Thank You,love it!

I also enjoyed this one-

http://educationnext.org/russ-whitehurst-takes-on-the-finland-du-jour/

The journey to accountability is coming along,does it have a pulse though?

I meant in Canada,does it have a pulse?

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

Oh boy another miracle cure like all of the miracle schools.

1) Teacher quality is not the main problem not even close. It is the main “in school” problem a far cry from poverty and health etc

2) This must be the hundredth attempt at merit pay incentives. The entire teaching profession rejects merit pay. Not the unions the profession.

3) There is this little issue of collective bargaining. If teachers reject it will it be imposed. That never works.

Diane Ravitch devotes an entire chapter to the failed history of merit pay in her NY Times best seller Reign of Error

We have been here many times before.

The entire reform movement is being shown to be a failure. Vouchers charters testing and merit pay, all failures.

We had a big argument here about math scores. After 20 years math scores on Milwaukee are WAY behind the public schools.

Time to give it up. If you want to improve schools look at what successful countries actually do, not failures like the USA.

It’s laughable that people actually believe that rating a teacher’s impact on student learning would be complicated.    There’s nothing complicated about keeping meticulous records, and then actually using them properly.  It would be a very easy set-up.  Gee wiz, we do it in the private sector all the time!
Once there’s merit pay, I would bet you that teachers would no longer average 15 sick days/annum (and the mysterious ‘long weekend sickness syndrome’ might disappear entirely! )
It’s time educrats took some real responsibility and begin educating our children.

Ravitch’s book ‘Reign of Error’ gets trashed, one bogus claim at a time…

http://www.nationalreview.com/education-week/361418/rain-errors-michael-j-petrilli

I had a few questions, because I don’t really buy into the part of measuring teachers against the achievement scores of students. The questions that inevitably are popping up in my head, are the kind that centers on what is steady achievement. The students with the As certainly can’t go higher as the students with the lower grades, or what is the defining line of steady achievement for low achievers.

So I went unto Impact, to review it - no answers there but I could see how effective it was to eliminate the poorer teachers and retained high performance teachers.  http://www.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Success/IMPACT+(Performance+Assessment)/An+Overview+of+IMPACT#5

I could not find the study on Impact, onto the other articles to see if I could find a link. No dice, and after 1/2 hour or so - enough - I can’t confirm what I read in the comment section of the NY Times - “Here is the most important part of the story…which this review does not mention. There has been no effect on student learning. None. More teachers may leave, but where is the evidence that they are replaced by better teachers?
I suggest the author read the study, not just the press release of the study. cb”
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/a-new-look-at-teacher-evaluations-and-learning/

I certainly like to confirmed it, but I can’t find the study to do so.

When I went to school, starting in grade 3 the class was tested on a test made by the school. It was no big deal for any of us kids, since it knowledge that we had already been taught, along with grammar, vocabulary and a whole assortment of test questions. If I remember correctly, it was 1 and 1/2 hours long, done in the month of May and just before the second recess of the day. The test results were passed unto the next teacher in the new grade with attachments as to the problems areas are. I know, because in grade 5, I caught a peep on my problem areas, seeing the writing of the principal and the teacher I had in grade 4. What I do know,  high expectations were put in place. All students should reach the idea goal of 75 %. Back in those days, having a 59 % or below was a failing grade…......the test results were used for a personal goal of the student. In grade 5, I was to aimed for a 85 % but if I score 74 % or below, a parent conference would be call, to see what could be done. Nothing was left up to chance by the school, because the goal as I see it now, was to maintain steady achievement for each and every student.

As for bad teachers, I did not know what a bad teacher was until high school. I always got good grades with the tough teachers, who were always inclined to help out compared to the teachers using poor instructional approaches. I should know, by April in grade 9, after finally listening to the horrible math teacher calling another student stupid, she chose to call me stupid. She was at the back of the classroom, and I was standing at the blackboard. I took the chalk and using my pitching arm - the piece of chalk landed dead set in the center of her forehead. Don’t worry, she was the one that had to apologized to me, and also to the class - but she did not change her ways. She was too long in the tooth, and the union protected her. Her math knowledge was not in question, it was her teaching style that was in question. The math teacher never forgotten me, because it was the first time a student stood up to her, took action instead of stomping out of the classroom either in tears or in anger. She was still screaming at her students, as I passed her class, saying to myself, sure glad she is not my teacher.anymore.

So what exactly are the parameters and measures being used when it comes to student achievement to evaluate teachers??  Isn’t the true measure, the individual achievement of students?  Isn’t it all about students not falling behind?

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

I don’t notice anyone claiming improved students results due to IMPACT. Only that we chased out some teachers we didn’t like. No guarantee the ones who come after will be any better.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/why-merit-pay-for-teachers-sounds-good—but-isnt/2011/10/09/gIQAVb72YL_blog.html

Anything that has test scores involved is of dubious value from the get go. Scores swing wildly from year to year with the same teacher.

The merit scheme found the vast majority of “excellent” teachers were in middle class areas and the vast majority of weak teachers were in poor areas notwithstnding the value added aspects.

The assumption is that incentives work in business so they will work in schools. There is a very large school of expert opinion like Denning of TQA that incentives don’t work in the private sector all that well either.

http://www.joebower.org/2013/01/merit-pay-bad-idea-that-wont-die.html

POBOD

Mike Petrilli really Tom? He must be the worst debater in the reform camp. Ravitch would make mincemeat out of him in a debate. Him own points are like Swiss Cheese. Example? You must reduce class size to 15 to make a difference. First it is not true, I can bury him in studies that show every single kid matters in reduction. Second if it WERE true, so reduce the class size to 15!!! It would only be in poor schools and the ROI is we’ll worth it. Every single Mike Petrelli point is bogus. I will happily debunk them one at a time. Not even difficult.

Tom’s link is a good one - I like this part, “. But the well-rounded, content-rich schools that Ravitch desires (as do I) haven’t existed en masse for decades. Ravitch wrote a whole book (Left Back) explaining why this is so — and it had to do with the education profession’s commitment to progressivism and romanticism, not because of more recent testing and accountability regimes.”

Certainly it is the case - the big fat dictionary sitting on a dais platform for us kids to used big words in our writing. The typical globe along with the various maps rolled up like blinds. Oh my, the books of knowledge, with beautiful illustrations and pictures of what was really like in some distant country. All gone, and it is now a task for parents to provide. After all progressivism demands the schools to remove the access knowledge resources, in fear of kids coming out of grade 8, knowing the Earth, locations of countries and fancy words such as nefarious. Nefarious always sounds better in an English essay, then plain old evil.

As for Doug’s links - same old - same old. Blaming the quality of the student but not doing nothing in improving the students and their achievement. As for merit pay not working in the education system, the operators at the board and ministry, sure do enjoy their bonuses year in and year out. Lastly, the old chestnut of poor teachers being in low-income schools - any teacher has a task when the school is not properly resourced for the learning needs of the students using the 19th century pedagogy based on progressivism and romanticism.

And lastly, perhaps a measure would be - the number of students who are not at grade level, and no improvement made for the whole school year. It just might work, in the K to 8 grades - and who knows, the kids who are struggling might start progressing and steadily achieve.

So provide the evidence Doug to refute the claim of 15 per class, and the rest of, ” The evidence indicates that class sizes must be reduced dramatically — to 15 students or fewer — in order to get an impact, and even then it matters only for the very youngest students in the very earliest grades.”

Keeping in mind, the pre-schools and nursery schools whether private or non-profit have classes of no more then 12 and other programs such as the YMCA play group programs that specialized in art and swimming lessons for the wee ones. And then there is the personal experience of being in classes of less then 15 or 16 at the high school level. These days, that would never happen,  because A) no class shall dropped below the lower limit, B) the remainder class with 15 or less students, will be spread to the other classes increasing the number of students. (note in this case - schedule conflicts is left up to the students to decide to drop the course or take it online, Finally C) Somewhere in the regulations of any school district with a regular population of 500 or so - no regular class shall be 15 students or less. So therefore, what happens to a grade 1 class of 56 students?  It is split in two of 26 and 27 students rather then the three split of 18 - 19 - 19. 

Class size matters for the younger set, but not necessarily for the older students. What I have read in the research, that show positive results are the teachers that stay with the same students for two to three years. But I guess that would be too much of a luxury for the progressives and smacks of taking a page from the private schools.

pobod

Sidwell Friends where Obama daughters go is a perfect example of the schools Petrelli says does not exist. Could find 100s more.

You can be as critical as you want of public schools Nancy, Vouchers and charters score lower.

Merit pay has been tried and failed and abandoned so many times few can keep track. It sure is nothing new. How many times must it fail before we count it out.Check the history of merit pay. It always fails.

Doug showing an example of a school that is a private exclusive school with a tuition of $35,000. Hot lunches are included, and the school’s philosophy, “inspired by the values of the Religious Society of Friends and guided by the Quaker belief in “That of God” in each person ” to try to prove that schools that Petrelli states doesn’t exist.

No Doug, the schools don’t exist for the vast majority of the students attending public school. The public education system holds the monopoly and have total legal authority to delivered education services for the masses.

Where Doug gets the idea that I was referring to an exclusive private or non-profit nursery or pre-school is beyond me. The schools my kids attended when little, were within my price range, just barely. Of course, my youngest got a break because she was declared special needs, so I had the ability the choose a nursery school that suited my child without the qualifying factor of price range. Otherwise, typical fare and within access by all since Ontario does subsidized for the lower income and special needs children. Unless it has change in the last 10 years, since the Liberal came into power in Ontario. 

What Doug won’t do, to get away from merit pay and discussing the problems or good points.Even posting wonderful raves about a private school who is guided by faith of God. Last time I check, Doug is an atheist and he firmly believes in secular schools. 

I am still waiting for some answers on the questions that I posed in my first post.

And the last word goes to Impact’s most recent results no matter what the Blobsters say.
http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/study-dc-impact-teacher-evaluation-system-improves-performance/?cid=dlvr.it

We’ll have to see how effective that really is. I think there are a lot of ways the system could be gamed that could lead to bad teachers making more.

http://smilingtoothfairy.com/

pobod

I hve never seen so mny red herrings.

It is Petrelli’s short piece that is full of holes. Is he kidding? No schools for the rich and powerful be serious.

http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/the-most-expensive-private-high-schools-in-america/

What Ravitch is saying is rich kids get music art foreign languages, and the poor get test prep cram schools with terrible facilities.

Ravitch says class sizes should be low. The rich say no they should not and turn around and advertise the small classes in elite schools. Which is it?

All of Petrelli’s arguments are sophomoric and pathetic. Each can be taken apart by anyone who pays attention.

pobod

1) their system is not bad if they eliminated testing results, too wild and unpredictable.

2) Assuming it works, they will soon need to pay every teacher 25K more they will love that.

3) the visits are too often but I assume it is not 5 visits per year forever.

The rising outrage against too much testing is beginning to bite,

This is an aside statement.It pertains to testing.

I test kids pre post every 24 lessons during remediation to analyze their growth in phonemic awareness and their ability to blend,segment and apply the rules they were taught.With fluency and automaticity, comprehension increases incrementally.

I can see rapidly whether what I am instructing is working or not, if it isn`t, I analyze why.
What I see is that many tests in the market have no merit.The teachers deliver them and there is no analysis of the results.It`s an idiot`s game.If they buy a reading program for NY city and the kids are failing the NAEP in grade 4, why can`t they analyze the results and see the kids aren`t learning?Because the tests preparers don`t have the intrinsic knowledge to analyze the student`s struggle and thus proceed to deliver better programming.This is where I worry.If a teacher fails her kids in grade 4 it`s many times because she is forced to teach with the so and so program even if she doesn`t believe in it and sees it failing.How many phonics teachers felt heartache when whole language was enforced the first 5 years till they accepted defeat?

Last year I attended a conference in NY on Reading and the new Woodcock Johnson(4) and it`s creator did a presentation. She was a Professor from a University somewhere in the U.S.
The publisher needed new goods to peddle and decided I guess to do the new version of the Woodcock Johnson, I can tell you that she had NO IDEA how to teach Reading so how could she develop a test to appraise it?
Many of us left just shaking our heads.

In my view a lot of the testing is a money maker and of no use whatsoever.Teachers need to be taught the science of Reading and publishers in the game need to be accountable and sell product to schools that work.
I feel EQAO is crucial as are the NAEP exams in the U.S..
Poverty neighbourhoods certainly need excellent teachers but many times she is excellent, willing and caring, that`s not enough, the Penicillin is missing and you can`t wish it better.

Where does the public education advocates get the idea that public education should be more like the exclusive private education??  Or is it because the public education advocates who are against choice for the vast majority of students sitting in the public schools, are using the exclusive private schools as their own whipping boy, knowing full well parents at all social-income levels act to the best interests of their children’s education. The trouble is, it is the public education establishment that does not want the public school parents to act in the best interests of their children’s education.

As such, quotes like Doug’s - ” The rich say no they should not and turn around and advertise the small classes in elite schools. Which is it? ” are a dime a dozen to reinforced the messages that public school parents should strive for the exclusive private school education in a public education setting. Selling a pipedream, because wealthy parents have the same concerns as less wealthy parents have - a good education for their children.

That said, Impact according to the actual study, overall teacher performance improved significantly in the school district. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19529

Should we not expect all teachers to be at a minimum levels of performance that allows their students to progress and achieve?  I am just thinking about the differences between a parent in a public school and a parent in an exclusive private school. The parent in the exclusive private school, will be alerted by the school staff, their child is experiencing learning difficulties - an assessment is in order to test for learning differences. So unlike in the public school…...........where the knowledge sets of public school teachers, there is no requirement of having knowledge of learning differences that gives rise to learning difficulties.

It might do to look at the history of teacher evaluation. “This history might be divided into three overlapping periods: (1) The Search for Great Teachers; (2) Inferring Teacher Quality from Student Learning; and (3) Examining Teaching Performance. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, teacher evaluation appears to be entering a new phase of disequilibrium; that is, a transition to a period of Evaluating Teaching as Professional Behavior.”  http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2482/Teacher-Evaluation.html

Note: If the educator class are insisting on the label of professionalism in the 21st century, should not the public expect professionalism from the public education establishment? Just wondering, because far too many parents are sending their children to private tutors to repair deficiencies in the basic 3 Rs and knowledge gaps in the upper grades of school. The exclusive private school parents, paying the high tuition are the lucky parents that receives phone calls, for timely interventions instead of alerting them in the senior years of schools, as it is done in the public education system.

Note: If the education class are insisting on the professionalism label, why shouldn’t they be evaluated based on a combination of merit pay and student achievement? 

Just some more questions I have after reading a bit of history….......

Part 1

Joanne, I went on red alert on your remarks regarding the conference that you attended in NY and the new Woodcock Johnson (4). To which, it is so brand new, I could not find it but that doesn’t mean it does not exist.

What put me on the red alert, is my observations in 2013 of a new development in the Canadian parent files, starting in grade 4 - where parents are trying to get help for their children, and in their stories they are casually using phases such as, ” Although SV has low ability in pseudo-word attack, SV is doing well in school according to the school” or some other version of single word phases commonly associated with reading deficits. Mind you, I have been reading the parent comments on the regular education and parent sites that are not associated with LD. It is the language of the LD parents who have educated themselves on the ABCs of their children difficulties. 

So last week, I read 10 parent comments in different places across the Canadian web where the parent singles out one specific low score in the reading/language areas, the child is either doing very well or the child has dropped in achievement. In part, Joanne, some of my puzzlement has been eliminated, and now I am flabbergasted what the public education establishment in partnership with the K to 12 education publishers are now doing.

Part 2

In short, teachers need to be taught the science of reading, including how to understand not only the assessments assessing learning difficulties but as well as to analyzed the results of achievement and standardized testing - making the vital connections to instruction to the outcomes of students.

It was your last paragraph that help me put it together from a parent’s perspective. Simply put, the education establishment is dumbing down the assessments for educators to administered, in order to keep the support staff including educator psychologists down to the minimum numbers. What is behind it all?  The refusal of the public education establishment to change their ways from the 19th century to the 21st century. One area is the science of reading as you have pointed out. The end goal is to bring the children with reading deficits into the norm. In other words, the vast majority of children will no longer be considered as needing reading, writing or numeracy remediation.

Further evidence - 1. My 16 year old, on the cusp of her 17th birthday, had the additional Woodcock Johnson reading assessment.by the guidance teacher.  Unfortunately, the report read like a critique of my child’s mental health deficits, than a reading assessment report. The kicker was, scant attention was paid to the low standard scores of phonemic awareness scores and word decoding. My child’s reading difficulties became a mere problem of increasing self-esteem.

2. In the American LD files and other places, it has been reported by parents, on the difficulties that they are having with schools to remediate the 3 Rs, based on the assessments and achievement scores. One such example in 2008. http://www.greatschools.org/LD/community/discussion.gs?content=37571

3. The Woodcock Johnson assessments come with attached warnings in the LD community. At Wrightslaw - In part - “Because the WJ-III subtests are short, many do not provide good qualitative information about what a child knows, can do, and where the child needs continued work. For example, the WJ-III does not measure the child’s ability to write a paragraph or an essay; it only examines the ability to formulate brief responses.

The WJ-III is scored by computer. The results obtained are organized into cluster scores. Cluster scores must be considered with caution when there is a significant difference between individual subtest scores. Relying on composite or ‘cluster’ scores can lead to faulty educational decision-making that have tragic consequences for children.”
http://www.ldonline.org/article/6026/

Part 3

The next few links to testified to the profits being made at the expense of the students. If one cares to google it, the Woodcock Johnson assessments will be the new assessment tools of the educators. It is already in many different schools across the United States, and is connected to the Common Core curriculum. In Canada, it is going a different route, where the guidance teacher is being trained to administering and analyzing the scores of the new series that are designed for professionals who do not have professional training in the ABCs of assessments and as Joanne has stated, it becomes an idoit’s game, or as I would state, fill in the blanks or paint by numbers.

4. The Woodcock Newsletter - http://www.riversidepublishing.com/products/wjIIIComplete/pdf/Woodcock_Newsletter.pdf

5. Would you believe - practice tests for worried parents?  http://www.mybookezzz.net/woodcock-johnson-practice-test-sixth-grade/

6. Would you believe - “There are a variety of ways in which addictions can impact academic performance. For example, in a study in the journal Addictive Behaviors, researchers found a link between drug use and truancy, meaning that the more drugs these students took, the more class they missed. Each skipped class is another missed opportunity to learn and grow, and ongoing truancy like this could lead to difficulties in school and lower academic scores.”
http://www.muirwoodteen.com/psychological-testing-assessment/academic-testing/

7. Would you believe, testing using the Woodcock Johnson assessment for entry into kindergarten at a magnet public school? http://www.city-data.com/forum/education/1711580-need-some-info-about-woodcock-johnson.html

8. There is reams and reams of web sites, offering their services to parents, to aid in helping their children pass the Woodcock Johnson assessments. As one can conclude, the assessments normally reserved to pinpoint and assess learning difficulties, are not being used in different ways, other then what the assessments measures.

9. On a Canadian site - describing the many different assessments to determined learning difficulties. http://www.dyslexia-ca.org/pdf/commonly_used_measures.pdf
If the only assessment tools of educators are the Woodcock Johnson assessments at any public school,  most children if not all will never be identified as having LD or dyslexia or for that matter - non-verbal.

So yes, to Joanne pointing out - “The publisher needed new goods to peddle and decided I guess to do the new version of the Woodcock Johnson, I can tell you that she had NO IDEA how to teach Reading so how could she develop a test to appraise it?
Many of us left just shaking our heads.”  We are already seeing it across the Canadian schools where the public is being sold a false bill of goods, at the expense of the students and their education. My prediction: Within 5 years, we will see further declines in literacy and numeracy, but more importantly, fewer and far fewer students being identified formally as having a learning disability and increasing numbers of students of being identified as having mental health problems and illnesses or ADHD.  Alas, the results of standardized testing and the global ones such as the PISA test are not being used as they should be - but rather as tools of spin completely ignoring the the slow decline in literacy and numeracy levels of their citizens. However, that is another big story for another day.