The Obama Phlogiston Theory of Education: Love Teachers, Tolerate Unions, and, Dismiss Teacher Contracts.

The avalanche of stimulus funding will obviate the need for teacher layoffs and begin to drive incredible amounts of dollars to Duncan’s favorite projects. On the philanthropy side the Gates Foundation will be supporting much of the same agenda.

 

At his Town Hall meeting Obama restated his views on education, carefully noting creating reforms with teachers and at an Oval Office meeting directly engaged a teacher on the question of incompetent teachers.

 

Arguably the most animated and substantial exchange was between the president and a longtime teacher from Overbrook High School in West Philadelphia …  he could not get the teacher to answer when he asked whether in her 15 years on the job she has encountered colleagues who she would not want to teach her own children.

“My point is that if we’ve done everything we can to improve teacher pay and teacher performance and training and development, some people just aren’t meant to be teachers, just like some people aren’t meant to be carpenters, some people aren’t meant to be nurses. At some point, they’ve got to find a new career,” he said.

Barack, the friend of teachers, is smoothly reaching out a hand to teachers, slickly arguing his case, and laying out his “theory” of school improvement.

The Obama riff:

• Charter Schools, usually operating outside the restraints of teacher contracts,
• Performance pay, in lieu of, or, in addition to traditional seniority based salary schedules,
• Data systems to track pupil achievement and teacher value-added, aka, teacher performance
• Teacher dismissal procedures, hopefully negotiated, that include student performance data and are relatively quick and easy.

The only way to achievement these goals on a local basis is with a strong mayor who is in total control of the education bureaucracy, especially school governance, to drive the policy, and, not surprisingly Obama/Duncan support mayoral control in New York City.

Randi Weingarten, the AFT/UFT leader tries to thwart the increasingly vigorous attacks on unions, expressed in an op ed in the NY Daily News .

The teacher unions are faced with a dilemma, they endorsed and enthusiastically supported Obama in his campaign, the stimulus package averted devastating teacher layoffs: the trade off, a range of “reforms” that fly in the face of long entrenched teacher union values.

The Obama/Duncan dicta largely parallels the Klein/Sharpton Education Equality Project philosophy, and this weekend Bloomberg and DC’s Mayor Fenty will gather at a high profile conference to espouse, and probably gloat over their political successes.

The new reform orthodoxy is eerily tracks to the Madoff scandal, and, a must read Education Week op ed, scarily, makes the comparisons,

Those of us deeply involved in reforming science and mathematics education, and who might once have wanted to believe in the potential of testing as a blunt but necessary instrument of reform, are now forced to come to grips with the full implications of the tests’ insensitivity to instruction in a way that vastly diminishes the role we can hope them to have as instruments of reform. We were wrong to help sell the idea of placing so much trust in institutions that, in retrospect, stood to benefit the most monetarily from our continued willingness to suspend disbelief.

One slide of a DOE powerpoint, as usual praising themselves, has a fascinating data point,

Only 54.7% of 8th grade students with an ELA state exam score of 3.0 (proficient) graduate in four years.

Additionally, NYS is incrementally increasing the “passing” score on Regents exams from “55″ to “65,” the 2008 9th grade entering class will need grades of “65″ on all their Regents exams. Some are predicting graduating rate spiraling downwards and are concerned whether students are college ready (conference here).

The Obama theory of education reform increasingly resembles the theories about the “element” phlogiston, a widely accepted theory of combustion, it was popular, complex, scientifically supported, and, wrong.

“I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,” Can Teachers/Unions Impact the New, Obama/Duncan/Klein No Child Left Behind?

 

President Obama’s speech still bothers me.

 

Nothing in a president’s speech to the nation is by accident, every single phrase and word are carefully crafted. Why did he have to discuss firing teachers? Iraq, Afghanistan, the greatest  fiscal crisis since the great depression, problems of monumental import, and, he decides to raise the dismissal issue.

 

In her “President’s Perspective” column in the New York Teacher, the NYC teacher union newspaper Randi Weingarten addressesd teacher concerns about the speech.

 

What was it about President Obama’s first major speech on education that left so many teachers surprised, disappointed and even angry?

 

Yes, the stimulus package will save innumerable teacher jobs, and, yes, huge increases in Title 1 and other federal programs will flow into states, and, yes, the President is respectful to unions, and talks of “negotiated” bonus pay programs.

 

What concerns me is the Obama education program appears to be the Klein/Duncan programs ratcheted up to the national level.

 

In response to “data-driven” instruction, aka ELA/Math scores as the sole measurement of teacher/school success, schools seek the “quick” fix. 

 

In school after school the principal purchases a proprietary program, let’s say, “America’s Choice,” the teacher lesson plan notes the page in the Teacher Guide. The lessons are “canned,” the supervisor makes sure the proper lesson is “taught” on the proper day. The “predictor” test is given, and the teacher “differentiates instruction,” usually, once again, using the worksheet or the “lessons” listed in the guide. The lessons are tedious for the kid and the teacher, but, it may result in higher grades on that really, really important standardized test.

 

The John Hopkins “Unfulfilled Promises,” 2006 report of dropouts in Philadelphia,  the Parthenon Report of a few years ago and the recent ELA 8th grade decile/Four Year Graduation Rate report all point to many kids with proficient ELA scores who do not graduate in four years. Currently only 55% of kids with 3.0 8th grade ELA scores (“proficient”) graduate from NYC high school in four years … Why do so many kids fail to graduate even though ELA scores say the kids are “proficient”?

 

We know that non-cognitive skills are better predictors of adult success than test scores. Richard Rothstein writes

 

…findings suggest that policy makers should do more to examine enhancing the potential for student engagement, responsibility and community contribution, as well as test scores when they craft policies to narrow the black-white achievement gap in secondary schools.

 

Self-confidence is apparently one non-cogntive trait that predicts labor market success.

 

…employers complain far more about job applicants’ communications skills, punctuality, responsibility, attitude, teamwork ability, and conflict resolution skills than their verbal and mathematical abilities. 

 

Too many schools ignore the traits that determine success, not the sterile test scores, but the those all important non-cognitive skills.

 

In the current issue of the American Teacher, Rothstein challenges “acountability by the numbers” goes on to suggest a more nuanced system, based on school inspections  to measure student and school performance, a must read!!

 

Teachers evaluate themselves and their students every single day. Teachers are writers, directors, producers actors and the critic in a play that lasts one day! Each day is another challenge. We ask questions, we challenge students, we evaluate homework and tests. We adjust, adapt from minute to minute. We use the “data” we collect throughout the school day to plan for the next day.

 

The Lake Woebegon (“all children are above average”) Effect of No Child Left Behind is based on the premise that flailing teachers will improve student outcomes.

 

  I was at a wonderful concert a few nights ago … and as I listened to “Old Man River“  I thought of those classroom teachers, beaten down by a thoughtless, data-driven, exam driven system.

 

 

 Don’t look up
An’ don’t look down,
You don’ dast make
De white boss frown.
Bend your knees
An’bow your head,
An’ pull date rope
Until you’ dead.

 

But, then again, many of us belong to unions, we can fight, in unity, for a better system, a better system for children, parents and teachers. And, another song  sang that night drove it home,

 

The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”

And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes.
Says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize,

From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
Where working men defend their rights,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!

“Marking Your Own Paper,” An Independent Data Office Must Be Created to Review Data and Inform the Public.

 

At the last Assembly Governance Task Force meeting, Marsha Lyles, Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning testified for the Department.  She went on, and on, and on, spouting data after data, all self-adulatory, recounting the glittering successes of the Klein years. Assembly members questioned the data, especially pointing to contradictory NAEP results, only to have the NAEP data trashed by Ms. Bell-Ellwinger, self-described as a Senior Advisor to the Chancellor.

 

The Communication Tsar, David Cantor, is quick to respond to any questions about Department data … see the recent back and forth on Gotham Schools here.

 

Who has more credibility as a researcher: Cantor or Diane Ravitch? Should your public relations staff be the “experts” in the analysis of complex data?

 

It is accepted in the scientific community that published research must be “peer reviewed,” respected authorities, not involved in the research, comment on the research techniques and analysis of the data.

 

In a question about the effectiveness of the graduates of the DOE Leadership Academy Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf mumbled about the complexity of the issue, i.e., most take over brand new schools, and talked about the necessity to use regression analysis. Chris, you’re absolutely right … why not ask some outside research institution with experience to do such a per reviewed study? 

 

While the endgame is a few months away the one outcome of the mayoral control/school governance imbroglio must be the establishment of an independent authority to report on city/district/school/student progress.

 

David R. Jones, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Community Service Society strongly supported the concept of external review. Mr. Jones serves as Vice-Chair  of the Independent Budget Office .

 

Whether the Independent Budget Office should expand it’s responsibilities or another organization based on the IBO model must become a matter of public discussion. The Research Alliance for NYC Schools should NOT be the outside, independent body, it is ill-suited. Both Joel Klein and Randi Weingarten serve on the Board, and, the alliance was created three years ago under another name and has only produced three reports of low interest in this time.

 

The IBO was created by the City Charter and has a clear mission:

 

 IBO publishes three annual reports required by the City Charter. Our Fiscal Outlook, issued prior to the upcoming fiscal year, provides an independent forecast of revenue and spending for the year ahead. IBO’s Analysis of the Preliminary Budget offers a comprehensive review of the Mayor’s proposals, and we follow up with an Analysis of the Executive Budget that highlights changes from the preliminary plan.

 

The IBO is constantly analyzing issues of public interest and maintains a weblog:

 

IBO regularly produces “fiscal briefs” on critical issues confronting the city. These informative publications have covered important topics such as city spending on schools, progress and prospects for completing the Mayor’s housing plan, the tax burden on city residents, financing sports stadiums, and the cost of recycling. Our “background papers” are generally geared to narrower interests and technical readers and include methodological details or provide overviews of specific city programs. IBO’s Weblog provides short explanations and timely information on current fiscal issues.

 

Sol Stern, a Senior Scholar at the Manhattan Institute , was right on target when he wrote

 

… his Department of Education routinely undermines accountability with a public-relations juggernaut that deflects legitimate criticism of his education policies, dominates the mainstream press, uses the schools as campaign props, and, most ominously, distorts student test-score data. Without transparency, real accountability doesn’t exist.

 

We live in the world of data, from the baseball sabermetricians who use data analysis to draft and trade ballplayers. In the world of education,  from President Obama down to the classroom teacher the use of data is the “idea of the moment.” The bits of data must be accurate, the analysis sophisticated and the resultant actions carefully reviewed. This cannot happen when the data is politically determined. The Orwellian DOE communication department, aka the “spinners” are not expert in data analysis, they are expert in the use of data to support their employers, the use of data to drive ideology. Perhaps Cantor is a closet Winston Smith.

 

Whatever happens in Albany, an independent data office must be created, after all, Dvaid Cantor has a hard enough job burnishing Chancellor Klein’s image.

Career and Technical Education (fka Vocational High Schools): Why Doesn’t Tweed Support CTE Programs? Why Are So Many Kids Allowed To Fall By the Wayside? Why Does Tweed Ignore the Cries of the Construction for Qualified Workers?

 

…a farrago of squalor and raucous mayhem.

Jeffrey Taylor, Atlantic Monthly, September, 1966.

 

How many times have you heard someone say: college isn’t right for this kid, can’t you teach him/her some marketable skill? like carpentry, or plumbing, or electricity, or computer repair?

 

In the dim past NYC had a rich panoply of vocational high schools as well as shop/home economics programs in both middle and high schools. The middle school programs were victims of budget cuts in the eighties and nineties. Shop classes had a firm class size of 24 (regular classes were 30 in Title 1 schools and 33 in others) and shop classes needed a steady supply of materials. Principals, in their wisdom, or lack there of, eliminated shop classes and the BOE allowed it to happen, after all every kid was going to go to college …right?

 

Vocational high schools once were the pride and joy of the system, again, they were allowed to deteriorate. Park West High School had a “vertical transportation” program, aka elevator repair. The very expensive equipment was provided by the unions and most of the kids went on to union jobs in the elevator repair industry or transit authority. Park West was closed and the program disbanded.

 

Today is the last Assembly Hearing on School Governance, the Brooklyn session. Each hearing has a theme, (the Bronx English Language Learner hearing was a zoo) …, Staten Island was Special ed, etc.), the Brooklyn Hearing is Career and Technical Education (CTE). I’m sure the Department spokesperson will laud the four year 67% graduation rate in CTE schools compared with 64% in academic high schools.

 

A few queries: the State Ed Department has recognized CTE programs in a range of schools. How many kids are in CTE tracks and how many receive CTE diplomas? The CTE diploma, aka, Diploma with Technical Endorsement is far more rigorous than a Local or Regents diploma, kudos to the State Ed Department. The NYC DOE website has tons of longitudinal graduation data), nothing on CTE diplomas.

 

The State lists 76 programs in 36 schools, how many kids are enrolled in the programs, and, how many receive CTE diplomas? I fear only a handful.

 

Of the 200 or so small high schools only a few are CTE schools (Food and Finance, HS of Computer Technology at Evander), I don’t consider the HS for Advertising/Media and the Film School real CTE schools.

 

The DOE did open a new construction trades school in Queens, why not one in each borough?

 

A close friend of mine’s son has a serious learning disability. He struggled through school and dropped out of high school. Supportive parents encouraged him, he received his GED, worked part time in construction trades, got into an Architectural Assistant Program at a SUNY school, graduated and now runs a small construction trades business.

 

How many kids could have been saved? How many dropouts could have been prevented? Could be running their own small businesses?

 

The DOE CTE programs are a farrago, a clumsy attempt to justify a failed program, actually the lack of any substantive program. And the kids? pawns being used for the greater good … polishing Joel’s reputation and Mike’s legacy.

Is there no shame?

An (Imagined)Interview with Arne Duncan: Probing the Mind of the Uber-Educator

Secretary Duncan, can I call you Arne?

 

Of course

 

Classrooms range from students in wealthy high achieving school districts to schools in the poor crime-ridden neighborhoods. How can you have the same expectations for these kids?

 

You’ve hit a key issue: I expect every teacher to move kids, for the year the teacher is in front of that classroom I expect the teacher to move the student to the next level. In some schools we require extra supports, more guidance, health clinics in schools, perhaps small classes, or tutoring: these extra services will impact the rate and sustainability of the growth, we cannot accept excuses. The Education Trust  research shows us that there are many examples of highly successful inner city schools. In Chicago we supported Community Schools that are also supported by Randi Weingarten the AFT union leader.

 

How do you get the most successful teachers to work in the poorest schools?

 

Part of the answer is funding formulas, the needs of kids must drive funding, look at the work of Robert Gordon an economist, now working in the White House. Pay matters: we have to be willing to drive resources to the most challenged schools and compensate the staffs accordingly. States must be much more flexible in certification standards, alternate routes will attract many more highly qualified candidates.

 

Do you feel that seniority based salary schedules should be junked?

 

Junked is too strong a term. Student performance, peer review, principal judgement and longevity should determine compensation. In every other high salary, high skill profession pay, to some extent, is based on

performance.

 

Wouldn’t pay for student performance result in endless test prep?

 

Student performance, in my judgement should be a factor, not the only factor. Colleagues should be involved in evaluating colleagues. In NYC teachers served on hiring committees in a recent reorganization. Each and every teacher, from year one to year whatever must be expected to improve their skills. Accountability is not a dirty word, it is the essence of any school system. We constantly evaluate kids on report cards, on standardized tests, on SAT exams. Rating teachers “S” or “U” is not acceptable, evaluations must be nuanced and have meaning, and paying someone more for better performance is simply commonsense.

 

Will teacher unions accept this premise?

 

In the most unionized school district in the country, New York City, the union and the school district negotiated a school wide bonus plan, a good first step. Union bashing is not productive. Change is difficult, but inexorable, I am optimistic that school districts around the country will begin experimenting with a range of models.

 

Why?

 

In a few weeks we will ask for proposals and fund initiatives in 150 school districts: these plans must be bottom up, negotiated at the local level, and, I have confidence that we will see many different fascinating approaches.

 

Will teacher union have to sign on to these plans?

 

That is a local decision …

 

Do you oppose teacher tenure?

 

No, not at all. Teachers serve a probationary period, usually two or three years during which the principal evaluates performance and can decide whether or not to retain a teacher. Tenure simply means that a third party insures a level of due process. Teaching is not a guarantee of a lifetime job. Due process must be fair and swift, it should not drag out and be excessively costly. A negotiated arbitration process exists in many districts, as long as it is expeditious it will be accepted by teachers, school districts and the public. Teachers don’t support incompetent teachers.

 

Teachers fear that your emphasis on data systems is simply a ploy, your goal is to evaluate, pay and dismiss teachers according to pupil achievement – are they right?

 

Data collection systems are at different levels in different states. We know that longitudinal student data will enable us to track students and track teachers. It will enable teachers, schools and school districts to make better decisions for kids. It is also a tool in tracking teacher effectiveness, not the only tool, but, an important one. The important element is the teacher in the classroom and part of a judgement must be student progress.

 

Isn’t the history of top down reform poor?

 

You are absolutely right, that’s why while we are establishing criteria: the programs must be designed at the school and school district level. What works in one state may not work in another. In a changing world, a rapidly changing world, we welcome teachers and their unions as partners.

 

Wouldn’t you agree that NAEP is the “gold standard” for assessing school district performance?

 

Yes, it is the only national assessment.

 

During your tenure in Chicago and Joel Klein’s tenure in NYC NAEP scores were flat … doesn’t this cast doubt on your claims of making progress.

 

NAEP is one assessment, graduation rates increased dramatically, we closed many ineffective schools, we made significant progress.

 

Would you agree that research should drive our decisions?

 

Of course

 

Many research studies  point to the issue of teacher turnover, and the reasons teacher leave the profession is not salary it is job dissatisfaction, your emphasis on monetary rewards fly in the face of research.  In addition there is no research that shows monetary rewards improve practice. Ideology seems to be trumping fact.

 

Ideology is not a dirty word, ideology can drive practice and change the status quo. Too many are wedded to the past and try to use research data to stand in the way of change – I am convinced that our policies will close the achievement gap … remember school systems were not built to serve the needs of employees … the new face of education may be discomfiting for some, but we believe it is the only way to respond to issues that have eluded us for too long.

The Imposition of “Change” Is a Formula for Another Failed Reform, Barack, Speak To Your Sister (the teacher).

 

 

Each day President Obama drives the news with a major event: on Tuesday it was education. In a speech (view here) before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce he laid out his priorities.

 

Gotham Gazette trolls the press releases and just about all the players in the ed mix praise the speech, well, let’s say dance around the edges of praising the speech.

 

The key elements:

* early childhood education, home infant health care and year long schools

* national standards

* some sort of yet to be defined teacher pay for performance, and, equally undefined teacher dismissal procedures.

* creating data systems for tracking student achievement and teacher value added

* removing the state caps on charter schools

* 150 districts in which to play with the above.

 

The plan, if you can call it a plan, throws sops to both camps, the early childhood, year round schools for the Broader, Bolder guys, national standards were strongly supported by Al Shanker, and the merit pay, dismissal, data and charter school ideas for the Educational Equality Project.

 

 All things to all people.

 

Unfortunately, for Barack, the history of top-down reform is depressing. From the Taylorism of the 1920’s to the Nation At Risk Report (1983) through School Integration (1950’s) to Decentralization (1970-90s) up to the current accountability/data schemes, one reform after another, have had little or no impact on the classroom.

 

A decade old still highly relevant book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban (1995), “Tinkering Toward Utopia,” is worth another read. They inform us

 

The politics of education has not been conducted on a level playing field. Policy elites – people who managed the economy, who had privileged access to the media and to political officials, who controlled foundations …gained a disproportionate authority over educational reform … Policy elites have tried to persuade the public that their definition of problems and proposed solutions were authoritative …(and) have often dominated discussion of reform, especially when concern about education grew intense and widespread at the national level.

 

Reform after reform is driven from above, and, after a few years ebbs into another reform. The actors at Tweed, and in Washington, are prime exemplars of “policy elites,” crafting an accountability business model that is shunned by classroom teachers. Schools are closed, replacement schools are opened, a complex “Progress Report Card” is the heart and core of the life of principals, Fair Student Funding, bonus pay for schools and rewards for kids roil in the blogosphere and have little or no impact on the day-to-day life of kids and classroom teacher

 

Tyack and Cuban suggest,

 

Change where it counts the most – in the daily interactions of teachers and students – is the hardest to achieve and the most important, … We favor attempts to bring about such improvement by working from the inside out, especially by enlisting the support and skills of teachers as key actors in reform.

 

William Easterly is a renown economist and Co-Director of the Development Research Institute at NYU. Easterly is sharply critical of massive top-down development programs, i.e., the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he argues, in the Wall Street Journal that “…poor, ordinary people had ‘peculiar aptitudes for solving the problems of their own time and place,’ a confidence later vindicated by homegrown success in Botswana, the East Asian tigers, India, Chile, Turkey and China.”

 

In Foreign Policy Easterly writes,

 

For decades, …countries have struggled tremendously to realize the potential of individual creativity as opposed to the smothering hand of the state….

 

It wasn’t happening because experts had handed out some blueprint for achieving economic growth to governments and then down to the people. What happened instead was a Revolution from Below – poor people taking the initiative without experts telling them what to do.

 

The lesson of successful development around the world is the lesson of successful schools, locally created programs, embedded in a culture that encourages and rewards innovation and creativity, is the key to student progress.

 

I fear Barack and Arne’s plan may be yet another chapter in that book about failed school reform efforts.

“Trust Me,” Says Michelle (Aphorism: When the Powerful Say Trust Me the Powerless Tend to Get Pregnant).

 

To some Michelle Rhee is a superstar, taking on teacher unions and creating a merit-based pay urban school system. For others she is a chimera, filled with fanciful ideas, with a bloated ego, out to destroy the lives of teachers and kids, to satisfy her lust for power.

 

The Washington DC public school system has been a disgrace for decades. A patronage pool for former Mayor Marion Berry it was mismanaged and ignored. Superintendents were powerless to make substantive change and the teacher union, active in DC politics, guarded their contract.

 

Charter schools and a voucher program siphoned students out of the public schools resulting in many underutilized school buildings and a shrinking, increasingly senior staff.

 

Mayor Fenty’s selection of Michelle Rhee was pretty shocking … but her resume appeared impressive. Only a three year career as a teacher, but, a glittering three years. The founder of the New Teacher Project which supports alternative paths to teaching.

 

A DC based blog describes her merit based plan,

 

Ms Rhee is thrashing out a deal with union leaders that would raise teachers’ wages dramatically. Starting salaries would leap from about $40,000 to $78,000, and wages for the best performers would double to about $130,000 a year. In return, teachers would lose tenure and be paid according to merit, measured in part by their students’ results. Current teachers would have a choice: they could join the new system or stay in the old one. New hires would have to join the new system.

 

A serious question is who is funding the plan, and, Rhee says, “trust me!”

 

She references a financial modeling study done by a secret consultant,

 

“When we engaged initially in this effort, we brought in a consulting firm to do some financial modeling for us, and basically what we’re able to show is after a five-year period we will be able to sustain this with city dollars,” Rhee said.

Rhee’s spokeswoman declined a request for a copy of the report, saying that documents related to the District’s talks with the teachers union on a new collective bargaining agreement are confidential.

The Washington Post reports that Rhee “… has declined to name prospective donors publicly,” and goes on to report that Gates says it has had no discussions with Rhee and other foundations are vague or noncommittal.

If the foundation contributions falter, or end, the City would be responsible for the costs, and the DC Chief Financial Officer muses how they could pay for the raises,

A collective bargaining agreement based on private funding would pose questions for the D.C. Council, which faces an $800 million revenue shortfall next year and an uncertain long-term budget outlook. The District’s chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, has told council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D-At Large) that the council would be obligated to assume the foundation commitments if private donors were unable to follow through.

A core question emerges: Is Rhee creditable? Has she lived up to her promises in the past? The best approach to answer this question is to look into her past.

Rhee’s official biography states,

OFFICIAL RHEE BIOGRAPHY: Michelle Rhee’s commitment to excellence in education began in 1992, when she joined Teach For America after earning her Bachelor’s degree in Government from Cornell University. Her teaching career started at Harlem Park Community School in Baltimore, MD, where her outstanding success in the classroom earned her acclaim on Good Morning America and The Home Show, as well as in the Wall Street Journal and the Hartford Courant.

Rhee frequently references her successes at one of the lowest achieving schools in Baltimore

RHEE: My career in education began as a classroom teacher at Harlem Park Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland. My experience there shaped the rest of my career. I saw that students who were performing far below grade level quickly achieve at the highest levels if they were exposed to a quality academic program.

Creds to Daily Howler, an investigation of Rhee’s claims, in July, 2007, found her claims wanting. No evidence of “outstanding success,” no evidence of acclaim on “Good Morning America, the “Home Show,” the Hartford Courant or the Wall Street Journal, and, no evidence of dramatic increases in achievement.

Recently Rhee has “downisized” her own achievements. A feature in Time Magazine  has quite a different story,

 Rhee suffered during that first year [of teaching], and so did her students. She could not control the class. Her father remembers her returning home to visit and telling him she didn’t want to go back. She had hives on her face from the stress.

The second year, Rhee got better. She and another teacher started out with second-graders who were scoring in the bottom percentile on standardized tests. They held on to those kids for two years, and by the end of third grade, the majority were at or above grade level, she says.

As a job applicant Rhee claimed her students achieved “at the highest levels,” after she is ensconced in the DC supe job her memory brightens, ” … a major of her kids archived at or above grade level.”

“Trust me,” says Rhee, the funding will come, the plan is sound, nothing to worry about … but will her claims morph as quickly as her resume.

When the powerful say “trust me,” people tend to get pregnant.

Beware of Geeks Bearing Formulas: Is the Rush to Data the “New Stupid,?” Education Must Begin With Kids and Teachers.

 

It’s hard to believe that Obama has been in office for a mere forty days …  the passage of the stimulus package, his inaugural address and his not quite State of the Union address, and, the gleaming Republican knives being honed. A political maelstrom is spinning about us.

 

A tumbling stock market and dire warning after dire warning have gulped up the air … another major announcement, or two, every single day, from the economy, to foreign policy, a true whirlwind.

 

On the education front we see immediate good news, and, from my perspective, long term bad news. The stimulus package plugs the leaking educational dikes and prevents, or, sharply diminishes potential layoffs, however, the priorities Obama set in his Tuesday night speech were troubling: accountability, charter schools, data and national standards. His key White Advisor is Bob Gordon, a former advisor to Klein, and, the author of the New York City Weighted Student Funding plan. Gordon has written widely re teacher effectiveness and stands in direct opposition to teacher unions.

 

    We propose federal support to help states measure the effectiveness of individual teachers – based on their impact on student achievement, subjective evaluations by principals and peers, and parent evaluations. States would be given considerable discretion to develop their own measures, as long as student achievement impact (using so-called “value-added” measures) are a key component. The federal government would pay bonuses to highly rated teachers willing to teach in high poverty schools.

 

Gordon and his co-authors go on to argue that teacher ” …effectiveness over the long-term can be predicted quite well by teachers’ student achievement results in their first few years on the job. The implication, they argued, was that the doors should be thrown open to lots more potential teacher candidates (through alternative certification and the like), and then the lowest-performing newbies (as measured by student achievement results) should be let go before they get tenure.”

 

The core of the Obama educational proposal would appear to be that other four-letter word, data.

 

The Data Quality Campaign (DQC)  argues for systems to

 

improve the collection, availability, and use of high-quality education data, and

implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement

 

On March 10th Arne Duncan will be the keynote at a DQC sponsored symposia.

 

Frederich Hess, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and no friend of teacher unions, warns that the headlong rush into “data-driven” education reform policy initiatives  may be the “New Stupid.”

 

Using data alone may tell you how students are doing: does data “…enable an organization to diagnose problems or management improvement?” 

Hess proffers

 

Data-driven management should not simply identify effective teachers or struggling students but should also help render schools and school systems more supportive of effective teaching and learning. Doing so requires tracking an array of indicators, such as how long it takes books and materials to be shipped to classrooms, whether schools provide students with accurate and appropriate schedules in a timely fashion, how quickly assessment data are returned to schools, and how often the data are used. A system in which leaders possess that kind of data is far better equipped to boost school performance than one in which leaders have a palette of achievement data and little else.

 

We shouldn’t forget that the major banks and brokerages were also “data-driven,” they were wedded to a risk management system, called Value at Risk (VaR).

 

… one reason VaR became so popular is that it is the only commonly used risk measure that can be applied to just about any asset class. And it takes into account a head-spinning variety of variables, including diversification, leverage and volatility, that make up the kind of market risk that traders and firms face every day.

 

In spite of this highly sophisticated tool, the investment galaxy crashed, one day VaR was totally relied upon as a foolproof measure of daily risk management, the next the investment world was in disarray and free fall.

 

The current NYC Department of Education is a prime example of data as the “New Stupid.” ARIS, a  student data warehouse costs $85 million, another system, being designed by Maximus, designed for storing Special Education data has price tag of $78 million. The Office of Accountability, that drives the Quality Review and School Progress Reports employs 100 employees, and the Department is expanding the Teacher Data Initiative … more than $200 millions, and what impact on the classroom?

 

Is there any evidence that the regular use of student data improves achievement?

 

Does the DOE track ARIS logons and compare to student progress by teacher?

 

On a local level we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on top down data systems, without any evidence of their impact, and, I fear the dollars will spiral into the billions on the national level.

 

To quote Warren Buffet, in a letter to his shareholders,

 

Too often … American have been enamored of ‘a nerdy-sounding priesthood, using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like.’… Some skepticism about these models is overdue,’ he added. ‘Our advise: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.’