Stupid SGO Tricks

I notice that the NJDOE has slapped up a "Top 5 Frequently Asked Questions" about Student Growth Objectives on their teacher evaluation website. SGOs are a mandatory part of AchieveNJ -- known around here as Operation Hindenburg -- that will count for 15% of a teacher's evaluation rating.

As I mentioned before: there is no research base to back up the use of SGOs in evaluating teachers. And it's rather obvious, looking through this "Top 5," that the NJDOE never bothered to field test the concept; otherwise, they wouldn't be making statements like this:

Q: How can teachers who instruct in semester blocks or nine-week cycles set SGOs?

A: These teachers should set SGOs as early in the semester as possible. If the instructional period is less than nine weeks (e.g. 30-day cycles), teachers should set goals for several of these short cycles and then aggregate performance on these goals into their SGOs when possible.

But what if the content changes each cycle? And what if the "growth" for each cycle is not comparable to the others? Why didn't you folks think about this stuff before you rolled this out? If you had field tested this, maybe you would have had time to come up with answers before teachers all over New Jersey were being held responsible.

Q: How should SGOs be handled for a teacher on a leave of absence or otherwise away from teaching for a period of time?

A: Teachers should be present for at least a nine-week continuous period of time during the year to set an SGO. A teacher who has not set an SGO before the November 15 deadline due to an extended leave should set an SGO as early as possible after his or her return to the classroom.

Well, that will be fun to think about during a family medical or maternity leave. And, of course, there is no research base to back up the nine-week minimal time frame; like everything else here, NJDOE is going with its gut.

Q: I am a school counselor. Do I need to set SGOs? Do you have exemplars for SGOs for that I could take a look at?

A: SGOs are not required for school counselors, but only for teachers with an assigned class roster. Educational specialists such as academic coaches, CST professionals, librarians/media specialists, paraprofessionals, athletic trainers, health workers and counselors, etc. may set SGOs at the discretion of local district leadership. However, the Department encourages all educators to set SGOs to help improve their performance by goal setting.  Office of Evaluation staff members have worked with several professional organizations that represent these educational specialists to develop SGO samples that may be useful reference documents. Please contact your professional organization for these samples.

So here we go: just like test-based evaluations, some educators have to deal with this system, and some don't. And administrators and educators now have to contact the staff at NJDOE (think they be able to get someone with actual experience in schools on the line?) and spend their time finding out how to make an SGO for the athletic trainer or librarian, despite the fact that there is no evidence SGOs will improve those educators' performance or lead to a better evaluation.

Q: I teach Special Education. How will my SGOs be different than a general education teacher's?

A: Like a general education teacher, your SGO should be tailored to meet the needs of your students. As much as possible, your SGOs should encompass the curriculum and students for which you are responsible. The IEPs of the students you teach contain added guidance to help you provide the type of instructional support that will help your students succeed. You may use this guidance to help inform your SGOs. For example, you may set an SGO that includes standards for reading comprehension. The IEP of a student may include strategies to improve the comprehension skills that the individual student has not yet learned. In this case, the IEP and SGO for that student are aligned.

Let's disabuse ourselves once and for all of this notion: SGOs are not at all about "meeting the needs of students." They are being used for teacher evaluation, not student evaluation. And I find it more than a little ethically dangerous to set an SGO using an IEP (Individualized Education Program: the formal plan all students classified as needing special education services must have).

Why? Because that SpecEd teacher now has an incentive to have her students show "growth," whether those students actually "grow" or not. If the IEP is not working and the child does not reach his or her goals, the teacher will pay a penalty for honestly saying so. No rational, ethical teacher evaluation system would ever force a teacher to choose between an honest assessment of a SpecEd student  -- or, for that matter, any student -- and their own effectiveness rating, especially since teachers do not have sole control over IEPs or curriculum.

But this is exactly what Operation Hindenburg requires of teachers. Which leads us to...

Q: Are teachers required to use a pre-assessment?

A: No. Pre-assessments may be used to collect baseline data, but there are several other ways to determine students' starting points as mentioned in the preceding question. Additionally, unless they are carefully constructed, pre-assessments may not provide the type of information that will be useful for setting appropriate goals. For instance, a pre-assessment that is identical to a post-assessment may be so challenging for students that most score very poorly and some become discouraged by their test performance early in the school year. Additionally, a pre-assessment on content in a subject area to which students have never been exposed (e.g. German 1) may provide little useful information. At the beginning of the school year, it may be challenging to motivate students to do their best on a pre-assessment. However, some teachers are using carefully crafted and rigorous pre-assessments effectively and have worked to overcome some of the problems associated with pre-assessments noted above. In consultation with their supervisors, these teachers may opt to continue using such pre-assessments.

Of course it's dumb to test kids on things they haven't yet learned -- but this is happening right now all over New Jersey. In addition to my own work and the younger Jazzboy's own school, I get lots of updates from teachers all over the state (thanks for that, folks - keep it coming!). Because the guidance has been so last-minute from NJDOE, and because curricular directors at the district level are swamped with implementing a system that was never field tested, teachers rushed into doing pre-assessments that were inappropriate for the simple reason that the material on the test had never been taught.

The NJDOE might fool themselves into thinking these pre-assessments were "carefully crafted and rigorous," but there's little reason to believe that: they haven't done a program evaluation, so how would they know?

Let's lay our manipulatives on the table, shall we? The only reason teachers across New Jersey are being forced to do SGOs this year is because Education Commissioner Chris Cerf thinks their implementation will make the use of NJASK test scores easier to swallow.

Only teachers of math and language arts in the 4th through 8th grades will be subjected to evaluation through standardized tests via Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs). Leave aside the obvious truth that SGPs are wholly inappropriate for use in rating teachers; what really gets under these teachers' skins is that they have to worry about NJASK scores while their colleagues don't.

What better way to make SGPs more palatable than to subject every teacher to a quantitative system like SGOs -- a system that has even less research to back it up than SGPs?

Again: this is not about the students. It is about satisfying the ideological predilections of a group of people running the NJDOE who clearly have no education, experience, or training in teacher evaluation. They are creating a disaster that is wholly avoidable simply because they can.

AchieveNJ, aka Operation Hinderburg

Tales of Inequity in Chris Christie's New Jersey, Part I

All high schools are equal in Chris Christie's New Jersey - but, as David Sciarra explains in this great piece, some are more equal than others (all emphases mine):

The buildings of Phillipsburg High School and Trenton Central High School are remarkably similar. Phillipsburg was built in 1928, Trenton in 1932, in classical style. Both are iconic, graduating outstanding young men and women over the decades. Both have great sports teams. Both serve 1,800 students.

And both buildings have fallen on hard times. They suffer from deferred maintenance. They lack modern classrooms and spaces for science, the arts and technology. Phillipsburg, which serves students from surrounding suburbs, is intensely overcrowded, with 30 dilapidated trailers cramming the site. Trenton Central has a plethora of defects: a crumbling façade, mold and asbestos, falling plaster, and, recently, cracks that shuttered the once-grand auditorium.

Both Phillipsburg and Trenton are urban districts. Both are eligible to have schools renovated or replaced by the state under a program administered by the Schools Development Authority (SDA).

Given the problems in both buildings, the state approved a new Phillipsburg high school and either building a new Trenton Central or a complete overhaul of the existing structure. In 2008, the SDA put the projects on its capital plan, allocating more than $120 million for each.

Both projects began moving through the planning stage. Because Phillipsburg decided to build a new school on a new site, it moved faster. In 2009, Phillipsburg was ready to break ground.

But in January 2010, both projects stopped when newly elected Gov. Chris Christie halted the urban school construction program. When the program restarted in March 2011, the SDA removed both Phillipsburg and Trenton Central from its capital plan.

This is where the stories diverge.

The Phillipsburg district protested the SDA decision not to build the new school. Students wrote letters and protested at the Statehouse in Trenton. The district sued the SDA. Phillipsburg’s effort fell on deaf ears until its legislator, state Sen. Michael Doherty (R-Washington), stepped in to help. Sen. Doherty vowed to press the case for a new building with Gov. Christie.

Let's take a small time out here to mention that Sen. Michael Doherty is New Jersey's Worst Senator™ - a man with an astonishing indifference to the needs of the children of this state's working poor. Doherty has for years insisted that state education aid should be distributed without any regard to whether a local community can raise its own school revenues, or whether a community is serving a large proportion of at-risk children.

See, if your parents can't vote for Doherty, he really doesn't much give a damn what happens to you. But if you're in his district...

In February 2012, Gov. Christie announced the SDA would put the Phillipsburg project back on the state construction list. Sen. Doherty praised Gov. Christie for recognizing that Phillipsburg is “overcrowded and in need of major repair” and said “it’s about time that we got our kids out of ramshackle trailers and into proper classrooms.” 

Yeah! Whoo-hoo! That's how you do it...

I'm sorry, Trenton - what's that you say?

Trenton Central was not put back on the list of schools to be replaced or rebuilt.  

In March 2012, the SDA announced it would repair only the most dangerous conditions. The SDA has yet to issue any construction contracts, and won’t begin repairs to the exterior until late next summer. The repairs won’t be completed until early 2018, almost two years after Phillipsburg has a brand-new school. 

Wow - that seems totally unfair, doesn't it? What did Doherty have to say about this?

Keep the mold on the walls and crumbling ceiling on the floor.

That’s what one politician alleges to be occurring at Trenton Central High School, a building that has been documented to contain mold, leaks and a rodent infestation, and has recently been in the middle of a hotly contested debate between the state and the Trenton School District about who will fix the 80-year-old school.

“I would say some cynical politicians from time to time may allow buildings to be used as props as opposed to actually doing the proper maintenance — allow an area to be a little spotty, a little maintained less than it should be — just so they could bring the press in and show them,” state Sen. Michael Doherty (R-Warren/Hunterdon/Somerset) said Monday. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s occurred somewhere in the history of mankind, maybe even in Trenton. Obviously, because that’s what they want to show.”

Doherty’s comments came four days after gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono toured the school’s deplorable conditions, scolding Gov. Chris Christie for failing to make repairs and declining an invitation to tour the school firsthand.

The senator contends Trenton receives $227 million in state aid, more than most other districts in the state.

“Instead of blaming others, they should ask themselves maybe we should have done a better job,” Doherty said, adding the building and grounds department, the board of education and the superintendent should do more to make sure the building is properly maintained. “It’s certainly not for lack of resources. They’re getting a lot more than virtually any town in New Jersey, but we don’t see those problems in other towns.”

You mean except in Phillipsburg, you massive, massive hypocrite.

What does the state senator from Trenton, Reed Gusciora, have to say about all this?

“We’re not doing anything differently than what Sen. Doherty did for Phillipsburg,” Gusciora said about advocating for a new school, adding Doherty is a hypocrite for criticizing Trenton. “All we want is what Michael Doherty got for Phillipsburg.”

Doherty disagrees with the assemblyman.

“I don’t think I’m being hypocritical at all because if you go to Phillipsburg High School they don’t have all the problems that Trenton High School seems to have, even though Trenton is getting a lot more (state aid) than Phillipsburg is,” Doherty said. “It’s a totally different situation.”

Oh, there's no doubt about that, Senator (all figures from the NJDOE 2012-13 enrollment file):

Trenton Central is, for all intents and purposes, an apartheid school.

While Phillipsburg High has poverty, it is nothing compared to Trenton Central.

And Trenton Central serves far more children who don't speak English as their first language.

Pundits will tell you there is some sort of a war going on between the Tea Partyin' Rand Paul types, of which Doherty is one, and the "moderate" wing of the Republican party as exemplified by Chris Christie. Don't you believe it for a minute: these guys may jockey with each other for political position, but they are a united front when it comes to screwing poor people of color.

More tales of inequity in Chris Christie's New Jersey to come...

What're you lookin' at?

Why Should NJ Teachers Unions Play Along?

Chris Christie has spent the last four years blaming the teachers unions for everything from state budget woes to the "opportunity gap" to halitosis. Why, then, would anyone be surprised when these same unions finally decide they've had enough?

The Newark Teachers Union on Thursday declined to sign off on a $30 million federal grant application, an indication of how fractured labor relations have become in New Jersey's largest school district a year after Gov. Chris Christie and union leaders celebrated a new labor contract.

District officials had been optimistic the union would approve an application for a grant from the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" program that was similar to one the union endorsed last year. Newark Public Schools, which are under state control, proposed using the funding to pay for laptops, teacher-improvement resources and support for students who are struggling emotionally.

But teachers union President Joe Del Grosso said the application was full of "stupid things that are just wasteful spending," such as a proposal to use earbuds to give teachers live feedback during classes. [emphasis mine]

You don't have to take Del Grosso's word for it: the NTU released the application, which includes a proposed budget. Of the $30 million in total spending proposed, over $18 million goes to contractors, with millions more going to new administrative positions in the Newark Public Schools bureaucracy.

This is the way things work in the reformy world of New Jersey education these days. You'll recall that when Mark Zuckerberg dumped $100 million in Newark's schools a few years ago, the cronies of Education Commissioner Chris Cerf and Mayor Cory Booker were the first ones to dunk their snouts in the trough. At the same time, the teachers of Newark were promised that $20 million of Zuck's bucks would be made available to them in merit pay raises over three years. In the first year, however, only $1.3 million went to the teachers who got bonuses -- and much of that money was actually taken from other Newark teachers!

Another example: when Eli Broad poured a cool half-a-million into Newark, Cerf's buddies were waiting with their hands out -- but there was nothing for the educators who were actually in the schools teaching kids.

It seems that any time money comes into New Jersey for its schools, a hefty amount winds up going to consultants, administrators, and others outside of the classroom.

Of course, Tom Moran -- Op-Ed page editor of the Star-Ledger -- could reliably be counted on to parrot the anti-union line pushed by Cerf, his friendly neighbor:

Believe it or not, Newark in all likelihood just lost a chance at $30 million for its schools over what amounts to a temper tantrum. Joseph Del Grosso, head of the local teachers union, hotheadedly refused to add his signature to the district’s application for coveted federal education grants last week, which by rule disqualifies Newark.

[...]

The backdrop here is that Del Grosso is involved in a serious fight with Superintendent Cami Anderson over the implementation of the teachers’ new contract. So fine, battle it out with Anderson. But don’t sabotage Newark’s chance at millions of dollars in funding for its schools.

The application isn’t valid without approval from the local teachers union. This is money for new laptops, modernized classrooms and teacher training. Yet Del Grosso seems bewildered by all the fuss. [emphasis mine]

Funny how Moran focuses in on the laptop money, but not the larger sums spent on consultancy fees and new administrative positions. I guess we don't talk about these things much anymore since Bob Braun, a real-life journalist, left the dying paper. Braun was the one who broke the story of Booker's and Cerf's cronies getting the Broad money back in 2011; however, since he's left, all we hear out of the S-L Op-Ed page is lots of shiny, happy talk about how wonderful Newark's administration is, and how Del Grosso must be a "hothead."

Which might ring more true if the Newark Teachers Union wasn't the only local in the state to say "no" to signing on for a grant application that would do nothing for teachers or students and plenty for the circling edu-vultures:

PATERSON — In a move likely to harm the city's bid for $20 million to bolster struggling high schools, the teachers union refused to sign an application for grants under a federal education program. 

The application, due Thursday to the Department of Education in Washington, needed the union's buy-in. Peter Tirri, president of the Paterson Education Association, said his team did not sign the Race to the Top application because the district gave the union only three days to review and comment on a 200-page draft application. 

"They have to have the decency to let us know more than three days in advance," Tirri said. "If you want people to work with you, you have to work with them. It's as simple as that." [emphasis mine]

Yes, another state-run district's teachers union rejected an application that would have poured plenty of money into consultants' hands and left the teachers and students outside rattling their tin cups. Keep in mind that Paterson's teachers haven't had a contract for four years:

The Board of Education on Wednesday night quickly drafted a resolution calling for a settlement of the contract, but opted not to vote on the measure until after their legal counsel could review the wording. 

Paterson teachers have entered their fourth year without a contract. On Wednesday night, a couple hundred of them attended the school board meeting, the latest in an ongoing series of protests that began last year. The teachers complained that the district was willing to pay consultants as much as $7,000 per day and give a performance bonus to superintendent Donnie Evans, while not giving them raises since 2009. [emphasis mine]

And who was the consultant making the big bucks in Paterson? Why, none other than Education Commissioner Cerf's good buddy and fellow Broad Superintendent's Academy Book Club graduate Mike Miles, who has since moved on to an ill-fated career in Dallas.

Why would Paterson's teachers agree to a proposal to further enrich outsiders when they've worked without a raise for four years?

Why would Newark's teachers agree to a proposal to further enrich outsiders when they haven't received even a small portion of the money they were promised for signing on to merit pay?

Why would any teacher or teachers union trust a governor to meet his promises to them when he holds them in such contempt?

This is what happens when you beat up on teachers and their unions over and over again: after a while, they stop coming back for more.

That money isn't for you, teachers and students!

Yeah, because I've got plenty of old friends who need a new gig!

Me too!

What I Would Ask Exxon/Mobil's CEO at Education Nation

Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of Exxon/Mobil and noted expert on education, will be doing a "one-on-one" during NBC's Education Nation. He will join a host of celebrities, politicians, businesspeople, and educators in discussing our nation's school system.

Here's what I'd ask him if I could:

"Mr. Tillerson, in 2012, you received total compensation equal to $27.4 million. 

"In 2011-12, the average public school teacher's salary was $55,418. 

"Mr. Tillerson, do you believe that what you do is 494 times more important than what a teacher does?"

Yes!

ADDING:

Here is how else Exxon spends its dollars, and what it receives in return:

– Exxon spent $12,970,000 on lobbying in 2012 to protect low tax rates and block pollution controls and safeguards for public health. In the first three months of 2013, Exxon spent $4.84 million lobbying.

– The company sent $3.6 million in total political contributions to PACs, candidates, and outside groups for the 2012 election cycle, and 89 percent of contributions went to Republicans. It has spent over $76,000 for the 2014 cycle so far.

– Exxon receives an estimated $600 million in annual federal tax breaks. In 2011, Exxon paid just 13 percent in taxes. The company paid no federal income tax in 2009, despite $45.2 billion record profits.

– In the first quarter, Exxon bought back $5.6 billion of its stock, or 59 percent of its profit, which enriches the largest shareholders and executives of the company.

– This year, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson received a 15 percent raise to a $40.3 million salary.

In 2013, the teachers unions spent an unbelievably ginormous amount of money on political lobbying: $2,074,187! Clearly, this is an outrage and must be stopped at all costs, lest we lose more of our nation's precious snack-cakes!

In contrast, the gas and oil industry spent $71,097,273 on lobbying in 2013. 

Meh...

Groundhog Day in Perth Amboy

Third time's the charm?

The Board of Education unanimously voted Wednesday night to place Superintendent of Schools Janine Walker Caffrey on paid administrative leave. 

Board members authorized Board of Education President Mark Carvajal or his designee to hire an acting superintendent and to contact the county superintendent’s office for assistance. 

Caffrey said she found the timing of the board’s decision curious because it comes in the middle of a school board campaign season and just before hearings are scheduled to be held on ethics charges involving several board members.

Caffrey has made allegations about the board before that state officials later ruled had no evidence to back them up. She's gone public and implied her board did not want kids to learn. Let's see if this latest round of charges turns out to be true.

Wednesday’s vote marks the third time the board has placed Caffrey on paid leave. The prior two times the board’s vote was later overturned by the state Commissioner of Education’s office after the superintendent appealed. Caffrey said she will discuss with her attorney what next steps she will take this time. [emphasis mine]

If Janine Caffrey was not the right person for this job, there is one group to blame for her tenure: the school board that hired her. They should be held accountable by the good people of Perth Amboy and pay a price at the polls.

But the dragging out of this fiasco is really the fault of others -- from outside the city:

- Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf, who overturned the board's ruling on the flimsiest of reasons, then dragged out the investigation unnecessarily (for the commissioner, local control of schools is apparently a white people thing, especially when it comes to hiring a superintendent).

- B4K, who paid for a public relations campaign in favor of Caffrey that put her in a compromised position.

- Tom Moran, Op-Ed page editor of the Star-Ledger, who ignored his obligations as a journalist to present both sides of a story and turned Caffrey into a folk hero to further his personal vendetta against the NJEA (which doesn't even represent the teachers of Perth Amboy, of whom Tom immediately assumed bad faith, as he consistently does when it comes to educators' motives).

- The Reformy Campaign Finance Machine, a group of mostly out-of-state plutocrats who poured an unbelievable amount of money into the Perth Amboy school board race in an attempt to interfere with what should have been a local matter.

These people's interference kept this farce alive for years. Were it not for them, Caffrey might have moved on quietly and resumed her career somewhere else. The Perth Amboy school district could have found a more suitable superintendent and moved forward. Instead, this mess has coming crashing down in its inevitable conclusion.

The real heroes of this completely avoidable disaster have been the staff of the schools, who have acted like the competent professionals they are throughout, and the students of Perth Amboy, who continue to strive for greatness despite being used as political pawns. Mr. Cerf, Mr. Moran, B4K, and those wealthy campaign contributors owe the educators and students of Perth Amboy an apology for interfering with their schools and dragging this incident out unnecessarily.

But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it...

Every day is Groundhog Day in NJ's Reformiest District™!

RIP Jean Anyon (1941-2013)

Anyon was a scholar who documented the most obvious thing in the world:

Professor Anyon, who died on Sept. 7 at 72, was one of the first people to study that landscape in detail — and among the first to assert that without accompanying social reforms like job creation, antipoverty initiatives and urban renewal, the problems of education in urban, poor areas would never be surmounted.

“The structural basis for failure in inner-city schools is political, economic and cultural, and must be changed before meaningful school improvement projects can be successfully implemented,” she wrote in a 1995 article in the journal Teachers College Record. “Educational reforms cannot compensate for the ravages of society.” [emphasis mine]

Unfortunately, in our brave, new, reformy world, anyone who asserts this glaringly obvious point is "defeatist and fatalistic, not to mention depressing." Heaven forbid the poor plutocrats who run this country might have to waste their beautiful minds on the depressing facts of poverty and social immobility. To insulate themselves, they've replaced real scholars like Anyon with a gaggle of well-paid think-tanky wonks, who push out "studies" that assert the Lake Wobegonian absurdity that everyone can be an outlier.

Their shallow policy briefs may be endlessly recycled in our ill-informed punditocracy; Anyon's work, however, is what still resonates with those who dare to look beyond simplistic platitudes:

Professor Anyon joined the faculty at Rutgers in 1976 and first came to wide attention with a 1980 article, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Published in The Journal of Education, the article examined fifth-grade classes in five New Jersey schools across the economic spectrum, from working-class to wealthy districts.

The study focused on what Professor Anyon called the “hidden curriculum” of each school — the type of work students were assigned, and the ways they were expected to complete it.

In the working-class schools, she found, work entailed the rote following of procedure, with no analytical thought encouraged. In the middle-class school, she wrote, “work is getting the right answer.”

In a more affluent school, Professor Anyon found, work emphasized creativity. In the wealthiest school, work meant “developing one’s analytical intellectual powers.”

These differences, she concluded, helped recapitulate existing class divisions. The children of blue-collar families, for instance, received “preparation for future wage labor that is mechanical and routine,” while those of wealthy families were taught skills that would help them assume leadership positions.

Two things strike me about this study of Anyon's: first, how American schooling is seen almost entirely  as a preparation for work, as opposed to a preparation for citizenship. In its quest to cut costs and maximize profits for owners, American business has essentially given up any role in training its workforce. The schools are supposed to do it all, with inadequate resources. Guess what winds up getting short shrift.

Second: the "working-class" schools that Anyon wrote of back in 1980 have curricula and practices that eerily mirror the "no excuses" urban charter schools of today. Take, for example, NYC's vaunted Success Academies:

“Focus on English Language Arts and Math. We spend the vast majority of class time teaching ELA and Math all year long. Kids have several blocks of each daily. We do not teach history or foreign languages in elementary school. We do have a good science program. They have a Specials period every day too. Aside from that, it’s reading, writing, math from 8:00AM to 5:00PM. Obviously the extended day and extended school year helps in terms of sheer volume of time.

“Put the best teachers in testing grades. During the first few months of school, teachers and assistant principals are shuffled between grades and even schools. The goal is to put the strongest teachers in grades 3 and up. So a strong Kindergarten teacher might suddenly find herself teaching fourth grade.

“Test prep starts in November: ELA test prep starts in November for two periods a week. After winter break, we have daily hourlong ELA test prep. Then we add math. By late February, we spend several hours a day on it. The last few weeks are almost all day test prep.

The more things change...

Jean Anyon (1941-2013)

Never heard of her...

Another Reformy Practice Not Grounded in Research: SGOs

Like all teachers around New Jersey, I have been attending workshops and working with my administrators and colleagues on a new, reformy project: Student Growth Objectives. My SGO will count for 15% of my annual evaluation - a percentage mandated by state code - because I teach an "untested" subject: in other words, I don't teach math or language arts between 3rd and 8th Grade, just like somewhere around 80% of all teachers.

In my SGOs, I have to demonstrate "student growth" using a rubric approved by my supervisor, following a format informed by the state Department of Education. And like every other scheme dreamed up by Chris Cerf's NJDOE, the department insists there is a research base for all this:

State officials stressed that among the greatest values in the process may be teachers working with their supervisors when developing SGOs.

“The research is showing there is an inherent value in that collaboration,” said assistant commissioner Peter Shulman. “They are setting specific targets for their specific students’ needs.” [emphasis mine]

Once again, NJDOE makes a claim about research backing up their plans without actually pointing us to the research they are citing. Certainly, it isn't anything that eminent education research Howard Wainer has ever seen:

Even if educators choose to create their own tests for SGO purposes, there are other things to worry about. Sure teachers make up tests all the time, but as noted researcher Dr. Howard Wainer explains, those tests usually have two purposes: to push the students into studying and to see if the course of future instruction needs to be adjusted.

“But when you add a further purpose – the formal evaluation of the teacher and the principal – the test score must carry a much heavier load,” says Wainer, author of Uneducated Guesses—Using Evidence to Uncover Misguided Education Policies (Princeton University Press, 2011). “Even professionally developed tests cannot support this load without extensive pre-testing and revision,” something that takes a lot of time and a lot of money.

That leaves portfolios, another idea that Wainer believes “only sounds good if you say it fast.”

“When portfolios were used as part of a statewide testing program in Vermont about 15 years, ago it was a colossal failure,” he recalls. “It was unreliable, unpredictable and fantastically expensive,” and soon, state officials abandoned the program.

What is the lesson to be learned? “Some measurement methods that work acceptably well at a classroom level do not scale,” explains Wainer. “A folder of a student’s work produced for a parent-teacher conference illustrates what is going on and directs the discussion, but when the folder is reified as a ‘Portfolio Assessment,’ we have asked more from it than it can provide. Research shows that portfolios are well suited for one purpose but not the other. What would make New Jersey’s use different?” [emphasis mine]

Oh dear. Well, there has to be some research that NJDOE is relying on; what about their "AchieveNJ for Teachers" webpage?

WHAT DOES RESEARCH TELL US ABOUT SGOs?

SGOs (or Student Learning Objectives/SLOs) have been in use in many states and districts for the past 14 years. The following studies and resources offer more information about the implementation of SGOs across the country:

• Community Training and Assistance Center Report: It's More Than Money (Feb 2013) – study of Student Learning Objective (SLO) implementation starting in 2008 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS)
• Regional Educational Library at EDC: Overview of Student Learning Objectives: Review of the Literature
• Reform Support Network (RSN) Targeting Growth: Using Student Learning Objectives as a Measure of Educator Effectiveness
• Reform Support Network (RSN) Quality Control Toolkit  for Student Learning Objectives

Let's take a look at these links -- but let's go out of order, starting with #2, published just this past spring:

Because there are not yet any research-based models for evaluating teachers’ impact on student learning for non-tested groups, states are experimenting with various approaches (Goe & Holdheide, 2011). [emphasis mine]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard that right, straight from the NJDOE itself: There is no research base that demonstrates SGOs will aid in effectively evaluating teachers in non-tested areas. This is faith-based teacher evaluation, folks; the document reiterates the point:

Research has shown that setting student learning objectives, in general, has a positive impact on learning (e.g. Beesley & Apthorp, 2010). However, because the use of SLOs in teacher evaluation is a fairly new approach, there is not yet rigorous research available on its effectiveness. Harris (2012) describes SLOs’ “potentially attractive” qualities of allowing for teaching autonomy in setting individualized objectives and customizing instruction accordingly. However, he emphasizes that these same qualities could lend themselves to manipulation and non-comparability and that “there is essentially no evidence about the validity or reliability of SLOs” (Harris, 2012, p.5). Non-experimental studies conducted on the Austin, Denver, and Charlotte programs described above seem to indicate a positive correlation between the quality of SLOs and student achievement and between the number of objectives met by teachers and student achievement, but more research is needed on the relationship between teachers meeting SLOs and student net achievement (Tyler, 2011).

The first link from NJDOE is a report about the implementation of SGOs in Charlotte-Mecklenberg. Understand the report says nothing - nothing - about the validity or reliability of using SLOs/SGOs in non-tested subjects. And the report's findings about SLOs in tested subjects looks like a candidate for the Mountain-Out-Of-A-Molehill-Inator* (p. 77):

Analysis of SLO Attainment, 2009-10 

Cross-sectional HLM analyses are conducted on the attainment of SLOs for elementary and middle school mathematics and reading. The findings are consistent with those on the quality of SLOs. 

There is a positive, statistically significant association between attainment of SLOs and student achievement in elementary school mathematics and reading. In terms of z-scores, attaining the SLO growth target increases the z-scores in elementary reading by 0.15 points, and elementary mathematics by 0.11 points.The attainment of SLOs is not a statistically significant predictor of student achievement in either middle school mathematics or reading.[emphasis mine]

Translation from geekspeak: most likely, a student who met the SGOs in elementary math and reading got a few more questions right on the state tests. Shocking, I know...

There is, admittedly, a correlation between whether a teacher had a "high-quality" SGO and whether that teacher got a bonus based on a Value-Added Model (VAM) that uses student tests scores to judge his or her "effectiveness." (p.58) But considering how crappy VAM models are, there's not really much for NJDOE to hang its hat on here. And, again: none of this is relevant to teachers in "untested" areas.

I want to be fair here: throughout the report, you get the sense that teachers and principals in C-M were willing to give SLOs/SGOs a fair shake. Everyone agrees that measuring student growth is a fundamental practice of good teaching. Everyone agrees that teachers ought to be judged, at least in part, on their ability to affect student growth. Everyone agrees that all professionals should look at the best practices of their colleagues. The teachers of North Carolina, like teachers in New Jersey and everywhere else, have no problems with being held accountable for their work.

But let's be very clear: there is very little research basis to back up the top-down implementation of SGOs in AchieveNJ. There's no reason to believe these metrics are valid enough, reliable enough, or precise enough to make high-stakes decisions. There's no reason to think using SGOs will substantially increase student achievement in tested or untested domains. And there's absolutely no reason to assign a weight of 15% to a teacher's SGO score.

Teachers and principals and administrators will do what they always do with mandates that are delivered from on-high by non-educators: they will work to make them as useful as possible for professional development, and as unobtrusive to student learning as they can.

But that doesn't change the fact that there is very little reason to believe the wide-spread implementation of SGOs will do much of anything for teachers, administrators, or students.

Accountability begins at home.

* You mean you haven't heard of the Mountain-Out-Of-A-Molehill-Inator?

ADDING: You know, I have to wonder if Charlotte-Mecklenburg's teachers are as enthusiastic about SGOs and the like now that the teaching profession has been destroyed in North Carolina...

New Depths of Sanctimony From Arne Duncan

Anthony Cody listens to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and discovers our Reformy Czar slathers himself in sanctimony the way a 13-year-old boy douses himself in Axe Body Spray:

Secretary Duncan:

Also inhabiting this bubble are some arm chair pundits who insist our efforts to improve public education are somehow doomed to fail, either because they believe the government is incapable of meaningfully improving education or because they think education reform can't possibly work since the real problem with schools is that so many children are born poor. In blogs, in books, in tweets, some pundits even say our schools are performing just fine and that fundamental change isn't needed or that we have to address poverty first before schools can improve student achievement.  At the opposite extreme, other commentators declare a permanent state of crisis. They discount the value of great teachers and great school leaders, and they call for the most disruptive changes possible, with little heed for their impact on our nation's children.

Too many inhabitants of this alternative universe are so supremely confident in their perspective that they have simply stopped listening to people with a different viewpoint. Instead of talking with each other, and more importantly, listening to each other, with respect and humility, and with a general interest in finding common ground, many of these people are just talking past each other, ignoring plain evidence and deliberately distorting the other's positions.

They are clearly not focusing on children and students. They are focusing, instead, on false debates. Fortunately, many people in the real world, outside the beltway and blogosphere, have tuned out this debate. They are too busy actually getting real work done. They're focusing on students, whether they're three years old, 13, or 33. All across America, states and districts are moving forward with courageous reforms. States are raising standards and expectations for students, and are piloting new and better assessments to show what students know and can do.

As Cody says:

The insulting way that Secretary Duncan chooses to characterize those who disagree with his policies really speaks for itself.  He divides the world into those who he sees "doing the work," who may have concerns - which he, of course, shares, and those who disagree. Once we actively disagree, we become part of some "blogosphere," or "bubble," which, by his definition, is engaging in idle carping that undermines those in the "real world." 

The fact that Diane Ravitch's book is among the top ten of the New York Times best seller's list must be a bit unnerving to Duncan, and that may account for this defensive rant.  His far preferred strategy, similar to that of Education Nation this coming weekend, is to ignore those who disagree. When that doesn't work, we hear attempts to marginalize, as in this speech. Gandhi once said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." We are now being actively fought.  

We have asked for dialogue, literally for years. Perhaps when Secretary Duncan gets done attempting to belittle and marginalize those of us who disagree, we might get one.

Amen. But let me add a few things:

- No one is saying schools shouldn't be improved. Perhaps someone should draw a warm bath for the SecEd so he can rest his weary, weary arms after the toil of building so many straw men. The plain fact is that no one here in the "bubble" has ever said our schools are "just fine." What we have said is the most obvious thing on the planet:

I keep coming back to this table of Bruce Baker's because it makes plain what everyone knows, even though folks like Duncan try to downplay it:

The link between poverty and learning is the most obvious thing in the world. It is ridiculous to pretend that firing a few more teachers based on student test scores or starting a few more charter schools or giving out vouchers or implementing merit pay will overcome the challenges facing a child living in poverty.

I, and everyone else in the "bubble," do believe well-resourced schools can help ameliorate the effects of poverty -- to a degree. But the problems of chronic poverty and inequity in this country have far more to do with a regressive tax code, a capital market that is little better than a rigged casino, a lack of a living minimum wage, a monetary policy that puts full employment on the back burner, and a whole host of other public policies that have nothing to do with public schools.

Which brings me to...

- When was the last time you heard Barack Obama say anything substantive about poverty -- outside of education reform? I'm not the only one who thinks this president has been strangely unmotivated to tackle chronic poverty head-on. But when he does talk about it, you can be sure that education is framed as the key ingredient in an anti-poverty program: Obama's declaration that "the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education" is pretty much the entire rationale behind Race To The Top.

But we can never seem to get the president to commit, with the same fervor, to policies that would address economic injustice directly. His "radical" tax hikes on the wealthy were basically no more than returning to pre-Bush rates; how about pre-Reagan rates? His minimum wage hike proposal of $9 an hour isn't even close to providing a living wage. Obamacare is mandated, subsidized private insurance. His Wall Street reforms are this close to laughable. He has, in my opinion, few if any serious proposals regarding housing, job creation, childcare, public investment, or any number of other policies that would attempt to raise people out of poverty right now.

The charitable explanation for this is that Obama is an incrementalist, and realizes he can only get small things done in a nation where nut-jobs are running the Republican Party. A more cynical view is that Obama is a neo-liberal and happy to scrub away any remnants of the Great Society. But, no matter the reason, it's unquestionably useful for Obama to keep pointing to education as the crux of his anti-poverty program. Race To The Top allows him to posture that he is taking action on poverty while, in truth, spending little in either actual revenues or his own political capital on the issue. 

Keep that in mind the next time the SecEd criticizes these non-existent pundits who think "that we have to address poverty first before schools can improve student achievement." That statement is a convenient dodge away from the obvious question: what else is the Obama administration doing to "address poverty" aside from Duncan's reformy agenda?

From where I sit: not a whole hell of a lot.

- Am I the only one who is getting really bloody tired of hearing corporate reformers brag about their work ethic? Look at this ridiculous paragraph:

There is so much good work underway, and thankfully, the people doing the work are not distracted by all the noise and manufactured drama inside the bubble. In the real world, outside the Washington bubble, the vast majority of people aren't debating IF college and career ready standards are actually needed.  They're not advancing false narratives about a federal takeover of schools by mind-controlling robots. They're just doing the hard work of putting high standards into practice. They're not questioning if a thoughtful system of evaluation and support is needed for both principals and teachers. They know that evaluation historically was generally meaningless, not developmental, and broken, and they're working together to help educators strengthen their craft, and build real career ladders that recognize and reward excellence. Even in my home town of Chicago, less than a year after a bitter strike, a recent study shows that teachers actually LIKE the new evaluation system, and want to make it work, even if they have lingering concerns about how test scores are being used.* [emphasis mine]

Oh, Arne Duncan hammered on the mountain,
He hammered 'til half past three...

Of course, you-know-who is the best at work ethic self-coungratualtion:

"Working tirelessly" - yes, Michelle Rhee actually put that on her Twitter feed. It's the same attitude of moral superiority that allows billionaire-funded, reformy, think-tanky types to compare themselves to Holocaust survivors. That makes them think that their motives are more pure than others' because "we don't have anything to gain from the success of the agenda other than that kids get better educational opportunities."

Duncan seems to think my side is "talking past" these "tireless" defenders of God, apple pie, and charter school expansion. But I don't see how we can't help but do that: these people are so convinced of the rightness of their cause that they don't do any more than pay lip service to the objections of people like me who are actually working in the schools.

Oh, am I being unfair to the SecEd? Is he really pushing all this nonsense because he has an evidence base? Check out my compendium of Arne Duncan's most incoherent hits and judge for yourself. He has no coherent thoughts about the unreliability and invalidity of test-based teacher evaluation. He has no coherent thoughts about the nexus of poverty and education outcomes. He has no coherent thoughts about his legacy or the legacies of Michelle Rhee in Washington and Joel Klein in New York.

Arne Duncan tut-tuts at the rest of the world because he is incapable of answering his critics. He is a lot of talk and very little shot. You ought to come out on the court, Mr. Secretary, and actually try engaging those of us living in "the bubble"; let's see if you've got game.

Arne Duncan debates his critics (artist's rendering)

* Hey, guess what? You know how Arne said Chicago's teachers LIKE their new evaluation system? Yeah, that's a load of crap:

Karen Lewis, the president of the CTU, was much less positive about the first-year results. She focused on a separate analysis released today by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, in which more than half of teachers surveyed said tests were weighted too heavily in the reviews.

"This is what we've been saying all along—the evaluation system is deeply flawed. Teachers don't like testing being part of their evaluations, not because we think that student outcomes are unimportant, but because these tests do not indicate how teachers are contributing to learning," Lewis said in a statement. "The test is just a snapshot; classroom observation is still the best way to measure teacher performance." [emphasis mine]

Well, I'm sure they'll come around, as long as they don't listen to all the scholars who say the system is junk...