness measures while also reducing the time students spent with in-effective teachers. They said three years was about the right amount of data.
I would also say, this discussion of using value-added or not using it for evaluations skips over the reality that right now we only have relaible test data (through the CSAP) for about a quarter to a third of our teachers. For the majority of our teachers we do not have value-added data to use in evaluations even if we wanted to.
Value-added data has two roles in our evaluation system. It can be used as part of the evaluation of individuals when it can be produced in a valid and reliable way (e.g. it will not be valid and reliable in my kids’ school where they move kids between teachers as they learn to read). AND, value-added can also be used to examine and maybe judge school district teacher evaluation system. We should compare the other measures of teacher effectiveness with value-added measures….and try to understand why the are similar or not? I am not saying all the measures should be perfectly correlated, but I am saying we should try to understand what underlies agreement or disagreement between measures.
Mary, I am not always sure what to respond to within your postings, we simply disagree about the validity and value of value-added measures. But one of your points seems to be a question about role of the “reformers” vs the “teachers”. I see our education system as massive $4 billion enterprise (per year in CO) and there are roles for teachers, administrators, parents AND analysts, advocates as well as elected policy-makers in trying to improve the system. And this change process includes a lot of new roles and new cooks working in the kitchen. I think improving the system is hard and multi-faceted work where a lot of people have a role in improving the system (or reform) at the classroom, school, district, state and federal levels.
Equally important, I am mystified by the argument that if a person is pushing to change or reform the system they are out to “destroy” the system or “destroy” schools. I fundamentally believe our system can do a better job educating our kids across the board (but particularly for our poor and minority populations), AND to get this improvement roles, activities and processes are need to change in classrooms, schools, districts, universities, states and at the federal level. But to argue that wanting change and even saying some things are being done poorly (such as teacher evaluation and retention) means I want to destroy schools strikes me as ridiculous.
Finally Mary, I am glad you have finally scratched your itchy fingers and dived in.
Hi Mary,
Well, we’re talking past each other — the link I sent shows many schools where low-income kids have positive academic outcomes (again, 7 of the the top 25 schools), yet you see in it only your own preconceptions, so let’s move on. I did look up the growth and proficiency data at the school at which you teach, so I think I understand the context of your comments on poverty a little better. I’m fully aware of the reality under which you teach; I wish you might in turn consider that there are places where the determinative impact of poverty is being addressed differently.
In any case, I think we both want better academic outcomes for low-income kids, and I’m sure we will each continue our respective efforts. As much as we disagree, I appreciate the dialogue.
My apologies–my fingers got ahead of my brain. I meant to say:
there is no accounting for the fact that the content of a course changes each year, for instance, math teacher A teaches algebra this year to Group A and teacher B teaches geometry next year to Group A , my point being that you can’t fairly compare algebra to geometry. Or if, in third grade, the reading test is heavy on phonics, and next year, in fourth, it’s heavy on comprehension, these scores for the same group, with different teachers, cannot be fairly compared. The CONTENT has to be the same for the comparison to be legitimate, certainly at least the subcontent (Geometry I and Geometry II, but not Algebra I and Geometry I).
Robert, I don’t think you’re personally taking a wrecking ball to schools, but if you admire what’s going on in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, then you at least admire the destruction of public education.
“I’m fully aware of the reality under which you teach.”
This sentence more than any other I’ve read on ednewscolorado really highlights the arrogance of the corporate reform movement. In what way did you achieve your awareness? By watching ‘Waiting for Superman’? Reading a book? Visiting some schools? Because it sure wasn’t by listening to teachers. Here you have someone who lives that reality every day trying to explain to you what it’s like and you’re ignoring her. How can reform be successful with such disregard for the teachers on the front lines who we are counting on to implement the reforms?
Mary,
I encourage you to promote Ed News to your peers and to the union. It is very important for teachers to find time to engage in discussions like above and to stay current with our profession. Most of us struggle to find time to get our students to learn and read and research current policy and pedagogical happenings. But I believe it is a necessary confluence of responsibilities for today’s teacher and we need to reprioritize our time and efforts to reflect this.
We access resources that will give us the opportunity to engage in policy discussions. The Gates Foundation and other organizations provide some of these necessary resources. Your assumption that Gates does not reflect progressive views reflects a bias that I hope does not mire you into a cynical, locked in position. Your continued efforts to engage in dialogue can help us struggle along. After all, as we say to our students, “If you are not struggling, you are not learning.”
Mark, you may need to do some further research because Mary is not biased with respect to the Gates Foundation. Gates contributes to Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education and if you look at this link, you’ll see all kinds of ostensibly progressive or at least liberal-leaning entities on the list of contributors http://www.excelined.org/Pages/Excellence_in_Action/Meet_the_Donors.aspx Gates has given $10 million to the Discovery Instittute’s Cascadia project. Discovery promotes intelligent design. http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog Here’s another source if info about Gates, et al. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Education_Reform Check out Gates’ 2/27/11 editorial in the WashPost–he advocates larger class sizes, and that teacher seniority has no effect on student achievement and neither do advanced degrees. In that piece, Gates wrote “83 percent of teachers said they would be happy to teach more students for more pay” according to a study he cited. He did not tell the truth. In the Gates-funded, “A Leap of Faith: Redesigning Teacher Compensation,” study done in Washington State with a few thousand teachers (another fact he omitted) the authors never ask if teachers would be happy to teach more for more pay. Gates turned around how the original survey question was presented. The data was presented as percentage of teachers who would prefer $5000 more rather than a class reduction of two students. Thus, according to Gates, teachers would take 5K for more students–how many more he never says because of course, he is massaging the actual data just like the corporate politician he is. But that’s not what the survey actually said. He is really advocating to diminish union influence AND I suppose one could say he does want to improve education. Even if he is some kind of liberal, there are plenty of liberals and progressives who have fallen for the business model of reform in education. See Ravitch.
Don’t tell me Bill Gates is some kind of progressive. According to Open Secrets.org: from ’89-’10 Gates gave 43% to Rep and 36% to Dems and Steve Jobs during the same time period gave 100% to Dems. Want more? Gates gave $2K to Americans for a Republican Majority and the Keep Our Majority PAC in 2004.
Gates still operates like a CEO of one of the largest corporations on Earth. He cynically plays both sides of the political fence. Having made as much money as one could make, he now tries to call the shots on medical issues (pardon the pun) in Africa and on educational issues in the USA. And with all that money comes enormous power and influence and like so many non-profit organizations who mean to do-good, Gates is unaccountable and can overwhelm the efforts of lesser but perhaps more effective organizations and interests. Oh and about how Gates provides “some of the necessary resources”, we could also have a conversation about how organizations like Gates actually create the conditions under which certain resources come to be seen as “necessary.”
Mary said: “Any website that plasters The Gates Foundation, The Daniels Fund and The Walton Family Foundation across the bottom of their page is in serious need of some progressive thought.” The insinuation was that no progressive thought was being presented on the site because the Gates Foundation supports it. When I say “Gates” I am not referring to the person Gates but the foundation. Ed News does reflect some progressive thought. I acknowledge that the Gates Foundation funding should be viewed with some skepticism, but as I alluded to Mary, I hope this does not lock you into a position that supports a lack of critical thinking about the substance of what is being debated. I am glad I gave you an opportunity to unload on Gates.
For what it is worth here, please note that the foundation that supports Ed News Colorado is the Gates Family Foundation – a local group whose endowment comes from the Gates Rubber Company – it is not the Seattle based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Mary,
I absolutely admire the reforms going on in New York, New Orleans, Denver and Mapleton. Key to these reforms is that current institutions need to change if we are going to help every kid meet there potential. That means the federal role, states, districts, schools, teacher prep institutions, PD providers all need to change. Maybe in another blog we can debate what makes what is “public education’.
Jeffery, the research has been pretty consistent over th past 10-15 years that after the first 3 to 6 years of expereicne there is no detectable impact on student learning from experience…same for masters degrees.
Isn’t that funny–the research from the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) and the IRA (International Reading Association) have been very consistent with THEIR research that states that teachers don’t really become effective until at least six or seven years in. The learning curve is too steep. I have never seen a teacher who was truly performing at the top of their game before year seven. Never, and I have mentored several new teachers. Only someone who has never taught in a public school would believe otherwise–or someone who thinks Teach for America McTeachers are the answer, perhaps. But it’s interesting that two highly respected professional organizations disagree with you and offer years of research to the contrary. The research you quote comes from Gates, a foundation that funds their own research, making it suspect (professional organizations don’t do that–universities are the source of real research, not your own researchers). The reform frame is just to keep repeating what they want to believe, over and over and over, until it becomes the new truth. But independent research doesn’t support your experience claim–and neither does actual experience, something else reformers lack.
I will, believe it or not, go along with you on the masters degree thing. I don’t think a masters is worth much to a teacher’s effectiveness if they have a masters in education. U of P is just a diploma mill (and, I might add, is one of the big contributors to the reforms–a big HMMMMMM…..) but a masters degree in one’s content does wonders for their practice. I am an English teacher and my masters is in English, specifically The Teaching of Writing (from UCD, not a diploma mill). Please don’t tell me that my masters doesn’t do anything to affect my teaching. I studied under Rick Van de Wege, which probably doesn’t mean much to you, but he is nationally renowned as an expert in the field.
As far as U of P and masters degrees in education, I have never understood how someone could come into that school with no background whatsoever in education and leave with a MASTERS in education–how on earth can you have mastered what you’ve never even done for a day??
But it’s also interesting that reformers blast masters degrees for teachers out of one side of their mouths, yet U of P is a big contributor to the effort, and they’re nothing but a masters degree diploma mill. The reform movement coming from U of P apparently thinks a masters is very important and they make it very easy for someone with money to spend to become a MASTER TEACHER in 18 short months, no experience required.
Robert, if you don’t mind me asking, which reforms do you admire most and why?
To add to Dr. Teske’s comment–here’s a full list of EdNews funders/sponsors, which include CEA:
“This site is a division of the non-profit Public Education and Business Coalition. EdNews is funded by grants from The Daniels Fund, The Piton Foundation, The Colorado Health Foundation, the Donnell-Kay Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Carson Foundation. Our paid sponsors are the Colorado Association of School Boards, the Colorado Association of School Executives, the Colorado Education Association, the Colorado League of Charter Schools and RBC Capital Markets. We also solicit membership donations and have received donations from over 100 individuals.”
http://www.ednewscolorado.org/about-2
Mary,
Here is a quote from a lit review (http://www.tqsource.org/publications/LinkBetweenTQandStudentOutcomes.pdf):
How Important is Teacher Experience?
The synthesis of research in which teacher experience is used as an aspect of teacher quality suggests that experience matters, but it contributes differentially only in the first four or five years of teaching. During this time, teacher appear to gain in effectiveness (contribution to student achievement scores) but then they level off, which means that years of experience beyond the fifth year contribute little or no additional benefit in terms of student achievement. Experienced teachers may contribute to their schools in other important ways, however, including providing stability and serving as mentors to new or struggling teachers.
Andy, I admire reforms that show evidence of moving the needle on student achievement (in a positive direction). I think the Portfolio model has some promise for larger districts. (http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/view/topics/4)
Paul and Holly, thanks for the clarification. Certainly a great example of the definition of “ass u me.”
Mary, I would argue that a degree in education is more valuable than a degree in one’s content, if by content you mean a greater understanding of the content of the discipline. Rick’s work at UCD focussed on the teaching of English not the content of English. This is one of the issues in the university world where great scholars of the discipline, professors, do not have a grasp of the pedagogical underpinnings that make great teaching. Not true for al professors (see Paul, I won’t assume) but we have all taken the course in college where the students self-applied more pedagogical concepts than did the professor in order to understand the content.
I would like to see more “The Teaching of U.S. History,” or “The Teaching of Biology” courses offered in ed colleges. And I’d like to see pay increases for teachers for increased education become more scrutinized for actual impact on student achievement versus increases in pay for generalized course work, or even course work that does not relate to one’s area of teaching. Should I, as a history teacher, be given an increase in pay because I took a master’s level nursing course?
Robert, let’s be very clear about what the research says and doesn’t say. Present research is based primarily upon tying teacher quality to standardized test scores. Your own link above states, “Measuring teacher quality using standardized achievement test scores is challenging for the following reasons:
• Standardized achievement tests were intended to measure student achievement and were not designed to measure teacher quality.
• It is difficult to sort out teacher effects (i.e., the contribution of teachers) from classroom effects (i.e., the contribution of peers, textbooks, materials, curriculum, classroom climate, and other factors).
• It is difficult to obtain linked student-teacher data that make it possible to connect specific teachers to student achievement test scores.” There are other studies that could show a correlation but they were not included in the meta-study. There was found to be positive relationship for mathematics. Why that is not as true for other subjects is interesting and needs further analysis. “Nye, Konstantopoulos, and Hedges (2004) have theorized that “mathematics is mostly learned in school and thus may be more directly influenced by teachers…. Reading, on the other hand, is more likely to be learned (in part) outside of school” (p. 247).” Fascinating. If so, might one infer that we thus over-value teacher and even school effects? p43 of your link contains some important caveats about the studies that were examined. I don’t think the caveats really strengthen your assertions; they simply highlight the importance of more study. Meanwhile, Finland is doing quite well with master’s degrees, almost no standardized testing or other draconian accountability measures and provide teachers a lot of autonomy. And trust.
The data sets appear to consist mostly of teachers with master’s degrees in education, not tied to subject-area or other classroom-specific possible effects. Perhaps teachers tend to rise to the level that is expected of them by external pressures or a strict curriculum that does not allow for creativity on the teacher’s part. Perhaps only an associate’s degree is sufficient to be a teacher. One can’t say that master’s degrees don’t matter; one can only say that within certain very strict parameters, there is no strong correlation outside of mathematics.
Personally, I learned a lot about the process of asking questions in my master’s and doctoral programs–questions about data, whether in my subject area or education. I would contend that postgraduate experience should focus on the teacher-as-researcher in one’s field and/or the classroom. Real (not mail order or instant internet) grad programs focus study, provide discipline, and enable students to learn more deeply from professors and cohort members. Even let someone teach three years, then go to grad school. The habit of mind learned in grad school should carry over to the classroom but I know, where is the research on that aspect of a master’s degree?
Thanks Mark–Bill Gates and his foundation have a lot to learn. And btw, I had a few lousy professors–we all have. Maybe we should all be better learners on our own, take advantage of a prof/teacher’s expert knowledge with good questioning and not wait to be spoon-fed knowledge. Maybe our entire society should place more value on learning than playing baseball for career preparation. No student will go through life at any level without running into a bad teacher. Equipping the student with the skills to persist despite poor instruction may be the best thing we can do.
Actually, the program was both the content and the teaching of English. Unless you were part of that masters program anyway, I don’t see how you could possibly know what was involved–but perhaps you were indeed part of it, and if so, I apologize. I apologize, and sort of wonder what exactly you thought people were talking about and writing about.
I am certain that as a result of this masters, my writing instruction is head and shoulders above many teachers’ instruction and will remain so.
I have yet to see a masters in education that was really that valuable, but perhaps you’ve seen one I don’t know about. I continue to believe that it might be better not to grant pay raises to education masters, but a content area masters, such as in English or math, should most certainly get the raise, as there is no doubt among reasonable people that those degrees increase the knowledge and effectiveness of the teacher.
This thread has moved off the front page, and so it’s over and out for me.
Mary
I’m with Mary. This has been a great discussion, but I need to move on. Stay tuned for my next blog.
r2