In the Land of Education, the people quaked in fear as rumors of their impending doom spread throughout the kingdom. It was only a matter of time before neighboring warriors descended upon them, making them low-cognitive servants in their own land. Surely the gods, those responsible for structuring academic goals, were fashioning someone to come to the people’s rescue, someone who harbored no fear, a leader eloquent of tongue and heroic in deeds who could slay this elusive monster devouring the students of the kingdom.

[enter Michelle Rhee and fellow ed-reform warriors]

Hear ye, hear ye, my fellow citizens. I have traveled long (2 years) and hard (1 grade level) through the halls of education and return to you today with lips of truth. If we are to survive as a worthy kingdom of scholars, we must slay those who are enslaving our young to the monster of mediocrity. We must purge our kingdom of ineffective teachers, and to do so, all teachers must be subject to trial by fire!    

Ms. Rhee, the founder of StudentsFirst, has been drawing millions of dollars from her organization to accomplish just what I’ve described above – ok, with a little less drama, but not by much. She has many weapons in her arsenal, but one of the shiniest is the push to evaluate teachers according to students’ standardized test scores. She claims such appraisals are the perfect way to “elevate” teaching and rid the schools of ineffective teachers. Evidence, however, suggests otherwise.  According to MetLife’s recent “Survey of the American Teacher,” the current climate of education has dropped teacher morale to its lowest point in 25 years and decreased teacher job satisfaction by 15 points in just three years.

If the era of teacher accountability brought on by education reformers is supposed to “elevate” teaching, why then are teachers feeling so demoralized and dissatisfied? Could it be they’ve been identified as the monster of the kingdom, and the only way to survive the empowered hero’s sword is to play along in a game that goes against everything they know to be true and good about teaching? You call that a no-win situation, and it is the perfect formula for a dissatisfied, demoralized workforce, just what we are well on our way to achieving in our schools.

The story, however, doesn’t have to end here with the inevitable death of the identified monster. Sure, when teachers can no longer find moral worth in what they do, can no longer stomach the idea of drilling students with test prep, can no longer draw vital energy from knowing they’re making a real difference – they die, and the story ends. But that’s not all there is to an epic tragedy. The hero in the story, in spite of remarkable intelligence, strength, boldness, and cleverness, is also brimming with hubris, an overestimation of self that causes him/her to overlook or discount some type of fatal flaw?

What am I saying? I’m saying… Dear Teachers, this story isn’t over yet, not by a long shot. If you don’t believe me, go to The Network for Public Education. You’ll see an army amassing that may very well be the force Ms. Rhee has overlooked – real teachers, sharing real stories, discussing real solutions, who can spot a fake a mile away.

Countries where people have read the blog.

]]> http://lisamyers.org/2013/03/02/milestone-100000-visits/feed/ 8 thank_you lisagailmyers map http://lisamyers.org/2013/02/27/im-running-for-school-board/ http://lisamyers.org/2013/02/27/im-running-for-school-board/#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:50:52 +0000 Lisa Myers http://lisamyers.org/?p=539 Read More ›]]> I have always believed that local school boards could greatly benefit from a teacher’s voice. The thing is, I always imagined the voice coming from other teachers. I never considered that the voice might belong to me, but here I am officially announcing that I am running for a seat on the Redwater ISD Board of Trustees.

As of this afternoon, I am not running against anyone. I’m running in the place of a community member who, after devoting many years of service to the district, has decided not to run for another term. There are still, however, a couple of days left in the registration window, so the race may not stay uncontested.

No matter the number of candidates on the ballot, I know what I want to accomplish as a trustee. I want to build a bridge between the classroom and the boardroom by stressing the community’s shared vision and beliefs.

A few years back, the Redwater community gathered its community and business leaders, parents and guardians, students, school administrators, trustees, and faculty and staff to develop a shared vision and set of beliefs that would guide the governance of the district. The process wasn’t easy, but the end result was pretty incredible. We exited the process with the following vision: to develop an educational system and community committed to the relentless pursuit of quality and excellence, and we topped off the vision with a set of guiding beliefs:

• We believe an expectation of quality and excellence for ALL must be projected throughout Redwater ISD and embraced by the community.
• We believe ALL stakeholders must collaborate to become a united, family-oriented learning community.
• We believe ALL stakeholders are accountable to provide a safe learning environment.
• We must strive to educate and prepare ALL students to meet the challenge of the 21^st century.

What the Redwater community accomplished in those stakeholder meetings was no small feat, and it turns out that we were a few years ahead of the State in our task. In July of 2012, a couple of years after our collaborative endeavor, the State Board of Education (SBOE) revisited its Framework for School Board Development and revised it to instruct school boards to govern from the following five principles:

• Vision- The board ensures creation of a shared vision that promotes enhanced student achievement.
• Structure – The board provides guidance and direction for accomplishing the vision.
• Accountability – The board measures and communicates how well the vision is being accomplished.
• Advocacy – The board promotes the vision.
• Unity - The board works with the superintendent to lead the district toward the vision.

The full document can be read at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=2147489092

So the vision we adopted as a community is incredibly important to today’s education. It isn’t something to be filed away in a binder forever lost to future generations. It is a document that can bind us together in doing ALL we can to ensure our vision of excellence becomes a reality. The product of those meetings is a beacon that can remind us that we ALL must work together to grow our beliefs into convictions, our convictions into actions, and our actions into achievement. This shared vision is the very thing needed to build bridges across our whole educational system, including the one stretching between the classroom and the boardroom.

Therefore, if given the opportunity to serve on Redwater ISD’s Board of Trustees, I will treat our vision statement and core beliefs as unifying elements by which every deliberation, decision and action must be measured. In return, I would ask that you help me remember the heart of collaboration in which this vision was birthed.

UPDATE: As of Friday afternoon, the window for running closed, so… I’ll be taking my seat on the board in June!

Now, imagine that you’re eight years old and every day at school feels that way. You see, we’ve entered the testing season, and for many little boys and girls, it marks the beginning of a decline in learning and the birth of a strong dislike for school.

It is during this season that many parents have to deal with children who can’t fall asleep at night, who cry through breakfast every morning, and have to be stripped from the car or pushed onto the bus each day. Why? Because eight-year-olds can’t handle the pressure of high-stakes classrooms any more than they can withstand the g-force of some amusement park rides. Their bodies simply can’t endure it. (At least theme parks seem to get this and post signs in front of rides inappropriate for small children.)

So maybe the answer lies in convincing your child each day that “doing his best” is all that matters. Before you attempt that, however, you might want to consider the climate in high-stakes classrooms, especially the ones in districts where standardized testing directs policy.

Because standardized tests afford an “easy” way to assess education by producing measurable data, your child’s performance on her standardized tests holds great consequence for her teacher, principal, superintendent, trustees, district, county, region, state, and even country.

“But she’s just eight!” you say.

True, but nevertheless, she is extremely important in the grand scheme of things, beginning with her role in making sure her school meets AYP (the measurement of growth required to maintain federal funding for at-risk students). And because it is quite common for a school to miss AYP by one student, every single student matters, and your child not passing the test can affect everything –

Your child doesn’t pass the test. The school loses AYP funding. The teacher gets a bad evaluation. Principals get admonished by superintendents. Superintendents lose the trustees’ backing. The school board considers replacing all aforementioned employees by not renewing their contracts. Trustees worry about their next election. The district’s rating declines as county, regional, state, and national standings follow suit.

While your child probably can’t delineate these intertwining parts, he or she can certainly feel the pressure resulting from such a system.

A child acting in mischief is no longer just a distraction needing redirection; he is a threat to the livelihood of the teacher and of everyone in the system. Family-time absences at the elementary level cannot be excused; loss of instructional time threatens the school and could lead to the vicious cycle of loss described above. Action-oriented learning cannot be the room’s leading method; test-taking strategies and stamina must be developed to stave off the threat of student failures.

In short, unless your child passes the required tests, he is a threat to everyone in this high-stakes testing system. This doesn’t mean his teacher will treat him hatefully, but it does mean he will probably be treated with urgency, and urgency, when it is consistently applied, can be utterly exhausting and stressful – especially to an eight-year-old.

It is difficult to describe this manner of instruction as anything other than an egregious immorality. But what are we to do? High-stakes testing is the law of the land.

First, what we shouldn’t do is assume our schools and teachers support this mode of learning. For the vast majority, they are simply trying to survive in the system our politicians have built for us. What we should do, on the other hand, is contact our elected officials and demand that they overhaul these laws that fuel such a detrimental system, namely anything linked to No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top. It is high time that they understand that the threat of failure now rests on their shoulders and not upon the shoulders of our eight-year-olds. It is high time that they understand that their job depends upon their ability to do this job.

Yes, this would be Bill Gates’ company. And yes, Bill Gates would be the one who is constantly preaching about measuring teachers’ production by test scores. Too rich!

Dear Mr. Gates,

I mean, look, ultimately progress is measured sort of through the eyes of our students. More than politicians or our students’ standardized scores (value added or lost) or anything else, it’s through the eyes of our students.

See Following Bill Gates DOWN Microsoft Path = Bad Business for more details.

The kind of “measuring” of teachers he is talking about is the same type that led to his company’s downturn. I can’t help but wonder if he is invading our profession simply because he isn’t doing so well in his own right now.

See http://lisamyers.org/2013/02/16/following-bill-gates-down-the-microsoft-path-bad-business/ for a list of sources detailing Microsoft’s fall based on Gates’ appraisal system.

Is This What Bill Gates Means by Good Education?.

A typical debate on education reform (completely made up, of course)…

Business-based Ed-Reformer (Umm, let’s call him Mr. Gates): We need a teacher appraisal system that will allow us to reward our best teachers. They deserve to be recognized and rewarded.

Public Education Advocate (shall we call her, Dr. Ravitch?): If we start labeling teachers as top performers, good performers, or average, below average, and poor, the school culture will become a dog-eat-dog world where creativity and collaboration will die.

Mr. Gates: Schools have accepted mediocrity for far too long. It is time schools work from a business-based system that can weed out non-producers.

Dr. Ravitch: Mr. Gates, schools aren’t factories, and students aren’t widgets.

Mr. Gates: Dr. Ravitch, I’m a business man, and I know what I’m doing. After all, I built an internationally successful technology company. Trust me and let me do what I know how to do.

Okay, maybe it wouldn’t go exactly like that, but you get the picture of where we are in this debate over education. It wouldn’t be an overstatement that those of us in the Public Education World are weary to death from trying to get the citizens of Business-based Ed-reform World to understand how things actually work in our world, the classroom. (In fairness, they probably feel the same about us.)

Because the debate seems to never end, and to some degree we are all practicing Einstein’s definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results), I’ve decided to try something different and take a journey into Business-based Ed-reform World. Maybe from there, where the story can be told from a business vantage point, our public education concerns will be clearer. Mr. Gates, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll visit your province.

***

Down in the buzzing valleys of technology row, there sits a monument to a once great movement. This monument is called Microsoft, and in its day, it commanded every creative thought and collaborative invention that its competitors could only pant after. The company’s admirers quickly grew into an international groupie of tech heads, teenagers, business men and women – and even caught the eye of stay-at-home moms! Microsoft’s cornucopia of products flooded the homes of consumers, and there seemed to be no end to the company’s success.

But then, the head of Microsoft had an idea. What if he could evaluate his employees and rate them as top performers, good performers, or average, below average, and poor; that way his company could become even more effective because it would only employ top performers.

And so, this once great company incorporated this new employee appraisal system, and a funny thing happened. Production went down. Employee morale suffered. Sabotaged projects and managerial favoritism started cropping up. Rather than boosting Microsoft farther into stratospheric success, this new program of measuring employee against employee started dragging the company down a path to “what we once were.”

Today, Microsoft struggles in the shadow of Apple, a company whose product line includes the IPhone, a single product that outsells all Microsoft products combined.

***

Note: Mr. Gates’ employee appraisal system is known in the business world as “stack ranking,” and many in the business world accredit this management tool with breaking Microsoft’s momentum and allowing Apple to take the lead in technology innovation. Yet, this is the kind of evaluation system Mr. Gates, a lead corporate education reformer, would like to see instilled in our schools. It just doesn’t seem like a good business move to me, considering its failure at Microsoft and all.

Sources:

• http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/06/19/thats-all-folks-why-the-writing-is-on-the-wall-at-microsoft/
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/03/the-terrible-management-technique-that-cost-microsoft-its-creativity/
• (http://nibletz.com/2012/08/21/apples-iphone-outsells-all-microsoft-products-combined/).
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57471170-75/microsofts-ballmer-challenges-vanity-fairs-lost-decade-claim/

The solution is simple, if not easy.

We need to allow for multiple pathways to a high school degree. One academic pathway would emphasize math and science. Another, the humanities and fine arts. A third would focus on career and technical education. All students would get the basics, but there would be greater flexibility than under the “one size fits all” existing system which pushes everyone towards a university degree.

For the full read, see: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/texas-vs-no-child-left-behind/

That was nearly a decade ago, but I still remember sitting at the table and listening to the presenter protest our misled understanding of success. He said it didn’t matter if 100% of our students passed the State test or not; that meant nothing and was no cause for pride. What really mattered was if we showed value added to each student. That was the mark of true success, and his program, using a complex statistical formula, was just what we needed. Not only would it deliver reports on every learning objective imaginable, it would also predict the level at which each student should be performing year to year if teachers were doing their job.

As you might guess, the man’s presentation was a huge success, and most schools in the region signed on to his program touting this new tool called Value Added Measure (VAM). To everyone responsible for gathering data, this was a Godsend. But for everyone responsible for producing the added value to each student, this was a nightmare.

On the surface, this kind of evaluation doesn’t seem too much to ask of teachers, and I suppose that would be true if the “complex statistical formula” measuring and predicting student performance met the two criteria of testing: validity and reliability.

Validity is the degree to which a test or program measures what it is supposed to measure. In other words, if it is measuring a student’s progress based on in-school instruction, then the tool must have some way of removing possible out-of-school influences that could affect performance, such as parents getting a divorce, a move to a new home, a break-up with a boyfriend, illness, financial difficulties, etc. The problem, of course, is that there is no way to remove any of these variables from students’ lives. They don’t leave them at the door when they step into the school.

The second requirement for standardized measurement is reliability: the extent to which the instrument being used produces the same results on repeated trials. In other words, test results, when administered under like conditions, must produce like results time and time again. Only when reliability is established can one know that the test is measuring true progress in learning and not just providing a snapshot of performance on a single day.

Companies that produce these VAM programs know that their product must deliver validity and reliability. One such company, TAP, even addresses the requirements in their explanation of VAM on their website:

Value-added analysis is a statistical technique that uses student achievement data over time to measure the learning gains students make. This methodology offers a way to estimate the impact schools and teachers have on student learning isolated from other contributing factors such as family characteristics and socioeconomic background. In other words, value-added analysis provides a way to measure the effect a school or teacher has on student academic performance over the course of a school year or another period of time.

TAP attempts to address validity and reliability here, but reality leaves VAM short on both requirements. Even if the programmers can allow for students’ socio-economic-status and their family demographics, there is no way they can remove all the variables that come attached to different students. Reliability, which is dependent upon the stability of validity, cannot be established if the variables are always changing, as variables always do with children.

In short, the programmers of VAM tools have developed wares much like traveling medicine men used to cook up snake oil. Because everyone is so desperate to be cured, they are far too ready to buy the “solution”. The bottom line is that education has no short cuts. It is messy. It is tumultuous, one day never like another, one student never experiencing the same day twice, teachers juggling strategies to meet each child’s needs. These program designers think they have created something complex, but their formulas do not even come close to the complexity of the human beings in every classroom every single day. There is no measurement for such complexity. Period.

Here is a sample of one of her blog postings and the comments it elicited. Please read and be prepared to be challenged in your thinking, if not by the post itself, then by the readers’ comments.

The Secret Strategy of Corporate School Reform?.