Here are images of how you should cast your ballot. First, here's the one page view, presenting how you should cast your ballot.
Here's how the process in a few practical steps. Find the envelope indicating that it contains the official UFT ballot. Check off the ballot box that is marked for the MORE/New Action slate. Put the ballot in the envelope, and then put that envelope into the final envelope.
Still needing guidance? Here are some FAQs from the MORE Caucus UFT website.
WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR THE MORE/New Action SLATE
When you vote for Michael Mulgrew and the Unity slate you are voting for the evaluations based on high stakes and Value Added Modeling, or VAM (rebuked by a judge last week in the Shari Lederman case). Furthermore, remember that Mulgrew has consistently supported Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his ill-minded policies. (Mulgrew took his support so far that in 2014 he threatened to defund the Working Families Party if it endorsed Zephyr Teachout for governor over Cuomo).
A major negative development under Mulgrew's tenure has been the change to the new evaluation system used at the city level. The evaluations have increased in number and have followed the absurd Danielson model. Mulgrew endorsed every worsening step of the evaluation Advance Evaluation system. He even asked for the DOE to evaluate teachers along more areas than even the DOE first sought in the negotiations.
And remember that Cuomo has supported the regressive education reform forces that led New York State education: John King and Merryl Tisch. And remember that Cuomo failed to listen to parents and educators that Common Core was an inherently flawed set of standards. (See this analysis of how Mulgrew endorsed Cuomo's New York State-level evaluation dictates.) Yet, Mulgrew has aggressively supported the standards, at one union function, threatening violence to anyone who dared to take them away. Mulgrew perpetuated the fiction that teachers had a role in writing the standards, when the truth is that no K through 12 educator wrote them.
Locally, Mulgrew has continued the Unity tradition of liking for a friendly mayoral candidate, and then failing to criticize the mistakes of that politician's policies once they are in office. Witness his continued support for mayor Bill DeBlasio whose chancellor Carmen Farina has proven to be no better than Bloomberg's chancellors. He has not challenged the DOE administration to part from the Bloomberg ways, and he has ignored the continuing problem of charter school encroachment on community schools and other district schools. By contrast, Jia Lee and the MORE caucus have challenged the administration on this enduring problem.
Just as we expected: a statistics organization has seen the light about the logic about basing teacher evaluations on student test scores. As the statistical organization noted, there are significant factors beyond the school's or the teacher's control that impact on students' academic performance. Teachers should not be held accountable for factors that are beyond their control. It is great that at least statisticians have seen the light. Now if only journalists and policy makers could exercise the same critical judgment on the issue.
BREAKING NEWS: American Statistical Association Issues Caution on Use of VAMby dianeravitch
The central feature of the Obama administration's $5 billion "Race to the Top" program was sharply deconstructed and refuted last week by the American Statistical Association,
one of the nation's leading scholarly organizations. Spurred on by the
administration's combination of federal cash and mandates, most states
are now using student test scores to rank and evaluate teachers. This
method of evaluating teachers by test scores is called value-added
measurement, or VAM. Teachers' compensation, their tenure, bonuses, and
other rewards and sanctions are tied directly to the rise or fall of
their student test scores, which the Obama administration considers a
good measure of teacher quality.
Secretary
Arne Duncan believes so strongly in VAM that he has threatened to
punish Washington state for refusing to adopt this method of evaluating
teachers and principals. In New York, a state court fined New York City
$150 million for failing to agree on a VAM plan.
The
ASA issued a short but stinging statement that strongly warned against
the misuse of VAM. The organization neither condemns nor promotes the
use of VAM, but its warnings about the limitations of this methodology
clearly demonstrate that the Obama administration has committed the
nation's public schools to a policy fraught with error. ASA warns that
VAMs are "complex statistical models" that require "high-level
statistical expertise" and awareness of their "assumptions and possible
limitations," especially when they are used for high-stakes purposes as
is now common. Few, if any, state education departments have the
statistical expertise to use VAM models appropriately. In some states,
like Florida, teachers have been rated based on the scores of students
they never taught.
The
ASA points out that VAMs are based on standardized tests and "do not
directly measure potential teacher contributions toward other student
outcomes." They typically measure correlation, not causation. That means
that the rise or fall of student test scores attributed to the teacher
might actually be caused by other factors outside the classroom, not
under the teacher's control. The VAM rating of teachers is so unstable
that it may change if the same students are given a different test.
The ASA's most damning indictment of the policy promoted so vigorously by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is:
"Most
VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the
variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for
quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking
teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that
reduce quality." The ASA points out: "This is not saying that teachers
have little effect on students, but that variation among teachers
accounts for a small part of the variation in scores. The majority of
the variation in test scores is attributable to factors outside of the
teacher’s control such as student and family background, poverty,
curriculum, and unmeasured influences."
As many education researchers have explained--including a joint statement by the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education--
the VAM ratings of those who teach children with disabilities and
English language learners will be low, because these children have
greater learning challenges than their peers, as will the ratings of
those who teach gifted students, because the latter group has already
reached a ceiling. Those two groups, like the ASA agreed that test
scores are affected by many factors besides the teacher, not only the
family, but the school's leadership, its resources, class size,
curriculum, as well as the student's motivation, attendance, and health.
Yet the Obama administration and most of our states are holding
teachers alone accountable for student test scores.
The
ASA warns that the current heavy reliance on VAMs for high-stakes
testing and their simplistic interpretation may have negative effects on
the quality of education. There will surely be unintended consequences,
such as a diminishment in the number of people willing to become
teachers in an environment where "quality" is so crudely measured. There
will assuredly be more teaching to the test.. With the Obama
administration's demand for VAM, "more classroom time might be spent on
test preparation and on specific content from the test at the exclusion
of content that may lead to better long-term learning gains or
motivation for students. Certain schools may be hard to staff if there
is a perception that it is harder for teachers to achieve good VAM
scores when working in them. Over-reliance on VAM scores may foster a
competitive environment, discouraging collaboration and efforts to
improve the educational system as a whole."
For
five years, the Obama administration has been warned by scholars and
researchers that its demand for value-added assessment is having harmful
effects on teachers and students, on the morale of teachers, on the
recruitment of new teachers, and on the quality of education, which has
been reduced to nothing more than standardized testing. Secretary Duncan
has brushed aside all objections and pushed full steam ahead with his
disastrous policies, like Captain Ahab in pursuit of the great white
whale, heedless to all warnings.
Based
on the complementary statements of our nation's most eminent scholarly
associations, any teacher who is wrongfully terminated by Duncan's
favorite but deeply flawed methodology should sue for wrongful
termination. What is not so clear is how the nation can protect our
children and our public schools from this administration's obsessive
reliance on standardized tests to rank and rate students, teachers,
principals, and schools.
In this article, the author describes the history of classroom research and notes that, despite potential for present day application, many of those who currently develop observational systems for evaluating teachers appear to be unaware of this literature. The author describes what we know about effective teaching, the limits of using this information, and the need for identifying new important outcomes of schooling that can be used in teacher evaluation.
This paper reviews the literature on teacher effects and focuses on value-added measures and their use in evaluating teachers. Suggestions about the use of value-added measures and about the future of teacher effects research are provided.
In this study, the researchers surveyed all 50 states and the District of Columbia to provide an inclusive national growth and value-added model overview.
by Corinne Herlihy, Ezra Karger, Cynthia Pollard, Heather Hill, Matthew Kraft, Megan Williams & Sarah Howard
This paper explores how state education officials and their district and local partners plan to implement and evaluate their teacher evaluation systems, focusing in particular on states’ efforts to investigate the reliability and validity of scores emerging from the observational component of these systems.
Teacher assessment using value-added models of teacher efficacy suffer from a fatal flaw, namely, that a myriad of exogenous (unaccounted for) variables affect student test score growth and result in unstable estimates of teacher competency from class to class and year to year.
This article discusses the intended and unintended consequences of high-stakes teacher evaluation. The potential for high-stakes teacher evaluation to meet the intended outcome of a better teacher workforce and improved student achievement is assessed, and the costs of doing so.
This study examines accountability in teacher education in an era of testing. It compares how multiple professions evaluate program outcomes and identifies concerns with overemphasis on value-added models as the basis for assessing the impact of teacher preparation program graduates. Suggestions are offered for possible alternative paths.
This article discusses the papers in the special issue of Teachers College Record addressing broad themes of reliability and validity that raise cautions regarding the usefulness of recent approaches to high-stakes evaluation of educators. Implications are drawn for the long-term health of the teacher labor market.
Beyond the general job stress, under corporate education "reform" we have the escalating stress in school districts as teachers cope with the increasingly burdensome conditions, first driven by the No Child Left Behind policies, and then by the Race to the Top policies, with their emphasis on Value Added Modeling teacher evaluation systems (metrics-driven analyses of teacher performance that take no consideration of social conditions, administrator irresponsibility, parental support or student initiative). Incredibly, there is little thorough public discussion of how the people establishing the evaluation protocols have limited or shady teaching credentials. Consider the case of Charlotte Danielson, the architect of the Danielson Frameworks, head of the Danielson Group. She has successfully masked where she taught, at what grades, and for how long. Has anyone asked why she has kept her credentials so secret? Note that these evaluation systems have been rolled out, even though some conscientious education professors and researchers, as in the case of Chicago last year, have questioned their validity and have asked for piloting before mass implementation.
Then we have the matter of greater acute concern to teachers, their families and the economy:
Teachers will lose jobs. Those still retaining jobs will endure an ongoing hell, as they pass each day in trepidation that their lessons will be suspected for causing bad scores on high stakes tests (when in many cases these low test scores will happen even with the best of efforts --you can read elsewhere --here and here-- on the external social factors or the poor school administration factors that enable less than ideal school performance).
The profession will take on a menial reputation, impacting individuals, fraying families
It will become more evident that teaching is a menial job demanding pre-Progressive Era 14 hour shifts, whose humiliation and job security make teachers increasingly unattractive as potential partners. Word will soon leak out: teachers under the new conditions cannot "have a life."
Not making the headlines will be the job stress, the broken relationships as partners snap at partners, blow up at kids, make scenes at family gatherings, you can keep imagining the examples. Silently, out of the headlines, the partners and children in these families we compose a generation that has lost the opportunity for a decent, happy family life.
Teacher suicides
Mary Thorson, former Army Reserve; teacher who took her life
Additionally, we should consider that many terminated teachers will find themselves distraught, unsupported and with no options, particularly after experiencing on the job bullying, bullying sanctioned by media rhetoric and politicians' policies. Most tragically, there will be those without strong social supports and take their own lives. Already we have seen teachers commit suicide after harassment (Mary Thorson of suburban Chicago) and termination following shaming in publicly revealed metrics-driven comparison of teachers and their test rankings (Rigoberto Ruelas of Los Angeles).
On Mary Thorson, who took her life, on Thanksgiving, 2011, read this post and this post at Assailed Teacher. Filmmaker and former teacher Mary Richardson, contributing to the Socialist Worker, connected her plight to the larger societal scourge of bullying of teachers.
The downward spiral from the Keynesian multiplier in reverse
We should consider the Keynesian multiplier and the sprawling impacts of a middle class income. Teachers are middle class. The better paid ones have some disposable income. They can take long distance trips with their families, they can pay for sports, camp, dance or music classes for their kids. The ancillary effects of teachers losing their jobs will be weakened local economies that rely on the discretionary spending of those formerly employed teachers, the restaurants, the barbers, hardware stores.
Note that in the industrial Midwest it is often cited that when an auto or auto parts plant closes it is estimated that thousands of jobs are lost beyond the factory gates. This is the Keynesian multiplier in reverse. Remove the economic growth trigger and you decelerate the economy. You can see this from Michigan to the Hudson Valley. The New York City metro region has been less susceptible to the down-turns that much of the rest of the nation, particularly those in which industry has been a large fraction. Yet, with the firings that the consecutive APPR "Ineffectives" there will be a slightly down-ward drag on the economy.
Much as the Vietnam War higher-ups spoke of burning down a village to save it, we have politicians from liberals like New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo (who has called for the "death penalty" for "failing" schools) to conservatives like Wisconsin's Scott Walker that speak of reducing state costs to save the economy. We should not fall for their Frank Luntz-type manipulation of language. "Slashing costs" means cutting jobs; reducing healthcare benefits, slashing pension benefits have very real costs. Lifestyle quality will get downgraded. We should note the aggregate (general, overall, taking all the parts together) economic decline that follows the very specific war on one part of the middle class.
We can add administrators to the mix, as they get thrown out of jobs when schools close. Yet, we will see exceptions to the downsizing of administrators, as we see in frequent columns in Chaz's School Daze, there is a double standard for administrators, as they can be charged with highly unseemly conduct, yet often remain in their positions. Watch administrators in closed schools get rotated over to other schools while teachers take the hit for the bad test scores. While administrators get rotated, many teachers will lose their positions. Watch also for the veteran teachers be in line to take the hit, as school leaders will be eager to replace them with younger, cheaper teachers.
It is particularly easy to get replacement talent. The stagnant economy means that there are limited positions for recent college graduates. There will be eager graduates will and ready to replace the veteran teachers. This is particularly a problem in vibrant cultural magnet cities that attract college graduates around the surrounding region. In our region it is New York City; in the Midwest, it is Chicago; in southern California, Los Angeles and so on.
Therapy: a growth industry
The only people benefiting from the ratcheting up of pressure on teachers will be therapists who will see a boom in the number of clients, until their insurance runs out after termination, and the moving companies that will move families from big suburban homes to downscale apartments or back in with mom and day.
Political expediency of scapegoating and mass bullying
We also have the amoral politicians that do not see the harm in their social policies.
Ignoring the social factors that can contribute to less than ideal student test scores, they will scream for the heads of "ineffective" teachers, gaining political capital from these teachers' scarlet I status. Pundits and legislators with no teacher experience demand impossible results from teachers and create evaluation schemes that are increasingly becoming apparent to teachers and even superintendents as inappropriate and untenable. Yet, teacher union leaders, long absent for the classroom, as New York City's United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew endorsed every governmental step that created the evaluation mess that is degrading teaching and stealing administrators from their traditional school leadership duties. See this video on Mulgrew's endorsement of the new evaluation scheme from its 2010 inception roots.
(photo from demonstration of the Cranston Teachers' Alliance)
Out of humane empathy, more of the public should speak out against what education policy makers are doing with teachers.
Think of pastor Martin Niemoller's First They Came piece. What profession might be next, to follow teachers, in a broad-reaching political attack campaign? Really, who has spoken up for us, besides Diane Ravitch?
To the contrary, we have Democratic federal education official and president that cheer the mass firing of teachers, as Arne Duncan and Barack Obama in the Central Falls High School, Rhode Island case.
And more recently, we see New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie's becoming unhinged with anger at a teacher Melissa Tomlinson. His "I am tired of you people" outburst and the universal silence on this explosive public verbal abuse among politicians of either major political party, as well as the professional opinion shaping community, the pundits, speaks volumes to the social marginalization of teachers and the apparent legitimacy of the blanket targeting of teachers.
For the sake of the dignity of the profession, for the humanity of their families and their relationships, for the dignity of the national community, the scapegoating and the punishing policies must end.
*Leo Casey, pre-the education Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of our time Truly, the education field is stuffed with blind loyalty to one program of action or one line of thought, then with no acknowledgement of previously professed commitment, a lurch in another direction. Witness in New York City, the developmental lesson was, king, then it was the workshop model. (And never mind that God Lucy Calkins said it was for elementary grades in English, it was transposed with dogmatic force to the secondary level in other disciplines.) And now, have you noticed that the mini-lesson is entirely discarded? It is supposed to be subsumed within the body of the motivation. No matter, administrators told us that blue is now fuschia, and we followed in line; and this cycle repeats with nary an instance of critical thinking. Leo Casey, vintage 2008, fights the good fight versus VAMLet us take a step back to the heady days of 2008. The United Federation of Teachers was for Hilary Clinton, who then openly professed criticism of No Child Left Behind and promised to take action. Alas, this was all before Barack Obama nudged her out of the way, beat I-can-see-Russia and her partner, Russert's Meet the Press BFF; Obama, who less than a half-year into the presidency, launched Race to the Top and the rest is history. Just as the CPUSA had wild switches and swings in its line, especially in the mid-20th Century, the brook-no-public-dissent Unity caucus of the UFT (see for example here and here) has had its wild swings in its line on data and its use. In 2008, before activists and terrified teachers had nightmares about VAM, APPR and IPCs --before we knew or even cared, then [Unity] UFT VP, Leo Casey had the right line on VAM. (See here and here if you still need some clarification on these terms and their significance for your career.) Could you imagine, that the Bush II years would be the golden years by comparison? The person that knew or talked about that sort of wonky stuff back in the mid-2000s was the dull nudge at school; now everyone with any concern for their careers knows. Why, I'd bet that many teachers' own children would realize that such terms are enough to make their parents grind their teeth. Note the UFT's Casey's admittedly wise words on January 21, 2008, "Tweed's 'Value-Added' Project: Ideology Trumps Education." Back then this Unity chieftain of the UFT was on the right track with his words on VAM, not yet erased from the record, on the UFT's EdWize blog, bolded emphasis, mine:
The DoE’s “value added” project is a fundamentally flawed exercise which
can not possibly deliver what it promises. It is being pursued, with the
full knowledge of its flaws, because technocratic ideology trumps sound
educational practice at Tweed. Moving forward with such a flawed
project is extraordinarily irresponsible because “value added” — the
idea that one should measure how much academic progress students have
made, rather than just their absolute academic standing — holds promise
as an useful tool in the repertoire of schools and educators. But the
way in which it is being recklessly pursued by Tweed will cast discredit
on the entire enterprise.
The DoE has no contractual or legal authority to use test score data in the
evaluation of teachers, and the UFT will oppose it with all the means
at our disposal. This is a line in the sand for the UFT.
Furthermore, note that Casey terms this reasoning as intellectually dishonest.
To understand just how intellectually dishonest this exercise is, consider the following. This pilot project is based on student scores on the annual New York State ELA and Math standardized exams, grades 4 through 8. [The initial year of testing, grade 3, provides a baseline, leaving only grades 4 through 8 -- the years in which the exam is given on an annual basis -- for the measurement of progress.] This means that the pilot can only be applied to the teachers of grades 4 and 5 in an elementary school, and to ELA and Math teachers of grades 6 through 8 in a middle school, a small fraction of all teachers. More importantly, since the ELA and Math exams are given in January, the students will have had at least two different teachers in the interval between exams — one in the spring term of one school year and the other in the fall term of the next school year. Even assuming that the exams are an accurate and complete measure of student learning — and there is ample evidence that they are not — a student’s progress from one exam to the next is thus dependent upon at least two teachers. In some instances, a student would have another two teachers for Academic Intervention Services in the 37.5 minute tutoring, and a fifth teacher if he attended a summer program. How could one possibly isolate an individual teacher’s contribution to a student’s progress using this method?
2013 UFT, about-face, applauding the same VAM principles So now, we have the UFT reversing itself from Casey's 2008 line in the sand declarations. A la the 1939-1941 CP period that included the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, we have the UFT making a grand about-face, now claiming that metrics are fair, a just reform over past practices. Akin to intellectually dishonest, can we say that the UFT is politically disingenous? The UFT in 2013 is repeatedly praising the new Advance (APPR) teacher evaluation system in principle, only adding the comment that the system has a few issues that need tweaking. President Barack Obama's and ED Secretary Arne Duncan's 2009 Race to the Top with its emphasis on test-linked evaluations paved the way for the changes New York is enduring. The UFT under Michael Mulgrew, in 2010 enthusiastically endorsed New York State's RTTT application, establishing these evaluation requirements in New York State, which provided the legal authority which Casey challenged, read here and here. 2013's Mulgrew deems the evaluation system, "clear in its intent to support the work teachers do inside the classroom." Where's Casey today? --safely insulated from NYC, assisting president Randi Weingarten in the American Federation of Teachers.
Come to MORE's next general meeting, 10/10/13
Nevertheless, the overall Unity line is that the state-imposed evaluation system is a wonderful improvement, including its reliance on the Danielson Frameworks (which assume that all kids will be attentive, intellectually precocious and cooperative), its central incorporation of value added modeling use of standardized test scores (the very kind of quantitative analysis that Casey faulted as the objectionable line in the sand that the UFT would fight with every means at its disposal), which mean that even the stellar teacher acing the qualitative Danielson sections could fail overall if the high-stakes test scores were inadequate, "40%=100%"-- along with the Student Learning Objectives, or SLOs, (in New York City, Measures of Student Learning, MOSL). The last point takes test-score ranking one step further on the absurdity scale, for example, in some schools, measuring physical education teachers on students' performance on tests in the science department. Such farcical, non-sequitor accountability measures stoked teacher outrage and a federal lawsuit in purple state Florida. Read, "Teachers in Florida sue state claiming job evaluation system is unfair." This Washington Post article begins, "Teachers in Florida filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, claiming the state’s new teacher evaluation system is unfair because it partly rates their job performance on test scores of students they don’t know and subjects they don’t teach."
*Postscript: scroll down for the Pledge on the Ethical Use of Student Data, student data being the basis for teacher cannibalism
This is all coming to make sense: Design metrics to numerically rank teachers. Have teachers compete against each other. Watch the low scorers get demoralized and quit or get terminated. Get new hires at low rates.
P.L. Thomas' very essential piece at "The Becoming Radical":
Little attention, however, has been paid in the mainstream media to Gates’s struggles in business (Microsoft) or his complete lack of expertise, experience, or success as an educational entrepreneur.
Until this expose by Vanity Fair addressing the key practices at the foundation of Microsoft’s failures (“Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined”). [1]
Gates has argued for a need to identify the best (and worst) teachers in order to control who teachers teach and how:
What should policymakers do? One approach is to get more students in front of top teachers by identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and asking them to take on four or five more students. Part of the savings could then be used to give the top teachers a raise. (In a 2008 survey funded by the Gates Foundation, 83 percent of teachers said they would be happy to teach more students for more pay.) The rest of the savings could go toward improving teacher support and evaluation systems, to help more teachers become great.
In effect, Gates’s plan to address teacher quality is shared among almost all education reformers, including the USDOE and Secretary Arne Duncan, and focuses on labeling,ranking, and sorting teachers—a practice eerily similar to the “Cannibalistic Culture” identified as central to the failures at Microsoft:
Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
“Competing with Each Other”: Students as Weapons of Mass Instruction
It all starts with a lie. A very compelling lie that has the weight of common sense reinforced by the proclamations of people with wealth, Bill Gates, and power, Secretary Arne Duncan: Teachers are the single most important element in the learning of a child.
The problem is, of course, this is factually untrue. Nonetheless, the follow up lie (when you base a conclusion on a false permise, that conclusion is also false) is also compelling: Teacher quality must be improved!
The balance of evidence shows that measurable student outcomes (itself a serious flaw in how we draw conclusions about both student learning and teacher quality) is overwhelmingly linked with out-of-school factors—anywhere from about 2/3 to well over 80% of that data correlated with out-of-school factors.
Even arguing that teachers are the single most important in-school factor in measurable student outcomes is problematic since the research on that claim is mixed at best (some evidence suggests that school leadership and culture are as important, if not more so, than teacher quality).
Gates and the USDOE, then, are making a foundational problem of seeking solutions to problems that haven’t been identified. In other words, no one has shown definitively that teacher quality is the primary or even one of the primary causes of low student outcomes.
Now, once we move beyond that problem, approaches to teacher evaluation and pay may need to be revised, but ample evidence shows that the proposals being offered by Gates and Duncan, as well as all across the U.S., are also without solid evidence to support them (disproportionate teacher assignment has been identified, but that reality is somehow often ignored since the privileged children are winning in that inequity [see Peske & Haycock, 2006]).
Incentive-based evaluation and compensation have a long record of being ineffective, counter-production, and not cost effective (see Hout & Elliot, 2011, and Kohn, 1993/1999). Yet, as with the compelling message about teacher quality and student outcomes, competition and incentives are almost universally embraced in U.S. culture without regard for the evidence (see Worthen, et al., 2009, regarding competition).
That leads to the revelations about the previously unexplored problems at Microsoft exposed by Eichenwald—the Cannibalistic Culture of stack ranking by which all workers are evaluated on an imposed scale of ranking in order to identify the elite workers.
If Eichenwald’s characterization of the ranking as corrosive is accurate, leading as it did to workers “competing with each other,” then we can anticipate a truly disturbing reality to occur when teachers are held accountable for their students’ grade as significant percentages of their evaluations and compensation: Teachers will begin to use their students as weapons of mass instruction to defeat the students of the competing teachers, either in their own school or within the district.
This is a debilitating and ethically corrupt outcome that cannot be avoided if we continue to seek incentive-based, VAM approaches to teacher quality.
Education and teacher quality absolutely need to be reformed, but increasing the Cannibalistic Culture for teachers and students is not the path we need as a free people seeking universal public education as a central institution supporting democracy.
Education is a collaborative venture; a culture of competition is poison in the teaching/learning dynamic. Labeling, sorting, and ranking teachers and students is inexcusable in any form as long as we are genuinely committed to fostering a culture of collaboration necessary for learning.
The Cannibalistic Culture has created the winners who call for expanding that game. The Cannibalistic Culture benefits only the winners as it forces the status of loser upon most people regardless—again consider the stack ranking at Microsoft.
Teacher evaluation and education need to be reformed toward a culture of collaboration, a culture that encourages human interactions that are not about winning or losing and not about fighting for ever-shrinking pieces of the pie.
Public education and teacher quality reform currently being pursued is certain to drive good people from teaching and to ask less and less of both teachers and students. We have ample evidence from the disturbing Microsoft story being revealed to us, but we also have the stories of generations of teachers who know how education and teaching need to be supported and reformed.
Teachers want all students to succeed. Teachers want to be treated as professionals. Teachers want school conditions that support their work as educators.
Teachers do not want to use their students to outperform some other teachers’ students.
A Cannibalistic Culture will certainly create students as weapons of mass instruction that will destroy universal public education.
Michelle Gunderson of Chicago has developed a great graphic on the Ethical Use of Student Data. Remember that student data is the essential instrument for ranking and sorting teachers. The extolling of some and termination of others --in parallel fashion to Gates' Microsoft's stack ranking-- cannot happen in the age of metrics over everything cannot happen without student data. Here is Gunderson's essential analysis:
Now, we see standardized test scores used to justify privatizing our schools. Over and over again our downtown administration starves neighborhood schools of resources and refuses to address the needs of our impoverished students. Then when these schools have low performing test scores, they are closed. Charter schools, which are private enterprises even when non-profit, are opened up to fill this void.
Hence, in my career as a CPS teacher I’ve witnessed standardized testing used to sort, punish, and privatize.
And I am saying enough is enough.
I’ve developed a Personal Pledge for the Ethical Use of Student Data. This pledge is my way of communicating to fellow teachers, parents, administrators, and education policy allies my stance on standardized testing. It’s a document that helps codify my moral stance, and it is hoped it will help others take a similar action.
I realize it is just a start. If I could wave a wand and make the tests disappear I would. But I do know that if my school district insists on giving these tests, I can insist upon exercising some control over how they are used.
*UPDATE: Toxic endorsement alert: Tisch in video interviwe discusses why Bill Thompson has the best temperament to lead New York City - scroll to end
Listen: audio link to Merryl Tisch's appearance on Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC radio TRANSCRIPT OF DR. TISCH FOLLOWS THIS INTRO While conscientious educators support standards, critical thinking, the development of thoughtful reading and writing skills, a growing number of educators are expressing concern over how David Coleman's Common Core is achieving this and how the tests are being used against students and teachers. Click the link to access the audio file of Lehrer's interview with NYS Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, on the Common Core State Standards and the tests, aired on August 15, 2013. After his introduction, he expresses his appreciation for Tisch's mother-in-law, "Billie and all she's done for WNYC." Yet, Lehrer's questions reflect a measure of independence and address some of the controversy around the new standards. [For more on the Common Core, read my critique, "The Common Core and Gates' Education Commercialization Complex," of its Gates Foundation origins, the secretive, undemocratic manner in which it was created by non-governmental bodies and how it has serious pedagogical flaws for teaching English and teaching social studies. For more on Dr. Tisch, Chairwoman of Thompson for Mayor, see "Who Is Destroying Public Education in New York State?" Under her leadership, the Board of Regents appointed Commissioner John King, who imposed the teacher evaluation system on New York City. At least she has Ed.D. degree, compared to the state-installed Camden, N.J. superintendent.]
NYS Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, with her appointee, NYSED Commissioner John King, at the historic 8/7/13 NYS Common Core-based test score announcement. Note her straight face, despite the context of being close to people ensconced in the Education Commercialization Complex.
[Tisch begins after Lehrer begins with a statement on the very low scores on the elementary and middle school New York State tests, in New York City, less than a third proficient, Yonkers 16 percent, 6 percent in Hempstead.]
Well obviously, this is a very stressful time in schools, school districts and believe me, all of us who are interested in education in teachers, principals, students, parents understand the stress.
I would want to underline the fact that it would be a mistake to interpret the decline in test scores as a decline in student learning or quite frankly, very importantly, a decline in educator performance.
The results of these assessments I think will give educators, parents policy makers and the public a more realistic picture of where students are in this pathway to becoming college and career-ready, to be well-prepared for a world that really awaits them as they graduate from high school.
We're at a moment of transition. I believe we are at the beginning of a generational change to make sure the students in the United States and for our particular region, New York State, are prepared to be competitive in the 21st century economy.
[Lehrer spoke to the implementation of the tests before the curriculum was fully implemented.]
The preparation across the state has been uneven. Two and a half years ago, New York State announced that we were shifting to the Common Core. In some districts there has been a magnificent amount of capacity building around professional development to teach to the Common Core, other districts not so much.
I would like to remind your listeners that New York State spends over a billion dollars a year, over a billion dollars a year, towards profession development.
It is going to be our ability to target those dollars to make sure that every teacher in every school district gets the preparation that is required in order to teach to this higher new standard.
As for curriculum, for Common Core, Commissioner John King, with whom the Board of Regents works, Commissioner King often says you cannot deliver Common Core curriculum in a box, that's not what this is. This is about being able to teaching students to read challenging texts, We're going to support teaching them to support their arguments with evidence drawn from the text, to write from sources, to achieve deep conceptual understanding. For all of those parents listening out there would say one thing: for years we have been hearing intently to people saying that so much classroom time is wasted on drill and kill, in other words, just teaching kids something that they can spin back in a standardized test. This is a move away from that. If this movement is successful and I hope it will be, we will be moving away from classrooms that drill students just for the purpose of regurgitation.
[Lehrer asked whether the tests were "based on that deeper standard of comprehension and that ability to think . . ."]
It's been uneven, I go to schools across the state. I went to a school, very high needs school, very large comprehensive high school, with a lot of immigrant students, students from varying backgrounds and I sat through a professional development hour with teachers, where they were producing curriculum in line with Common Core. It was fantastic to see. I'm not going to name the school.
I went back and I checked in with the principal of the school. I said I know you're getting all these kids from middle school coming into your high school. Tell me what you're seeing. He said from the middle schools I'm seeing a lot of preparation on Common Core. Unfortunately from surrounding middle schools, very little.
It is been the unevenness of the preparation that we are seeing that is contributing to the plummeting of the scores.
I would say every time a new test is given, scores go down. There's no question about that. It's a format, it's a new way of doing things.
I would say with targeted professional development, with educators, parents and students getting used to the formatting, the new requirements, you're going to see a steady rise.
I would say one thing to your listeners, I would urge you all to look at what happened in Massachusetts, undertook this hard work 15, 17 years ago, where they decided Massachusetts was going to lead the pack in terms of high standards. It was a very painful few years, very like what we're going through in New York. Massachusetts emerged as the gold standard in terms of achievement across economic spectrum, across ethnic spectrum for the country. We have something to learn from, we've seen this play out before. But I would urge every to understand that this decline should not be interpreted as a decline in student learning or in educator performance.
{Ed.: Rather, see this testimony of Sandra Stotsky, the Senior Associate Commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education, from 1999 to 2003, a major designer of the education standards to which Tisch referred. She was involved at the validation stage of the Common Core, but she refused to sign the validation statement for it. In her testimony to the Michigan State Legislature she made a point to say that she is not a libertarian or opposed to the idea of national standards per se.}
I would urge everyone that the decline does not mean a decline in student learning or educator performance.
[A caller mentioned the three days in a row of 90 minute tests in English, then a week of the same in math. Students were unable to finish the test. His own third grade son was getting sick just from the tests.
Some of his students were unable to finish the test, weeping, students that had scored 4, the highest level, in previous years.]
It stresses me beyond anything you can imagine that children felt so upset with the testing.
I would say first of all, the highlighting of the testing, in terms what's been going on in the press, in terms of what parents are reading in their local newspapers, that added to the stress. I would say teachers were well aware that this was the first year in New York State where student test scores were going to be used as a barometer for teacher performance.
I think that all of those factors, coupled with the new format of the test and the new requirements of the test have added to an unusually stressful situation. Anyone who that thinks that we are out there to stress children, I would say, then you don't know us.
I would say one more thing, in New York State 80 percent of the youngsters graduate from high schools, when they go on to two year colleges, they need to be remediated in math and English. That means they are paying the are paying college tuition for high school credit. What happens is, when you look at the completion rates, after six years in a two year college, the graduation rates hover between 22 and 24 percent. Which means our young adults are not prepared to do college level work where they leave our high schools and are leaving these programs in huge amount of debt. I would say the urgency is clear in the numbers.
[The caller interjected about his students' low scores, and his own son getting sick.]
I would say, that [the low test scores] is a challenge for the adults. Students will perceive a message from us. If we set this out as a new baseline, as a place where we all feel need to go, in order to not only ensure the future of our state, for the future of our country, their future, in order to be able to educated to participate in the greatest democracy in the world and not to be left out. If adults are going to pass their stress along to students, I would urge them not to.
As I said, this was an unusual perfect storm of events. I am expecting as this first wave of data comes across our desks, I'm expecting that the level of the rhetoric will change to an intense focus on professional development around curriculum development and instruction.
[A teacher favored the Core but commented on the professional development as focusing on test scores and convergent thinking.]
You know, I would remind your listeners, Brian, that we took a lot of this into account as we designed the system.
We went to the federal government. We said that New York State was going to be probably the first state, with the exception of Kentucky, to move to the new Common Core assessments. And the one thing we don't want to do is identify our schools, our teachers or our students as failing. Our waiver requirement to the federal government we sought and got permission not to identify any schools or school districts as failing, based on this new set of tests. We're kind of holding schools and school districts harmless [sic].
Additionally, one of the things that we did, knowing that teacher evaluation was going to kick in across New York State, with the exception of New York City, we created the algorithm about teacher evaluation, where we said, based on this new test, we would effectively have the same number of teachers performing in each of the categories, the bottom category to the top category, and ultimately, that is what we did create.
We worked closely with the teachers' union in the design of evaluation. We worked very closely with the state, with the legislature, very closely with the governor's office.
In New York State there is a law. The law says that state tests are going to align with Common Core standards, that there will be an evaluation system based on student performance, but we were very clear, very clear in New York State that we were not going to overly count student test scores to evaluate teachers.
[Lehrer then paraphrased Dr. Diane Ravitch's contention that the tests "reflect the the National Assessment of Education Proficiency, NAEP, standards, which really measure if the student is doing work that will get them an A, proficiency equals an A. So, when we say 70 percent of the students in New York City tested not proficient on the new state test so 70 percent failed the test, Diane Ravitch says, that's misleading . . . Does she have a point?"]
You know I always-- I never comment on what Diane says, she's obviously a great scholar and very thoughtful, we just have a divergent opinion here. I would say, however, that over the years, Diane has changed her mind about testing, first she was for testing, then she was against it. I would also remind everyone that she did sit on the NAEP board and so she is very knowledgeable about the use of testing, et cetera, et cetera [sic]. I don't discount discount anything Diane says but I would say to your listeners one thing, New York State is committed to educating every student, no matter where they live, no matter what their socio-economic background is, to a standard, and that standard is to align them with the possibility that when they graduate from high school and have a high school diploma in New York State they actually have a choice: do they want to pursue a career or do they want to pursue higher education. Right now, across this great country and this great state, many youngsters and we can visualize where those youngsters live, graduate high school with no choice at all. Now we can sit back and be complacent about that or we can have really tough conversations about it.
[Lehrer asked about the passing grades of 3 or a 4, about whether they measure A level work or did that measure merely grade level work.]
In my opinion, it measures grade level work.
I would say that this new push to Common Core will change the paradigm of testing. For a decade testing has been driving instruction and curriculum...this obsession with "drill and kill" has been driving what kids are exposed to in the classroom and how classroom time is used. If we start to focus on critical thinking and the development of critical thinking, I believe that instruction and curriculum and best practice will drive the test. That is a paradigm shift, and that is why we are taking this on.
[Lehrer asked whether a better test can co-exist with not teaching to the test.]
Tisch: absolutely.
[Lehrer: "Let's hope it works out that way. NYS Board of Regents chancellor Dr. Merryl Tisch thank you for coming on and answering our questions."]
* * * TISCH ECHOED A NYSED OFFICIAL'S LINE THAT PARENTS ARE TO BLAME FOR PASSING TEST STRESS ONTO THEIR CHILDREN
See "6 Insulting Things NYSED Keeps Repeating" at Stop Common Core NY's News page.
[See also, the other Stop Common Core in New York State page.]
Tisch's criticism that parents are to blame for passing their stress onto their children is an echo of the line that the NYSED Associate Commissioner is pushing, as Stop Common Core NY reports:
Ken Wagner, Associate Commissioner of NYSED, told the New York Times that he was worried that the concerns of parents were rubbing off on their children, causing kids to suffer anxiety about the state tests. He’s then quoted as saying, "My heart goes out to any kid that’s suffering stress or anxiety, but we have to think very strategically about the messages that students are getting from the adults they are around."
Two major problems with this: (1) the parent concern was a direct result of kids’ anxieties and fears, not the other way around; and (2) who gets to make the “strategy” regarding what messages kids get to hear from their concerned parents? If there’s one thing that’s getting very tiring around here, it’s listening to state officials trying to tell parents how to parent. It’s especially tiring because the parental “advice” they’re offering has nothing to do with kids–it has only to do with not making their corporate buddies mad.
Of Tisch, Stop Common Core NY wrote of her cold response to reports of children getting sick from the tests:
Merryl Tisch, who is also not technically part of NYSED, is the Chancellor of the Board of NY Regents. She was seen in a recent Wall Street Journal piece responding to reports from principals, teachers, students, and parents of kids breaking down crying during and after tests, vomiting during tests, and not wanting the leave the bathroom–all due to the anxieties and stress of the overwhelming English-Language Arts testing during the last three days. Her response was that she visited several schools and only saw one kid crying. The Wall Street Journal then goes on:
But she called it a “healthy problem.” It would be worse, she said, if tests were described as unfair or poorly done. Last year, for example, the state had to toss out questions related to a passage that was widely ridiculed for being confusing. “I would be so bold as to say they were better than most people expected them to be,” she said.
So, it’s healthy for our kids to suffer this way, according to the obviously out-of-touch and basically stone-hearted Tisch. And we’re going to go ahead and join the growing camp of people with test design experience who suggest that this year’s tests are not just poorly done and unfair (which we can only assume from the stories we’ve heard, since we can’t see the tests for at least another year). They are a flat-out disaster. They are, as Chris Cerrone has written, a #fail–with a hashtag!
Teachers and parents alienated by the tests might interested in the issue of the tests and profiteering would find Alyssa Figueroa's "8 Things You Should Know About Corporations Like Pearson that Make Huge Profits from Standardized Tests" enlightening reading.
The privatizers love to rant about how the parents are not involved or are not protesting in the cities. Well, when you have state education executives lecturing down to parents as you see above from Wagner and Tisch, when you take away elected school boards, when you have puppet Panel for Educational Policy and when you have sham local democracies in the Community Education Councils (CECs) you weaken the political culture for parent engagement.
* * *
Some WNYC listener comment gems; note the doublethink (the simultaneous acceptance of two contradictory beliefs as correct) that JHC notes (10:38 AM):
A listener commented:
Brian
thank you for this segment. There is so much to say...I don't know
where to start!
First,
I find it ironic that Tisch cites Massachusetts as the "gold
standard". Brian did you know before this segment that Mass
actually rejected the Common Core curriculum as inadequate and will
not be participating? Did you know that NYS adopted the Common Core
BEFORE it was released...basically buying a product sight-unseen?
OF
COURSE, all children should graduate from HS "college or career"
ready. However, there is nothing to indicate that extensive
standardized testing, administered year after year, does anything to
enhance student learning. So, my first question would be...why do we
need to test so frequently? Why not just test at benchmark years?
Could it be because Pearson stands to make so much money from this
increased testing? Who in NYS is going to benefit from Pearson
donations...we've got to follow the money!
Brian
we need to follow the money on the Common Core and it's mandatory
testing component. There are just 2 or 3 corporations who are going
to be selling these products to us, at whopping profits. THAT is the
real story here...we are about to privatize education, removing all
local control and even national control...handing the reigns of our
educational system to Pearson, inBloom and PARCC. THAT is the story!
Another listener commented:
I
was disturbed by Chancellor Tisch's responses to the teacher who
spoke about the impact testing was having on his students. Either she
was patronizing him or she really didn't understand his point at all.
. .She speculates that over time has everyone will become accustomed
to the tests and every one will feel more comfortable with them. This
is absurd and shows her obvious lack of concern for the sensibilities
of our teachers and the children and their families. Testing
has it's place but there are many other, less stress inducing ways to
do evaluations and assessments. Testing is just less time consuming
and more cost effective over time and more profitable for the
companies that produce them and whose Boards of Directors have the
ear of the Chancellor.
Another listener commented on the cut scores and how parents will only learn of their children's test scores on August 26:
I
also want to hear about the "cut scores." Were they
determined (4 being highest, 1 the lowest) after scores around the
state came in? Is the "proficient" rating equal to the
NAEP's "proficient" rating, which experts say is equivalent
to an "A"? Parents deserve much more transparency from the
State Education Department. It is disgraceful that we find out our
children's individual scores starting August 26. Our schools pay out
of their own budgets to implement the testing program, which is
equivalent to a mass experiment across the state. Parents across NY
state, via CECs, school boards, and other means, are coming together
to ask questions about the New York state regimen, and we are
entitled to more answers. For residents and parents who are
interested, please go to changethestakes.com
dba from nyc
Since these scores will ultimately be tied to teacher evaluation with Danielson, then most teachers would have been judged ineffective on the testing component of the evaluation. So let's say we get a pass this year. What will happen next year when test scores -- I am certain -- will not increase? Will all of these students' teachers be fired when they get 2 consecutive ineffectives as required by the evaluation? And why didn't the students of all of Bloomberg's new schools, with young energetic teachers who replaced the old "deadwoods" who were pushed out when schools were closed, perform better throughout all these years he's controlled the schools? The main problem underlying this "reform" movement is that these "reformers", including King and Tisch have no classroom teaching experience and wouldn't last 5 minutes in a typical high needs school.
Aug. 15 2013 11:20 AM
Rocco P. Hill from NYC
Brian thanks for holding her to that Diane Ravitch question. It is absurd that, as the Chancellor of the NYS Board of Regents, Tisch "will never comment on anything that Diane says!"
. . .
Three questions that I wish were asked:
1. Why are some states pulling out of CCSS?
2. What happens to NYS when RttT money runs out?
3. Is it true that parents are split down the middle on the entire premise of the testing associated with Common Core?
Aug. 15 2013 11:03 AM
Matt
As a college teacher, I absolutely disagree with Tisch that tests will help make my students more ready for plenty of reasons.
But, even more fundamentally than that, doesn't she just SOUND like a total phony speaking a party line?
Aug. 15 2013 10:48 AM
Jennifer from Westchester
Has Ms. Tisch read over the NY State workbook materials herself? They are frought w/errors an questionable answers. These kids are not being taught the humanities anymore-very poor history, politics, social studies, arts etc....and a bunch of math and grammar drills. I think the regents are in bed w/the testing companies and their very lucrative constant changing of the curriculum and the materials the schools keep having to buy or else funds will be cut. Ms. Tisch-the kids are suffering from your politics. You are insensitive.
Aug. 15 2013 10:45 AM
Bob from Huntington
This is not a "higher standard," as your guest maintains, this is a different standard that comports with the desires of industry leaders and their political allies to create a population of workers more attuned to their needs. So kiss
social studies and history good bye. We don't need a population of disgruntled workers capable of discerning where the political and economic developments of the last 40 years have placed them--less well off than their parents and grandparents.
A recently retired teacher writes here about the deficiencies of students educated entirely under Bush and Obama education policies:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/09/a-warning-to-college-profs-from-a-high-school-teacher/
Aug. 15 2013 10:39 AM
JHC from NYC
In the last 5 minutes, Dr. Tisch has said "The drop in test scores should not be read as a drop in educator performance." Also, "This is the first year these tests are being used to gauge educator performance." (Paraphrases, but accurate ones.) Which is correct?
Aug. 15 2013 10:38 AM
TISCH EDUCATION AUTHORITY OVER NYC, BY VIRTUE OF NYS AUTHORITY
Tisch has tried to separate herself from the issue of whether she has authority over New York City schools. But Peter DeWitt, writing in Education Week, and noting her role leading Bill Thompson's mayoral campaign, stressed that her statewide authority sets the parameters for what happens in New York City schools.
"Run" the city's school system is such an ugly word. It's
easier to control all the schools in New York State by setting policy
that will force them to comply. With increased accountability and
mandates that control every move that schools make, as Chancellor she
certainly does run schools.
TOXIC ENDORSEMENT ALERT:
Regents Chancellor Tisch explains why Thompson has the best temperament to lead New York City. She makes it clear that implementation of "roll-out" of the Common Core is the paramount objective of teachers and schools. "The reason to test to the Common Core is because the Common Core is being rolled out." What circulatory logic!from City & State site. Yes, we need to practice close reading, but we also need to employ logic in expository writing. Whoops! That might lead us to personal narrative, which de facto national commissioner of education David Coleman says is a no-no.:
Here's how the process in a few practical steps. Find the envelope indicating that it contains the official UFT ballot. Check off the ballot box that is marked for the MORE/New Action slate. Put the ballot in the envelope, and then put that envelope into the final envelope.
