Grading the Teachers!

[downtown]

Besides when Chicago went to merit pay based on just standardized test scores back in what 2001? I need to break out that book again...

Anyway sure scores went up, but since their pay was tied to one single test score what happened?

The teachers stopped teacher other topics in favor of only reading, writing, and math as nothing else was really on the tests; and the teachers started cheating and manipulating test scores, giving the kids answers, getting copies of the test ahead of time etc...

You got a detail or two wrong here (CPS isn't on a full merit pay system), but the general idea here happened. After NCLB was implemented, (which took testing to a whole new level), the curriculum DID shrink to meet that test. Science, Social Studies, Music, etc were not taught in areas that were under major test pressure.

I taught 4th grade in New Orleans in 2009. Our "high stakes test" is in Mid-April, and I did not open our science or social studies books after January 15th. We weren't allowed. My peers did the same.

The penalties nationwide for being caught cheating on these tests are pretty dramatic though....even though it does happen.

 

[Disgustipated]

The Educational Prison system doesn't work. Bottom line.

It worked for me. I'm not rich, but I did raise my economic status out of the lower class category.

You get what you put into it. The student has to want to learn. And I did have a huge thirst for knowledge (not so much now) when I was young.

 

[downtown]

It works great if you go to a good school. if you're poor (and I mean actually POOR, not CFC OT poor), then it's completely dysfunctional.

 

[Disgustipated]

Not true, the OP says the location of the school had little different. I went to an inner city high school. I had good teachers. Yes the good teachers taught the AP (advanced placement) classes mostly. You could argue you need the good teachers most in the disadvantaged classes. But let's be honest here, that would be a waste.

My Calculus teacher was so good I easily got a 5 on my AP exam at the end of my senior year.

He was probably the best teacher I ever had. I actually had better teachers at that inner city high school than my middle school in the suburbs.

 

[Adrogans]

Yeah as I said before its been a while since I read the section of a book about it. The authors went back and read over studies after they stopped the program in Chicago and compared test scores pre and during and post for teachers and analyzed them and showed how many teachers obviously cheated because only during the program their class test scores shot up and then went back down to where they had been before.

This was also coupled with other investigations as well, but I cannot recall all the details just the main thrust of it.

 

[bhsup]

So what's your highest degree and your current job again?

What has that got to do with anything? Unless you're suggesting that only ivory-towered eggheads should have opinions about things?

 

[downtown]

Not true, the OP says the location of the school had little different. .

The Article is correct in that the quality of teachers is probably the single most important variable for student achievement...but the flow of talent doesn't happen in a vacuum.

If we're going to discount training, experience, previous achievement level (which includes college GPA, Praxis Scores...the kind of stuff TFA uses), English proficiency, etc as indicators what makes an effective instructor, then what will you use? Magic? Do we say that teachers are simply born, and cannot be trained? Good luck getting a good one to stay then.

 

[Earthling]

There is so much fodder for the OT education mill in this article alone it should keep us going in rancorous discussion for months! The core findings alone blow up some of the big education assumptions (bolded) including that good teachers cluster in affluent suburbs and that schools are all important. Proceed to ideologically eviscerate each other

No, this only goes for Los Angeles, and considering that education in every state in the US, if not many districts, varies greatly, this doesn't demonstrate anything on a nationwide level. In many large cities I can certainly agree with this conclusion - the difference between schools won't be so much as between teachers. Look at rural schools elsewhere in the country and the answer is nowhere close.

A value-added approach is a decent idea, and if anything would be most effective accross all levels of schooling, but I wouldn't favor it as a large factor in pay, firing, and hiring systems. There is the disadvantage of expecting elementary students to take standardized tests every year but that could be doable. However different state tests would likely need to go and a return to more acceptable nationwide measures implemented for true progress.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

proof that blindly increasing money teachers make doesn't make them better, or necessarily attract more teachers. More proof the libs are wrong.

Proof that which school you go to, private or public, affluent or Title 1, makes no difference. The Conservatives, who lobby for voucher programs, are wrong.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

What has that got to do with anything? Unless you're suggesting that only ivory-towered eggheads should have opinions about things?

Do you go out of your way to come up with the stupidest, most irrelevant responses, or do they just come naturally to you?

Moderator Action: Warned for flaming.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[choxorn]

While people should try to figure out whether a teacher is good or not, test scores should not be the only indicator of that.

 

[bhsup]

Do you go out of your way to come up with the stupidest, most irrelevant responses, or do they just come naturally to you?

They come pretty naturally.

 

[madviking]

The blame for sucky test scores shouldn't be placed solely on teachers. Students are obviously responsible for their tests, but judging anything those shams known as standardized tests is complete and utter BS.

As someone who's been in the inside the system for eleven years now, I know that morale plummets right around 7th/8th grade. The curriculum, for the most part, remains rather stagnant through middle and high schools in America. The focus is never on 'learning', it's on passing the (as we have in Virginia) Standards of Learning and similar tests. Thus, students never retain to what they have learned as tests are literally just a vomiting of 'useless' information onto a sheet of paper or a computer screen. Nothing is accomplished with this method.

Are standardized tests the pinnacle of American education?

Of course not.

The inherent problems with standardized tests are that they are built for a specific brand of student: one who does not speak to think and works in a chair and desk with pencil and paper. As a student who does not fit this criteria, I feel that standardized tests are a complete mockery of what education should be. Education should be about cooperation, collaboration and corroboration. No single field of science nor meaningful occupation necessitates sitting behind a desk and spewing information. And this should not be the way we teach our children. Period.

What I've taken away from my years on the inside is that the current education system, even at the nation's top schools, is incredibly rigid, repetitive and utterly a waste of time. I cannot start rattling off the times in school I've sat in a computer lab supposed to be working on a meaningless English project on a book that's not even that good and instead playing Robot Unicorn Attack. The lack of connectivity is disgraceful. The fact that we have blocks and periods for specific classes defeats the purpose of education. A good school would be one where you could learn English in history class and math in a physics class. Instead, I had junior year: first you, madviking, learn about English, then physics, then Russian, then yadda yadda yadda.

No wonder I hated school so much.

My best moments in school were times I learned topics over than the class I'm in. Like me learning about 60's rock from my physics teacher (true story BTW).

No Child Left Behind (or as known by my peers and I, No Child Left Untested) works under the notion that education is not elitist. Which is complete BS. Education is one of the most elitist parts of our society. If we left schools to handle their own problems (curriculum, testing methods, etc), trust me, both morale and "grades" would increase.

Moreover, treating schools essentially like prisons (as JohnRM mentioned) further demoralizes students. You simply cannot learn under pressure. If we relaxed the pressure (especially all the inane rules about hats, gum, cell phones and silly stuff like that), students wouldn't crack so much, and again, students will do 'better'.

-----------------------

tl;dr the school system is completely broken.

 

[Masada]

No, this only goes for Los Angeles, and considering that education in every state in the US, if not many districts, varies greatly, this doesn't demonstrate anything on a nationwide level. In many large cities I can certainly agree with this conclusion - the difference between schools won't be so much as between teachers. Look at rural schools elsewhere in the country and the answer is nowhere close.

Question: Can you prove any of this? Answer: Of course not. Conclusion: At least mine has evidence.

 

[Camikaze]

Question: Can you prove any of this? Answer: Of course not. Conclusion: At least mine has evidence.

Surely it's a reasonable assumption to say that it varies in different situations. Evidence for LA isn't necessarily evidence for anywhere else. Logic would seem to be evidence on Earthling's side, on the other hand.

But, heh, I can't prove that either, I guess.

 

[downtown]

Question: Can you prove any of this? Answer: Of course not. Conclusion: At least mine has evidence.

How is it hard to prove? It's pretty easy to show that schools are way different...everybody uses different assessment techniques and standards, we use different teacher credentialing systems, we fund everything differently, and local populations vary WILDLY. LA and New Orleans, for example, are both very poor performing urban school districts with high poverty levels, but I can think of at least a dozen substantial differences off the top of my head which makes comparing student achievement levels difficult.

The current research I've read does indicate that teachers matter more than "schools"...but "great" teacher distribution isn't random, and the greatness of a teacher isn't static.

 

[Masada]

Surely it's a reasonable assumption to say that it varies in different situations. Evidence for LA isn't necessarily evidence for anywhere else. Logic would seem to be evidence on Earthling's side, on the other hand.

I don't see how you can just assume that it does refute the evidence. That's a big ask. You have an empirical study with quantifiable results being refuted on the basis of speculation essentially. Also, education policy has been in the past shaped by geographically limited studies. Not to mention the prevalence of studies of dubious statistical worth! The literature here at least, has been moving decisively against that kind of conduct.

How is it hard to prove? It's pretty easy to show that schools are way different...everybody uses different assessment techniques and standards, we use different teacher credentialing systems, we fund everything differently, and local populations vary WILDLY. LA and New Orleans, for example, are both very poor performing urban school districts with high poverty levels, but I can think of at least a dozen substantial differences off the top of my head which makes comparing student achievement levels difficult.

Earthling didn't say anything about student achievements; neither did I for that matter.

The current research I've read does indicate that teachers matter more than "schools"...but "great" teacher distribution isn't random, and the greatness of a teacher isn't static.

I never said that it wasn't. The insight I derived was that the quality of instruction varied far more within a school than between them. That doesn't preclude some schools being worse than others, equally it doesn't preclude some schools being better than others. But the variability between teachers inside the school was far larger than the difference between schools. Which is basically what your saying here.

 

[Camikaze]

I don't see how you can just assume that it does refute the evidence. That's a big ask. You have an empirical study with quantifiable results being refuted on the basis of speculation essentially. Also, education policy has been in the past shaped by geographically limited studies. Not to mention the prevalence of studies of dubious statistical worth! The literature here at least, has been moving decisively against that kind of conduct.

I don't think saying that different areas are different refutes the study, no, but I do think that the evidence is not as equally valid for one area as for the area that it was produced for, given that, although no citation has been provided, it is reasonable to assume that geographical differences do have some sort of impact.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Few in the education industry really are opposed to merit pay in general. What they are opposed to is merit pay being solely (or mostly) tried to standardized test scores, which in virtually all states, only measure the very basic aspects of Blooms Taxonomy.

(Blooms measures the levels of learning...the first level would something basic, like a fact recall or the definition to a vocab word. A higher level skill would be describing why things work, defending them, combining different skills...you know, the skills you need in college)

I was going to make a closely related point. The LA Times says

Value-added analysis offers a rigorous approach.

But a rigorous approach is not enough - it needs to be relevant. A rigorous test of something that matters very little, is worse than a less rigorous (say, 1:1 signal/noise ratio) measure of what really matters.

Additionally, careful attention needs to be paid to what we're incentivizing. We've seen enough teaching to the test already.

To some extent, incentive problems could be avoided by leaving everyone in the dark about exactly what will be tested, each year, and making sure that over the course of say 5 years, most of what is valuable (or the subset of that which is testable) will be tested. Pulling that off, needless to say, would be extremely difficult

 

[choxorn]

To some extent, incentive problems could be avoided by leaving everyone in the dark about exactly what will be tested, each year, and making sure that over the course of say 5 years, most of what is valuable (or the subset of that which is testable) will be tested. Pulling that off, needless to say, would be extremely difficult

The problem with that is that there will be people who learn a lot of very useful and interesting things, which have absolutely nothing to do with what's on the test.