Dangerously Irrelevant

Want to know how to wage war against public schools? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s ongoing campaign provides us some pointers…

1. Decide on a catchy title for your campaign. How about Breaking the Monopoly of Mediocrity?

Nice title! Pat yourself on the back!

Wait a minute… Does this mean that the U.S. Chamber wants to be mediocre but someone else holds the monopoly on that and thus is preventing the Chamber from also being so? No, silly goose. It means that public schools are both a monopoly AND mediocre and thus need to be broken up!

2. Create made-up statistics to prove your point. How about Approximately 70% of middle school students score below grade level in reading and math?

Perfect. This statistical sound bite sounds terrifyingly awful. Of course we must do something about this immediately!

BUT… this statistic is based on NAEP data and refers to the percentage of students who score at the ‘proficient’ level. Never mind that the consensus of the scientific and research communities is that the NAEP levels are arbitrary, lack any kind of statistical validity, and don’t make sense. Never mind that the National Academy of Science concluded that “the results [on NAEP] are not believable.” Never mind that the National Academy of Education concluded that NAEP’s achievement-setting processes were “fundamentally flawed” and “indefensible.” Never mind that experts affiliated with NAEP’s Governing Board have explicitly stated that “the proficient achievement level does not refer to ‘at grade’ performance” (and that instead NAEP’s basic level is more akin to ‘at grade level’). Never mind that Congress insists that all NAEP reports be accompanied with the disclaimer that achievement levels “should be interpreted with caution.”

Because, hey, we’ve got a campaign to run and people to scare and other groups that also will spread the same inaccurate data (thank you, StudentsFirst!). What does it matter if our essential premise is untrue?

3. Come up with splashy, eye-catching graphics to reinforce your misleading and untruthful message.

4. Make color-coded maps.

You gotta have color-coded maps. Lots of ‘em. And make sure you use selection criteria that are guaranteed to reinforce your message. For example, how about this map, which shows that achievement gaps in EVERY state are not just bad but downright UGLY?

Or, even better, this map that shows that overall achievement is horrendously UGLY in… wait for it… EVERY SINGLE STATE?!

Sorry, Massachusetts, we know that you beat Finland handily on the TIMSS math test, but we set the criteria so that your student achievement is UGLY. Sorry, Vermont, despite your reading levels being on par with Singapore, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada, your student achievement is UGLY too. Sorry, North Carolina, even though if you were a country you’d be in the top 10 worldwide in math, your student achievement is UGLY, UGLY, UGLY. Sorry, America, it doesn’t matter that your students’ achievement on international tests is closely tied to your high levels of poverty. You don’t have a single state – not even one! – that falls into the BAD or GOOD categories. Every state is UGLY with a capital ugh.

[Handy Tip 1: Never, ever use neutral or pro-school data (e.g., actual peer-reviewed research). Instead, use ideological, made-up data provided by other anti-school organizations to create your maps!]

5. Make report cards.

Just like maps, you gotta have report cards. And fact sheets. And playbooks. And movies. And whatever else you can think of to reinforce and spread your scary but untruthful message. Also see Handy Tip 1 above.

6. Use social media.

Create example messages and tweets for others to use. Set up a Facebook page. Make hashtags like #breakthemonopoly and #jobs13. Pay for sponsored tweets on Twitter. Again, remember, it’s not about the truth. It’s about spreading your message to the public and to policymakers.

7. Spend a boatload of money.

And finally, of course, spend tons of money on all of this and more. How about a nationwide tour where you spread your message to anyone who will listen (complete with media coverage at every location)? How about an email newsletter that you can use to pepper folks’ inboxes with even more inaccurate data? How about conferences and webinars and summits and forums and workshops and conference calls? Sure, why not? After all, you’ve got to outspend those evil teachers’ unions!

[Handy Tip 2: Don't forget to use a lot of your money for political campaign contributions!]

And, that, dear readers, is how you wage war on public schools. What, you say you want to defend public schools? Hahahahahaha! Oh, you’re serious. Okay, then. Better do all of this and more… Good luck!

Image credit: yoda

Sue Altman says:

old-fashioned Fordism isn’t even how good business operations are done anymore. That ugly, dehumanizing, and elitist way of thinking about factory work went out of fashion with the poodle skirt. In contrast, the Toyota Production System, which business school students are taught is the best in the world, relies on a philosophy rooted in respect for people, teamwork and employee empowerment. The Toyota approach replaced Fordism as the gold standard for product manufacturing decades ago. Further, mainstream operations managers employ a method known as statistical process control or SPC to measure effectiveness without assigning blame. If a part of the production process is found to be lagging, it is given additional resources, not punished needlessly.

…

[If] education reformers are going to use the language of business to justify their policies, how about they at least use business ideas from this century?

via http://edushyster.com/?p=2754

I don’t get to attend the meetings between educators and policymakers when they talk about teacher ‘accountability,’ but this is how I envision the conversation often plays out…

Happy viewing! (with captions!)

Regular readers of this blog know that I don’t always agree with Dr. Jason Glass, Director of the Iowa Department of Education. But I’m going to be one of the first to say how sorry I am that he’s leaving Iowa for his new position as Superintendent of the Eagle County (CO) Schools.

I have ongoing concerns about some of the directions that Iowa educational policy is heading. Like in other states, we have seen policy proposals in recent years that hurt kids, schools, and our state. From teacher ‘accountability’ to third grade retention to assigning schools letter grades, these policies play well to certain fringes of the ‘ed reform’ crowd but have nothing to do with transforming education in ways that facilitate deeper thinking, student agency, or relevance in a digital, global world. Unfortunately, our policymakers also are not immune to the influx of outside monies. When the Governor is a founding member of ALEC and the largest political donor in the last legislative race is StudentsFirst, Iowa can expect to face some significant issues regarding inappropriate outside and/or corporate influence on policies that affect its children, teachers, and schools. In a state where most educational professionals either don’t have an online voice or aren’t willing to use it, I have felt the need to sometimes speak against some of the lunacy.

For the most part I think that Jason has been a moderating influence on much of this. Despite the policy positions from above (or outside) for which he’s sometimes had to stand behind, he’s pretty middle of the road on most things. Every conversation that I’ve had with Jason has been nothing but congenial and respectful. In addition to his advocacy for strengthening the teaching profession, he’s been a strong supporter of competency-based education (which, along with technology, I believe has the greatest potential in our state for upending school as we know it). He has tried to help us learn from high-achieving school systems and he’s facilitated the expansion of online learning. He fostered the #iaedfuture Twitter hashtag (which has become an important channel for conversations about Iowa school policy) and has been exceptionally accessible to the larger public via his blog and Twitter. And he always, always is proud of and talks highly about the work that Iowa educators and schools are doing. One of our greatest strengths in our state is the tremendous interconnectedness and mutual support that Iowans and their educators give to each other. We have a long history of caring about education, we are small enough that everyone seems to know each other, and it’s relatively easy to get positive movements started. Jason has always understood this and, in his way, tried to leverage these strengths to do good things for kids and schools. Although I have expressed occasional concern about the possibility of Iowa becoming one of ‘those states’ (yes, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New York, Tennessee, etc., I’m talking about you), we have a number of fantastic things happening here when it comes to education. Some are a direct result of Jason’s leadership. For others – such as the grass roots 1:1 computing movement or the burgeoning standards-based-grading awakening – he has known when to stay out of the way (a much less appreciated but critically important characteristic of effective leaders).

So I’m going to miss you, Jason. Thanks for taking the ACT with me. Thanks for the public Twitter exchanges that everyone saw and the private email exchanges that everyone didn’t. I hope you have a smooth transition back to a place that was once home and wish you the very best in your new role. And if you ever want some help or support on the technology front – particularly with your building- and district-level leaders – please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

3 Megabits per second (Mbps). That’s the peak download speed of Sprint’s 3G mobile phone service. That’s also how Iowa and the United States define ‘broadband’ Internet access: a minimum of 3 Mbps download speed and 0.75 Mbps upload speed. Only 66% of Iowans have access to even this minimal level of ‘broadband’ in their homes. Moreover, one out of every four Iowa businesses is not accessing so-called ‘broadband’ services.

Take a look the map below. See all of the areas that are light green, yellow, or tan? Those are areas for which the maximum – yes, maximum – advertised download speed (as collected by ConnectIowa) is 3 to 6 Mbps or less. That’s the same as Sprint’s 4G mobile phone service. And that’s maximum advertised speed, not even regularly available speed. Those of us with ‘broadband’ access know that these are very different.

According to Akamai, the average connection speed in the U.S. is 7.6 Mbps but the average speed for Iowa is only 6.0 Mbps. Out of 12 states in the Midwest, Iowa’s average Internet connection speed is 11th, better than only Kansas. Even worse, Iowa’s broadband adoption rate dropped 11% from 3rd quarter to 4th quarter in 2012, the only state with a quarterly loss greater than 10%. Most states had adoption rate gains, not losses.

When most of Iowa has anemic Internet access, that doesn’t bode well for economic viability. When most regions in Iowa have Internet access that at best is what we get on a smartphone, that’s not a platform for economic, workforce, and entrepreneurial success.

Today the Internet is essential infrastructure, supporting the ability of individuals and organizations to innovate, build, sell, and serve. Everything is moving to the Web but right now Iowa is far, far behind what it needs for a hyperconnected, hypercompetitive digital, global economy.

Want to stop Iowa’s ‘brain drain?’ Want to provide a ‘world class education’ for Iowa students? Want to make Iowa more entrepreneurial, innovative, and globally relevant? Fix this.

Brandon Busteed says:

Every student in the world, from pre-K to higher ed, needs:

• Someone who cares about their development
• To do what they like to do each day
• To do what they are best at every day

That’s it. It should be the new bill of rights for all students – and frankly, all people – worldwide.

via http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-busteed/the-new-bill-of-rights-for-all-students_b_3306642.html

We already have some schools that are organized around these principles. They’re amazing, incredible, energizing places of learning. Now, if we could just get policymakers, educators, and parents on board so that we can scale…

Mike Wiser at The Quad-City Times reported today on the controversy here in Iowa around connecting student test scores to teacher evaluations (aka ‘value-added modeling’ or ‘VAM’). Last week I shared the research and prevailing opinion of scholars supporting why this should not be done.

In the article, notes that ‘teacher accountability has to be be part of it, or it’s not reform.’ This is consonant with policymakers’ general willingness to ignore the rating volatility concerns associated with VAM. As Amrein-Beardsley, et al. (2013) noted:

Policymakers have come to accept VAM as an objective, reliable, and valid measure of teacher quality. At the same time, [they ignore] the technical and methodological issues.

There appears to be a blind faith by many legislators in the objectivity of VAM, even though the actual data show that there is extremely high volatility in teacher ratings from year to year. Somehow policymakers are able to dismiss that rating instability as unimportant, even though it has tremendous impacts on teachers’ lives and reputations and public faith in the educational system. When Teachers of the Year are being rated ‘unsatisfactory’ by VAM systems, parents are rightfully suspicious. When high-achieving schools are rated as ‘needing improvement’, the public rightfully suspects that something’s not right. It’s important to note that legislators are not asking other professions to accept evaluation schemes in which 30 to 50 percent (or more) of their ratings fluctuate widely and completely randomly.

Of greater concern to me, however, is the response of Tom Narak, lobbyist for the School Administrators of Iowa (SAI). SAI represents all of the principals and superintendents in the state and is supposed to be knowledgeable about educational research and policy. Yet Mr. Narak says about VAM, “Why wouldn’t you? It’s the way (evaluations) are going now.”

Well, Mr. Narak, here are a few big reasons why we wouldn’t:

• Because year-to-year ratings for teachers are randomly varying 30%, 40%, 50%, or even higher [Di Carlo; Economic Policy Institute; Baker; National Education Policy Center]. In other words, extremely high percentages of teachers’ evaluations have absolutely nothing to do with their actual performance. As lobbyist for the administrators responsible for evaluating teachers, this should be alarming to you, not dismissed out-of-hand. Do you want principals and superintendents to send the message to their teaching staffs that they don’t care if evaluations are fair?
• Because even when student test scores are averaged over 3 to 5 years, random variation in teacher ratings still results in over 25% to 48% of teachers being rated inaccurately [U.S. Department of Education; Di Carlo]. In other words, when it comes to rating instability, looking over a longer time frame helps some but not a lot.
• Because the National Research Council, the National Academy of Education, the American Educational Research Association, RAND, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, the National Education Policy Center, James Popham, Gerald Bracey, Robert Linn, and many, many other of our most-respected scholars and research organizations all have looked at the research and said vehemently that we shouldn’t. In short, it’s a “who’s who” of educational policy and research – the folks we have trusted to inform us on policy decisions – all unilaterally aligned against VAM systems because of their volatility and unfairness.
• Because when VAM systems are implemented, predictably ludicrous and harmful results occur. These policy decisions have real consequences for our teachers for whom we supposedly have such great respect.
• Because even if we could devise a fair VAM system (which right now no one seems to be able to do), research shows consistently that the contribution of teachers to overall student test scores is 10% to 15% at most. The rest is attributable to other school factors or non-school factors. Any VAM system that imputes greater teacher responsibility than that small percentage would be highly unethical.
• Because holding teachers ‘accountable’ for random variation and/or factors outside of their control violates both the equal protection and due process rights due teachers under the U.S. Constitution.

If Mr. Narak and SAI are going to take a policy position on teacher evaluation, they should be up on the research I cited last week. In fact, on April 21 I e-mailed Mr. Narak the research noted above. Apparently, like many legislators, he and SAI don’t seem to care that the teacher evaluation systems for which they’re expressing support are inherently unfair and probably illegal? Would they feel the same if we were talking about the principals and superintendents whom they represent?

“Dear principal, 33% of your year-to-year evaluation will be completely random. Even though what you did this year isn’t substantially different from what you did last year, you may end up being rated highly or you may be rated near the bottom. Despite the extreme rating instability, there will be real consequences for you depending on the results. Good luck.”

Our teachers deserve evaluation systems that are fair. If they’re not fair, they’re unethical. If they’re not fair, they’re illegal. And right now, despite their intuitive appeal and legislative popularity in certain circles, VAM systems are unable to meet the basic principle of fairness and thus should not be supported by SAI or any other knowledgeable educational organization or policymaker.

[I'll also note as an aside that some states are starting to talk about evaluating administrators based on student test scores. If we are rightfully concerned about volatility in teacher ratings, wait until we remove the connection to students one additional step and try to tie scores to administrators. In other words, SAI, be careful for what you advocate because the principals and superintendents you represent are next…]

Finally, I’ll close with a plea to Jason Glass, Director of the Iowa Department of Education (DE), to publicly release the research that he has which supposedly supports VAM. Over the past months Jason has said repeatedly that DE and the Governor were not advocating for VAM approaches. And yet, here at the end of the legislative session, we somehow find ourselves discussing VAM systems and both DE and the Governor are supporting them. Whatever research Jason has, it’s going to somehow have to address the concerns noted above. Given that leading scholars and our most respected educational research/policy organizations are familiar with and have summarized the literature base and yet still strongly advocate against VAM, I’m skeptical. But, hey, maybe he’s got a bunch of dispositive studies with which both I and they are unfamiliar…

—–

I recognize that this post likely is going to make me unpopular with SAI (and even more unpopular than I already am with DE), which I regret because I’ve had good relations with them for a long time. But when the weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly against the policy position for which they’re advocating, I can’t just sit by and say nothing, not when it has very real, negative consequences for Iowa educators. John Ewing, President of Math for America, notes:

Of course we should hold teachers accountable, but this does not mean we have to pretend that mathematical models can do something they cannot.

I’ll state emphatically that we absolutely, under any circumstances, shouldn’t pretend that mathematical imprecision in evaluative processes has no impact on teachers’ lives and the fairness of our educational systems.

As always, I await your thoughts…

Should teachers be evaluated by students’ standardized test scores? While that idea seems to make intuitive sense, my newest resource on value-added measures (VAM) highlights the rating volatility, legal issues, and other concerns that have led our most trusted assessment experts and educational research/policy organizations to vehemently advocate against evaluating teachers with student test scores:

• Value-added measures

As we make policy, our teachers deserve our thoughtful, informed consideration. I hope this resource is helpful to you.

Are you ready to rethink your acceptable use policies (AUPs)? If so, here are some resources for you:

• Rethinking AUPs

Let me know what you think (and what you might add to the resource lists). I’m always on the search for student and/or employee AUPs that focus more on empowered use rather than hammering on safety/security concerns. We need more AUPs that emphasize YES! instead of NO!

Image credit: Bigstock, man pressing yes button

David Sirota says:

The pervasive media mythology tells us that the fight over the schoolhouse is supposedly a battle between greedy self-interested teachers who don’t care about children and benevolent billionaire “reformers” whose political activism is solely focused on the welfare of kids. Epitomizing the media narrative, the Wall Street Journal casts the latter in sanitized terms, reimagining the billionaires as philanthropic altruists “pushing for big changes they say will improve public schools.”

The first reason to scoff at this mythology should be obvious: It simply strains credulity to insist that pedagogues who get paid middling wages but nonetheless devote their lives to educating kids care less about those kids than do the Wall Street hedge funders and billionaire CEOs who finance the so-called reform movement. Indeed, to state that pervasive assumption out loud is to reveal how utterly idiotic it really is, and yet it is baked into almost all of today’s coverage of education politics.

via http://www.salon.com/2013/03/11/getting_rich_off_of_schoolchildren