Perth Amboy: Center of the Reformy Universe?

UPDATE: Reports are Caffrey has been suspended with pay. Dr Vivian Rodriguez has been appointed acting super.

ADDING: It looks like Perth Amboy gave New Classrooms a $60K contract this past January. Well...

And the saga of Perth Amboy gets even stranger...

When we last checked in on the City By the (Raritan) Bay, a nasty fight was brewing between schools superintendent Dr. Janine Caffrey and the PABOE. The board has charged Caffrey - not even a year into her term - with several offenses, including "...failing to meet with school principals, misrepresenting the facts at board meetings, dividing contracts to sidestep the bidding process and bypassing the board to implement teacher-assistance and counseling programs."

Caffrey responds that she is the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt, and that the board is punishing her for refusing to hire board members' friends. Worse, she says she has been cooperating with a state Attorney General's investigation into school lunch fraud, allegedly perpetuated by the board's president, Samuel Lebreault.

It's worth noting here that nothing conclusive has yet come out regarding the charges against Caffrey or the PABOE; right now, it's all allegations, and I see no concrete evidence from either side.

The entire affair is complicated by Caffrey herself. An author and public speaker, Caffrey has been an outspoken opponent of teacher tenure, claiming she is unable to remove teachers under the influence of alcohol from her schools. As I pointed out before, the problem may well be her lack of experience: her only direct supervision of schools before coming to Perth Amboy was as the founder of a tiny private school in Florida, and two years working in the NYC education bureaucracy. 

No matter: Caffrey was a witness before the NJ Senate committee at a hearing on tenure reform despite the fact she hadn't even worked in New Jersey for a year. Twice, the Star-Ledger gave her a platform to decry teacher tenure, passing by literally hundreds of more experienced superintendents who may hold a differing view.

After the story broke, the reformy group B4K launched a public relations campaign in Caffrey's defense; obviously, her outspoken stance against tenure has endeared her to the reformy movement. But there are some other interesting twists to this story that have since emerged:

Perth Amboy is one of only three districts to pilot a new program called Teach To One: Math. It's a technology-heavy project of Classroom Innovations, a non-profit started by Joel Rose, formerly of the NYC schools.

Leonie Haimson picks up the story:

Rose devised and ran the “School of One” for DOE, a much-hyped online program to teach middle school math, starting in the summer of 2009.  Rose has had a pretty standard trajectoryfor a corporate reformer: he started as a TFA recruit, then worked for seven years at Edison charter schools under Chris Cerf, moved over to DOE as Cerf’s chief of staff in 2006, and started the “School of One” as a  program in a few NYC middle schools. [emphasis mine]

Um, excuse me? You mean ACTING NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf? The man who has been mediating between Caffrey and the PABOE?

Yep:

Caffrey and members of the board’s personnel committee met with representatives from the state Department of Education on Tuesday. Information on the meeting outcome was not available from the state Department of Education.

Caffrey declined comment about the Trenton session, other than to say the talks will continue at the special meeting.

 Well, what are the odds? Haimson continues:

Along the way he got a law degree and trained at the Broad Academy for ambitious educrats...

Um, I'm sorry - is that the same Broad Academy Chris Cerf attended?

Yep. Continuing:

He also benefited from the huge publicity machine of DOE, when the School of One was cited by Time Magazine as one of the best inventions of 2009, and the program subsequently won a $5 million Innovation grant from the federal government, without any evidence that it actually worked.

When in March 2011, Rose left the DOE to start his own company and spread his idea nationwide,  there was much speculation as to what his relationship with DOE and the existing School of One program would be. At the same time, a  NY Post article revealed that the DOE’ was “slamming the brakes on the planned expansion of their high-profile School of One program -- even though the move puts a $5 million federal grant in jeopardy” because of doubts whether they had the funding or the capability to expand it .

Well now we know that the experiment will continue.  Rose’s new company is called “New Classrooms” and he will run it along with Chris Rush, who worked alongside him at DOE at the School of One.  When the Panel for Educational Policy approved the contract with New Classrooms on Jan. 18, Rose’s company won an exclusive three year right to run his program at DOE and expand it to 50 schools across the city.

According to the document submitted to the PEP, DOE claims that this contract will benefit the city, as Rose’s company will not be paid, though they acknowledge that he will be granted a “license to the DOE’s existing software and related intellectual property for the School of One,” which was presumably generated while he worked at Tweed. In addition, as the system is further refined to include a “recommended technology platform, suggested learning content, and algorithms for personalizing the learning system,” the company will be granted a new “license,” while DOE will be able to use it in NYC schools for free;thanks guys! 

The company will also no doubt gain huge promotional value, as evidenced by the numerous press releases and puff pieces that have run since the contract was granted, including this, somewhat more critical piece in Education Week,  which will help Rose acquire new contracts and further colonize public schools across the United States.  

Well, it looks like we know where the expansion starts: Perth Amboy. The system that was developed on the NYC taxpayers' dime is coming across the Hudson... and that's where this story really gets interesting. Haimson again:

Unmentioned in the Daily News article is the likely involvement of yet another controversial company in this project. Wireless Gen, now part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, ran the software operation for School of One when it was headquartered at Tweed and continues to be listed as its “lead technology partner” by DOE. Of course, Wireless, which was bought by Murdoch for his new education technology division at the same time he hired Joel Klein to run the division, has had its own numerous ethical and conflict of interest problems.

One advantage of this deal for Murdoch, Klein and perhaps Rose as well, is that as subcontractors to New Classrooms, Wireless Gen will likely no longer be subject to oversight or critical audits by the NYC Comptroller, who has tried to block previous multi-million dollar, no-bid Wireless contracts on the grounds of conflict of interest (as well as wasteful spending.) [emphasis mine]

Wait a minute: Wireless Generation had an interest in the project that became Classroom Innovations? The same Wireless Generation that's run by Rupert Murdoch? The same Rupert Murdoch that funds Michelle Rhee's reformy group, Students First? The same Students First that has partnered with B4K? The same B4K that is paying for a public relations campaign defending Caffrey from the allegations of the Perth Amboy BOE? The same Perth Amboy that is a pilot program for Classroom Innovations? The same firm that came from School of One? The same project that Wireless Generation had an interest in? The same...

My head's about to explode. Let's diagram it:

Let's start by saying what we don't know: we don't know if Wireless Generation is still working with New Classrooms, although they did work with their progenitor, School of One. We don't know the financial relationship between Students First and B4K, although Rhee serves on B4K's board, and they launched their "partnership" with great fanfare. We don't know what Caffrey's involvement with the New Classroom's project is. We don't know if Perth Amboy has any financial obligation towards New Classrooms, or vice versa. ADDING: It looks like Perth Amboy gave New Classrooms a $60K contract this past January. There's a lot we don't know.

But that's kind of the point, isn't it? The reformy world has many tentacles. Once a public servant like Caffrey is tied to one of their groups, it pretty much colors everything she does. Can Perth Amboy ever enter into one of these partnerships against without looking first to see if Caffrey has to worry about a conflict of interest arising from B4K's defense of her?

And more importantly: what is any of this doing for students? Haimson again:

If all this worked to help kids learn it wouldn’t be so offensive.  What will this contract actually accomplish?  The website of “New Classrooms” claims that

 “Our model provides instructional experiences designed to bring meaning and context to the skills students learn. At the core of each of New Classrooms’ instructional model is a robust academic framework that includes a research-based learning progression, integrated units of study, and the opportunity for students across the academic spectrum to be challenged and inspired.”

Yet when I toured a School of One classroom about a year and a half ago, at a school in Chinatown, I found the opposite to be true.  First, Joel Rose explained to the assorted visitors that because of the large class sizes in NYC schools, individualized learning was impossible to achieve without the use of technology: “No human being can meet all the needs of students in a class of 25, so something else has to be done to personalize instruction.”  (No mention of the fact that the DOE has been legally obligated to reduce class size below those levels, and has refused to do so on the grounds that it doesn't help kids learn, and has been rapidly increasing class size instead, but never mind.)

We then entered a large room, converted from the school's library, with about one hundred 7^th and 8^th graders seated at tables, most of them staring at computers and doing multiple choice math problems. I watched as one girl, seemingly in a trance, looked at the screen, and hit A, B, C, D keys in turn, until she got the right answer to a multiple choice question and moved onto the next one. Sadly, no adult but me seemed to be paying any attention to this student to make sure she was trying to think the problem through.

There were also two or three small groups of students, sitting at smaller tables, with rather harassed looking teachers who were trying to teach math, but allowed to spend only about ten to 15 minutes together before time ran out and a signal was made for the students to move back to computers, or to another group led by a different teacher. 

Rose explained that in the room, there were four certified teachers, two college students, and three high school students staffing the room, though it was hard to discern this.  He said that each teacher specialized in teaching 25% of math skills, and every student was assigned to particular groups or math problems by means of an algorithm, calculated the night before, based on his or her performance from  the day before.

But what I saw was not personalized instruction and engagement, but many confused and somewhat dazed students, and much disruption, with kids bumping into each other during abrupt scheduling changes, as they moved around the crowded room at the same time.

Rose also explained how the students also had access to “virtual” tutors through their computers; but I didn’t see any sign of this.  When I asked him where these virtual tutors were located and what their credentials were, he said he didn’t know, but they lived somewhere in the United States and had been provided by contractors.

Perth Amboy: is this what you want for your kids?

Even if Caffrey keeps her job, this story is not going away - stay tuned.

ADDING: I can't close this out without pointing out yet again the irony - or is it hypocrisy? - of an anti-tenure advocate like Caffrey calling for due process in her own firing. All tenure does is guarantee a teacher a hearing before an impartial third party before he is dismissed, which is exactly what Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger and B4K want for Caffrey. Yet none of them want to keep that same protection for teachers.

It would be funny if the consequences weren't so dire.

ADDING MORE: As if to make my last point:

“We like Janine Caffrey. We think she’s a good superintendent. She’s there to bring transformational change to the district. She’s not getting a fair shake right now,” said Shelley Skinner, Better Education for Kids’ deputy director. 

Skinner said Caffrey has been on the cutting edge of educational reform, and the organization believes she is doing what is best for Perth Amboy students. 

“We want to help empower the community to be part of the discussion. We want to make people aware and stand up for what’s right,” said Skinner, who added that Caffrey wants to put the interests of students before nepotism and patronism. [emphasis mine]

It's all about being "fair" - expect when you're a teacher, and you're given a review that takes away your tenure, and you can't appeal, just like TEACHNJ stipulates. Or when a bad principal won't take you and the central office can't force them to, like TEACHNJ stipulates, so you lose your job.

The trick here is whether B4K believes in "fairness" for folks who may not share their views.

Billionaire $ To a NJ Superintendent's Rescue!

You'd think a spat between a local school board and its superintendent would be worthy only of front page status in the local Penny Saver. But when it comes to the fight between the Perth Amboy BOE and Dr. Janine Caffrey, you'd be wrong: thanks to a bizarre set of ads run yesterday by the well-endowed, reformy group B4KNJ, this story has grown well beyond a local brawl.

Some background: according to the Star-Ledger, Caffrey has been asked to resign by the PABOE only months into her term as superintendent. The charges the board has brought against Caffrey are:

...failing to meet with school principals, misrepresenting the facts at board meetings, dividing contracts to sidestep the bidding process and bypassing the board to implement teacher-assistance and counseling programs.

Caffrey responds that she is the victim of a political witch hunt, brought on because she felt pressure from the BOE:

While the school board has accused Caffrey of running rough-shod over them, more shocking revelations have surfaced involving possible attempted fraud by school board president Samuel Lebreault. The state Attorney General’s Office is investigating allegations that Lebreault improperly filed an application for the federally subsidized school lunch program, an application that has mysteriously gone missing.

Caffrey contends the board wants her out because she has cooperated with the state investigation and has refused to give school district jobs to board members’ friends.

Ugly stuff; especially ugly because Caffrey has decided to wage this war in the media, appearing on NJ 101.5, and speaking on the record with the S-L and Gannett. I won't fault her for fighting to keep her job; however, tensions got ratcheted up even further with yesterday's appearance of ads like this on Politicker NJ:

Clicking the link takes you to this ad, sponsored by B4K - apparently, the same ad appeared in the local PA paper:

"Paid for by Better Education for Kids": more accurately, paid for by David Tepper, the Hedge fund billionaire who funds B4K. And, quite possibly, paid for by Rupert Murdoch and the Walton Brothers: B4K recently "partnered" with Michelle Rhee's Students First, which counts the two among its funders. I haven't seen any reporting on the exact financial relationship between B4K and SF; maybe it's time for B4K to reveal it. Because I wonder if there will be any conflicts of interest if Murdoch's education company, Wireless Generation, decides to do business with the Perth Amboy district.

In fact, I wonder if, in their zeal to defend Caffrey, B4K has accidentally open a big can of worms. If Caffrey keeps her job, how will we know if there are any strings attached to this undoubtedly expensive public relations campaign? Don't the taxpayers of Perth Amboy deserve to know exactly who is paying for the trashing of their school board officials?

Not that I have a lot of sympathy for the PABOE: they hired Caffrey in the first place, even though her qualifications are awfully light: seven years running a tiny private school in Florida, and two years buried in the massive NYC school bureaucracy are not what I'd consider to be the track record of the best possible candidate.

Despite this, the BOE gave her the job; and Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger gave her a platform multiple times to trash teacher tenure, saying it prevented her from doing her job (neither Moran nor Caffrey herself stopped to think that maybe her lack of experience prevents her from knowing how to deal with bad teachers). This, of course, is why B4K swoops in to save her now.

But I find the entire thing ironic. Here we have a school employee who claims that a board of education is acting improperly against her. She, Moran, and B4K say taxpayers and children will suffer if she is removed from her post without due process. They claim this board put political pressure on her to do the wrong thing, and that now she needs protection.

And yet all of them support TEACHNJ: a bill that would gut tenure and remove protections for teachers from political interference.

May I assume that every teacher in New Jersey can expect B4K to fund ads decrying their firing if they claim political interference from a school board? Will the Star-Ledger leap to the defense of all teachers if they lose their jobs and claim it's due to a vindictive board of education?

Or are these protections only available to those who share the views of the Star-Ledger, B4K, its allies, and its funders?

One more thought: the charge against the Lebreault is the same one made against the president of the Elizabeth school board; a board allied with Chris Christie. The Christie administration is using Elizabeth as an excuse to radically change SFRA, the school funding act that distributes funds to help at-risk children. Christie proposals will costs the former Abbott districts millions of dollars in reduced funding; again, the excuse to do this is alleged corruption in the free-lunch program.

Does anyone else find the timing of all this a bit... convenient?

Reformy Logic

The most reformy Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, Executive Director, The Black Ministers Council of New Jersey [all emphases mine]:

Our urban students are more likely to be assigned an inexperienced teacher — which is bad for both the teacher and the student — more likely to have a substitute and more likely to have a teacher teaching out-of-subject specialization. Additionally, because teachers garner more control over their assignments as they accrue seniority, leaving little incentive for them to take difficult assignments as they ostensibly improve, in our troubled schools where the most experienced teachers are needed, we are least likely to find them.

So the answer to a lack of experienced teachers is to pass a bill - TEACHNJ - that would diminish the use of experience in making decisions about retaining and firing teachers?

And we'll get more experienced teachers into difficult assignments by taking away the superintendent's ability to force a principal to take experienced teachers into his or her school? Are all good decisions made at the school-level, and all bad decisions made at the central office?

So what should we do to change a system that doesn’t value differences between teachers, while prohibiting the use of measures of student achievement when we make decisions about teacher effectiveness? We change how teachers are evaluated and how we reward them with the prestige of tenure. Thankfully, an effort to change the manner in which teachers are evaluated already is under way, but it will be meaningless unless there is a strong legislative framework to support it.

That is exactly backwards: there is no point in changing the legislation until we decide how we are going to evaluate teachers! Why should teachers buy into TEACHNJ when it doesn't even spell out how we are evaluated, and gives almost all of the power to devise evaluations to the education commissioner (a position that has become completely politicized)?

The study “The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers,” which tracked 2.5 million children in a large urban school district from third grade to adulthood, found that a teacher’s ability to increase student achievement on standardized assessments tracks improved life outcomes for those students in critical areas, including higher rates of college attendance, higher salaries and lower rates of teenage pregnancy.

Poor performance in these areas assures a life of lost potential as surely as excellent outcomes open the doorway to prosperity.

Good on Rev. Jackson for actually citing the study he references (if only the Star-Ledger would learn to do the same). But Chetty, et. al. never answers the critical questions: Can we identify these teachers with any precision? If we fire the "bad" teachers, who will we replace them with? How will we change the profession if we make standardized tests part of the evaluation but all of the decision?

It is a huge mistake to take one study and divine policy prescriptions from it that will have all sorts of ancillary effects. It's especially dangerous when the positive effects described in the study are not particularly big (admittedly, that is a somewhat subjective judgment - but that's the point, isn't it?).

Given the premise that teachers are vital and that students’ ability to demonstrate their knowledge is equally important — which should seem obvious but is hotly contested — it only follows that the conference and acquisition of tenure should be linked in some manner to these factors. TEACH NJ makes that a reality.

That's a straw man argument. No one says teachers aren't important; no one says students shouldn't have to demonstrate knowledge; no one says teachers should automatically acquire tenure and not have to prove they can teach. The argument is whether standardized testing is precise enough to help make high-stakes personnel decisions in schools.

It is not. Let's not pretend otherwise.

One more thing about helping poor and minority students, courtesy of Miss Katie out in Chicago:

And this past week, for some reason, it hit me so clearly. If my hospital served a majority of middle or upper class white children, we would have better funding. We would have better staffing ratios. We would provide better treatment. It is because my hospital works with mainly low-income Black and Hispanic young people that we can get away with not spending enough on patient care. If we served more white kids, things would not be this hard. We would have abundant resources, we would have ample staffing, we would have beautiful facilities. But we don’t.

The other day, I had a thought which absolutely sickened me. I saw a white parent of a patient who goes to a high-class private school step off the elevator--every now and then we get upper-class kids, although they tend to be transferred out pretty quickly--and I was embarrassed. And I thought “wait, why am I not embarrassed when every parent steps off the elevator?” Don’t ALL children deserve the best care we can possibly provide? And yet, in our society, we are somehow conditioned that it’s ok for some kids to get crumbling, disgusting facilities and minimal services while others are entitled to top-notch supports. 

It’s the same as the schools. If your school serves mostly brown or black children, then the powers that be know they can get away with investing the least amount of resources. Any complaint from community or parents can easily be dismissed as “noise”, since we all know no one listens to people from those communities anyway (right, Mayor Emanuel?)

And the so-called “education reformers” just make things worse. They take the already limited funds and push them towards private pockets. They invest in charters and turnaround schools which don’t serve all students. For-profit health care gives us a glimpse at what education will soon become if the corporations and billionaire philanthropists have their way in destroying public education. The inequality will be worse than ever. 

I believe it’s time to get angry about this status quo—the status quo that says local and unequal funding of schools is just fine. The status quo that says the communities, families, and children which need the most services can make do with crappy second-rate care. Right this moment, there is an occupation of a mental health clinic on Chicago’s south side. We the people must DEMAND more services in actions like this one. 

I am horribly embarrassed by my reaction to that white parent. We must expose the inequalities that are so common place we don’t even notice them anymore. We must stand up, in solidarity, to corporations and bureaucracies that are getting away with savage inequalities based solely on zip code or race. And only a massive people’s movement will change this disgusting, unequal status quo.

Amen. I'd love to see Rev. Jackson get as upset about SFRA "reform" as he does about teacher tenure. That's the real "status quo," and not all this phony baloney about teacher evaluation, which no one has proven to be a huge problem anyway.

Due Process for Me, Not For Thee!

My eyes were watering so badly this morning, I couldn't even read the Star-Ledger's editorials. First time I've ever been grateful for having allergies! (Oh, come on, it's a joke! I kid because I love...)

So I missed the latest brouhaha about celebrity superintendent Janine Caffrey:

The school board in Perth Amboy is preparing to make a costly mistake by firing Superintendent Janine Caffrey, an energetic leader who seems to be ruffling feathers by doing her job with integrity.

[...] 

Caffrey says the friction began when the board president, Samuel Lebreault, and another member pressed her to give district jobs to their friends and she refused. And while those two deny it, another member of the board says he believes it is "absolutely" true.

Worse, Caffrey says Lebreault is angry because she has cooperated with an investigation into his application for reduced-price lunch for his children.

Like I said, I am not terribly sympathetic toward the BOE in Perth Amboy, because they hired Caffrey, a not particularly well-qualified candidate, in the first place. I have no knowledge of what happened, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if something is not kosher.

But the S-L editorial board is hardly an impartial observer in all this. Tom Moran turned Caffrey into a folk hero when the ink on her contract was barely dry. Twice, she graced the pages of the S-L promoting the end of tenure, saying it was critical for her district's success. The problem is that she hadn't even been an administrator in New Jersey for a year, and her experience before that was spotty at best. Why did the S-L insist on making Caffrey the Queen of Tenure when there are literally hundreds of other superintendents far more qualified to discuss the subject?

Probably because Caffrey is very good at self-promotion; she learned the art when selling herself as a speaker, consultant and author (not that there's anything wrong with that - it's what speakers, consultants, and authors do. But superintendents?). Last Friday, she was on Jim Gearhart's show on NJ 101.5, defending herself.

Is this the best way to resolve this matter? In the press?

Well, guess who the S-L wants to swoop in and save the day?

Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf needs to jump into this mess and mediate. He is impressed by Caffrey’s work and wants to prevent this pointless and expensive fiasco. He has our best wishes.

Well, fine: this is what ACTING Commissioners do. But does anyone see the irony here?

Caffrey insists she shouldn't be fired, because she's the victim of a political witchhunt. The Star-Ledger - which wants to gut tenure for teachers - is insisting that an outside authority come in to adjudicate the dispute and give her due process.

If Caffrey were a teacher, we'd call that "tenure": due process before an outside authority prior to dismissal. It is precisely what the TEACHNJ bill eliminates - the bill the S-L champions.

Under TEACHNJ, a teacher can be fired without cause if she receives an "Ineffective" rating and doesn't improve. She doesn't get a chance to appeal outside her district; she doesn't get to challenge either the revocation of her tenure or the evaluation that led to the revocation - an evaluation based in large part on subjective observations.

What the S-L is asking for Caffrey is more than they are willing to give a teacher in her district. Apparently, it's good to be the queen.

It's good to be the king... er, queen!

ADDING: More from Gannett. Guess she's going to fight this in the press.

A Tale of Two Videos

First, watch this (h/t Brian Page):



Then, watch this (finally found a work-safe version):



They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying -- lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want -- they want MORE for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They DON'T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting ****** by system that threw them overboard 30 ******' years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly ******** jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.


If anyone ever questions you as to why corporate interests are trying to take over American education, show them these two videos. A school set up in cubicles is the perfect place to train children to passively accept the norms of corporate culture: a culture that has led to massive income inequity and a political system bought and paid for by our aristocracy.

The rest of the world must be watching this and laughing their butts off. We are destroying ourselves; our competitors and enemies don't even have to lift a finger.

ADDING: More from Brian Page:

Pedagogy that uses technology as the primary leader in instruction sacrifice the critical social interaction that students receive with other students and teachers in promoting the goal to providing educational services at the lowest possible price.  We must ask ourselves what end product do these approaches envision?  Do we want graduates who can comfortably sit in front of a computer screen but freeze up when it comes to looking someone in the eye?  Will graduates of schools using these approaches be able to carry out coherent conversations?  Will they leave school prepared to be able to socially function in an increasingly complicated world? Our responsibility is to prepare our students for the 21^st century, and as you can read in this article, many 21^st century skills necessary for students to thrive cannot be learned in an online environment.

Yep.

Some Of the Evaluation; All Of the Decision

There is a recurring theme in reformy teacher evaluation schemes: "We're not encouraging teaching to the test, because we're using multiple measures. The test scores will only be x% of the teachers evaluation. Stop worrying!"

This theme is important to selling the plan, because even the reformyists acknowledge that teaching to the test will stifle children's learning. They also inherently acknowledge that taking a single test on a single day is going to be prone to error (especially if the test is full of nonsensical questions about rabbits and pineapples, or poorly formed math problems).

What these folks don't want to acknowledge is that even if standardized tests are a small part of the evaluation, they can still become a huge part of the high-stakes decision that follows. It doesn't really matter much if the numerical rating a teacher gets, based on her students' standardized test scores, is only 50% or 30% or 20% of her evaluation; the very nature of its phony "precision" gives that score far more weight when it comes time to make an actual decision based on the evaluation.

No metaphor is perfect, but let's try this:

Suppose we are going to rate and rank a group of restaurants. We need to come up with a system to evaluate each one, but we have to be able to show that the restaurant ranked #1 is better than the one ranked #2, because we'll only be giving a merit pay bonus to the manager of the "best" one. We'll also be firing the manager of the worst one.

We decide to take an approach that uses multiple measures. For 50% of the evaluation, we'll do an "observation" of each restaurant by having a meal there. Let's use a rubric: one that rates different parts of the restaurant experience - food, service, decor, etc - on a scale of "Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, Distinguished." We're looking to get an overall sense of the restaurant here; we're also looking to help the restaurant get better by having the manager reflect on the things we say are important for its success.

For the other 50% of the evaluation, we're going to look at something absolutely critical: the amount of time it takes to get our food served. Everyone agrees that a good restaurant must serve the food promptly; there is simply no dispute here. It is a foundational characteristic of dining that customers must be served promptly.

Here's what we'll do: for one night only, we'll track how much time it takes each customer to receive his food. It doesn't matter what they order, it doesn't matter if it's a busy night, and it doesn't matter if the staff has problems that night that distract them: we're going to time every order and come up with a precise average.

Let's say two of our restaurants are "Distinguished," but we're only going to give that merit pay bonus to one manager. How do we choose which ones? Well, luckily for us, we have a highly precise variable to look at: average service time. So we look at who of the two had a better time between ordering and serving on that one particular night :

• Chez Michelle: 10 minutes, 14.7 seconds.
• Chez Diane: 10 minutes, 22.8 seconds.

Well, there you go: Chez Michelle wins. It's obviously a better restaurant than Chez Diane, right?

The problems with this are obvious. First: is the 8.1 second difference between the two service times really that important? Could it not be explained away by any number of factors, including pure chance? Does it at all matter?

Second: we have now given one metric all of the weight in a decision. In fact, we could make this 10% of the evaluation, but it would still be all of the decision.

Chez Michelle may be a "Distinguished" restaurant, but there is no reason to believe it is any better than Chez Diane. In fact, the food, the decor, and the service may be better at Chez Diane. Of course, that may be a matter of taste - which is kind of the point, isn't it?

Let's look at the other end: we're going to fire the manager with worst restaurant. Two eateries are "Usatisfactory":

• Chez Eli: 38 minutes, 12 seconds
• Chez Whitney: 38 minutes, 15 seconds

Well, that solves that, right? Congrats Chez Eli; you live to fight another year. Of course, Chez Whitney may have decent food while Chez Eli's is toxic, but we can't really tell that, can we?

You can see how we've lulled ourselves into thinking we have a precise metric when we really don't. Because the review (the "observation") of the restaurant is so imprecise, it becomes far less important than the very precise timing of when the food is served. It may only be part of the evaluation, but the decision to fire the manager is based solely on service speed.

This is the central problem with using standardized test scores in teacher evaluations: we are making high-stakes decisions with a phony sense of precision. In our restaurant analogy, the imprecision of the review puts all of the decision into the time it takes to serve the food. In teacher evaluations, the imprecision of classroom observations puts all of the decision into standardized tests scores.

And it doesn't matter if you use Value-Added Modeling (VAM) or Student Growth Percentiles (SGP) to rate the teacher: each shows a level of precision that forces them to become all of the decision.

It is worth noting that my metaphor falls apart on one important point: the time between ordering and service at a restaurant can be precisely and accurately measured. But what if the watch we used had error rates of 25%-35%? Methods of teacher evaluation using standardized tests have these kind of error rates, and yet we make them all of the decision. 

Which brings us to seniority. Sure, everyone would like for a more-senior teacher who isn't as good to be laid off before a less-senior teacher who may be excellent. But let's not kid ourselves: we can't measure effectiveness with the same precision as seniority. It may not be ideal, but at least we can say with precision that one teacher has been on the job for 9 years and another for 10. We simply can't make those fine distinctions in effectiveness, even though the precision of the measurement falsely implies that we can.

Now, there's still going to be a great temptation for the reformyist to want to justify making the decision solely on effectiveness anyway. What she'll most likely try is to give the observation - in my analogy, the review of the restaurant that leads to one of four categories - more precision by averaging a series of observations. This is what Michelle Rhee did in Washington D.C. with the IMPACT system.

But that precision is even phonier than the one based on tests. More on this later.

EXTRA READING: This was the "Decisions for Dummies" version; now read the real work, courtesy of Bruce Baker:

The Toxic Trifecta, Bad Measurement & Evolving Teacher Evaluation Policies

Fire first, ask questions later? Comments on Recent Teacher Effectiveness Studies

Follow up on Fire First, Ask Questions Later

The problem – and a very big one – is that states (and districts) are actually mandating rigid use of these metrics including proposing that these metrics be used in layoff protocols (quality based RIF) – essentially deselection. Yes, most states are saying “use test-score based measures for 50%” and use other stuff for the other half.  And political supporters are arguing – “no-one is saying to use test scores as the only measure.” The reality is that when you put a rigid metric (and policymakers will ignore those error bands) into an evaluation protocol and combine it with less rigid, less quantified other measures the rigid metric will invariably become the tipping factor. It may be 50% of the protocol, but will drive 100% of the decision.

Reformy Tentacles Everywhere

Oh, my:  

For months, Leeds Global Partners, a New York-based firm specializing in educational issues as "attractive investment opportunities," has been closely involved in developing Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's proposed school reforms.

And while the governor's major proposals, including teacher evaluations, changes to tenure and the expansion of charter schools are meeting opposition in the General Assembly and the state's educational community, Leeds Global's school-privatization agenda has been front and center in a variety of closed-door negotiations.

Unionized teachers and a leading state lawmaker take the privatization proposals -- including plans to circumvent teacher contracts and public bidding procedures -- as major threats, underscored by the company's track record in creating individual agreements with teachers hired to turn around failing urban school districts.

Leeds was awarded a $195,000 contract, without prior public notice for bids, with money from the State Education Resource Center. The nonprofit center was set up in 2005 to support local and regional school boards, according to contract documents obtained by Hearst Connecticut Newspapers.

Another investment group with interests in education, DSA Capital, was awarded a $60,000 consultant deal. Like the Leeds contract, this was championed by first-year state Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, according to the documents and interviews with sources close to active negotiations.

According to state guidelines, executive branch agencies, including the Education Department, must obey state contracting procedures ordered by former Gov. M. Jodi Rell in the wake of the scandals that drove former Gov. John G. Rowland from office and into federal prison.

But Pryor's office said that SERC, because it is nonprofit and has an arms-length relationship with the Education Department, doesn't have to follow bidding rules. [emphasis mine]

Of course they don't - it's for the kids...

Wait a minute - DSA Capital. Where have I heard that name before? Could it be New Jersey?

TRENTON — A private consultant is being paid $60,000 by a California philanthropic foundation to help reorganize the New Jersey Department of Education, acting education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said during today’s Assembly Budget Committee hearing.

Asked by Assemblywoman Joan Quigley (D-Hudson) if the department had hired such a consultant, Cerf said he was working with someone on a part-time basis, describing the man as a "friend" who is "very well respected" in education reform circles across the country.

After the hearing, Cerf confirmed the adviser is William Cox, who owns consulting company DSA Capital, state Treasury records show.

The Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation is paying DSA Capital to lead a team of consultants and produce "a high-level plan" for the Department of Education, DSA’s three-month contract shows.

Cerf is a 2004 graduate of the Broad Foundation’s superintendent’s academy, and it is common practice for the foundation to financially support its own as they transition to new leadership roles, DOE spokesman Alan Guenther said. [emphasis mine]

Nice work if you can get it. As I wrote at the time, William Cox and ACTING Commissioner Cerf are fellow Broadies. And Cox has other interests in education "reform":

The Record knows:

Cox has years of experience scrutinizing school systems. He said he worked as an analyst at Standard & Poor’s for 21 years, often focusing on public sector enterprises. He led a project called School Evaluation Services, launched in 2001 to assess schools’ finances, demographics and performance nationwide under a grant from the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the U. S. Department of Education. 

He became a managing director at Standard & Poor’s, and did work restructuring businesses. After leaving that company in 2008, he founded DSA Capital, a business strategy firm. [emphasis mine]

You know who owns Standard and Poor's? McGraw-Hill.

The teachers reading this blog just had their jaws drop to the floor; yes, it's THAT McGraw-Hill, the extremely well-known textbook and standardized test publisher. The same McGraw-Hill that is right in the middle of the DC testing scandal that calls into question the claims of former superintendent and corporate-reform supermodel Michelle Rhee.

But, yes, it really does get even better than that! Because what did Chris Christie just announce as part of his education "reform" plan?

Measures of Student Achievement Recognizing the Importance and Limitations of Test Scores. Fifty percent of a teacher’s overall evaluation should be based on direct measures of student achievement as demonstrated by assessments and other evaluations of student work.  This would be compromised of two required components and one optional component. The largest required component would be an individual teacher’s contribution to his or her students’ progress on a statewide assessment.  However, the other required component would take into consideration other factors that impact a student’s growth, including school-wide performance and specific student circumstances. Additionally, districts would be permitted to choose one or more optional measures of student achievement from a list of state-approved measures.  Such measures might include student performance on nationally-normed assessments or State-mandated end-of-course tests. [underline emphasis mine]

In other words: the standardized test will be the determining factor in teacher evaluation. But wait: only 10% to 20% of teachers could be evaluated currently on standardized tests - we only use them for Grades Three through Eight, and only in certain subjects. Wouldn't we have to develop a whole new raft of standardized tests to evaluate as much of the teaching corps as possible?

So Cox, after being invited in by Cerf and funded by Broad, spread the reformy, test-lovin' gospel to New Jersey. Now he's moving on to Connecticut, invited in by their SDE Commissioner, Stefan Pryor. Who's Pryor?

Who is ConnCAN?

• The facts are this: Stefan Pryor, the current commissioner of the SDE, helped to create the Amistad Academy with Dacia Toll, Achievement First’s President and CEO. Today, Achievement First run 20 schools in CT and NY and plan to expand to 35 in the next few years. This bill will make that easier for them to expand, as will current legislation in NY.

Wow: a former edu-corporatist, just like Cerf. What are the odds?

Of course, anyone who even suggests that there may be an ulterior motive in all of this is obviously a union shill intent on destroying the youth of America.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along...

ADDING: Connecticut, you are blessed to have Jon Pelto doing his thing on your behalf.

No Experience Necessary

We have many highly qualified, experienced, and very successful superintendents in New Jersey. But when it's time to get informed opinions about our school system, we often pass them by for by for folks who are... well (to put in kindly), somewhat less experienced:

The governor also wants to change the way enrollment is counted. Students are now counted on Oct 15. The governor wants to base funding on average daily attendance, which he says will give schools incentives to improve attendance.

That change is supported by [Fort Lee Interim Superintendent Steven] Engravalle; this month, the governor appointed him to the task force that will look at how school aid is distributed.

Engravalle said Fort Lee’s enrollment fluctuates each year, sometimes growing by more than 80 students from Oct. 15 to the end of the school year. He said students from other countries often register for a few months while their parents are in the area for business or if they’re visiting relatives.

Cerf said he visited the Fort Lee school district because of its “reputation for fiscal responsibility”, and its academic successes. School No. 3 in the district was named a Blue Ribbon School last year. That national honor is given to public and private schools that are either high performing or have greatly improved student achievement. [emphasis mine]

Fort Lee schools will receive $1,946,449 in state aid under the Governor’s proposed budget for next school year, an increase of $428,847, or 28 percent.

Look, I wish Mr. Engravalle all the best. But he has been the Interim Superintendent for less than a year; I'm sorry, but he is simply not the best candidate to serve on this task force.

Joe Scarborough was happy to tout Engravalle on MSNBC, but failed to mention that Engravalle had been on the job for only four months. Could it be that Morning Joe and his favorite governor, Chris Christie, wanted to sell Engravalle as a miracle worker because the young super was happy to go on to national TV and trash his teachers' union?

The plain fact of the matter is the man really hasn't done anything yet. Any successes of the Fort Lee district should be claimed by his predecessor, who left New Jersey for New York. Why? Because Chris Christie's salary cap for "greedy" superintendents chased the man away.

Yeah, I know: "He just doesn't care about kids!" Whatever...

Again, Engravalle may turn out to be a great superintendent - I sincerely hope he does (if only for the sake of Fort Lee's kids) - but it is way, way, way too early to say this man is qualified to sit on perhaps the most important task force on education the state has ever assembled.

Of course, there is a history of putting unqualified folks on education task forces here in the Garden State. But I digress....

Meanwhile, over in Perth Amboy:

Less than a year into her term as Perth Amboy’s school superintendent, Janine Caffrey may soon be looking for a new job.

The school board plans to vote next week on whether to fire the reform-minded leader — who says she isn’t going down without a fight and has the backing of the city’s mayor.

Feuds among superintendents and school boards are not unheard of in New Jersey’s bare-knuckled business of public education, but against the backdrop of a state investigation, the Perth Amboy situation is no ordinary controversy.

While the school board has accused Caffrey of running rough-shod over them, more shocking revelations have surfaced involving possible attempted fraud by school board president Samuel Lebreault. The state Attorney General’s Office is investigating allegations that Lebreault improperly filed an application for the federally subsidized school lunch program, an application that has mysteriously gone missing.

Caffrey contends the board wants her out because she has cooperated with the state investigation and has refused to give school district jobs to board members’ friends.

In an interview with The Star-Ledger, Caffrey said she is standing her ground and expects that the board will fire her if she refuses to step down — despite having two years left on her three-year contract. She earns $172,500 a year.

School board attorney Isabel Machado Wednesday said she could not comment on personnel matters.

In the days before she took over last June, Caffrey said Lebreault and fellow board member board Israel Varela called her about giving district jobs to their friends. Both times, the superintendent said, she rebuffed those requests.

"It was crazy," Caffrey said. "My goal is to get to the point where I can do my job for the children of Perth Amboy."

Lebreault declined to comment on any personnel matters, but Varela denied ever recommending anyone for a job. He added that Caffrey made her comments about him after he questioned her about school finances.

"This board is not a vindictive board," Varela said. "The board must do what’s best for the Perth Amboy schools."

What the board has done is file 11 allegations against Caffrey, including failing to meet with school principals, misrepresenting the facts at board meetings, dividing contracts to sidestep the bidding process and bypassing the board to implement teacher-assistance and counseling programs. [emphasis mine]

I have no idea whether Caffrey is being wronged here; she may well turn out to be vindicated. In fact, I don't have much sympathy for the Perth Amboy BOE: they hired Caffrey, a superintendent who was light on qualifications, in the first place. The only school she ever ran was a tiny private school in Florida. A few additional years in the giant NYC school bureaucracy is hardly qualification to run a district like PA, and yet she got the job.

Maybe the BOE in PA should have looked at a few more resumes, huh?

The fact that Caffrey hadn't done anything as an actual superintendent didn't stop the Star-Ledger's Tom Moran from trying to turn her into a folk hero. And it didn't disqualify her from testifying at the NJ Senate hearing on tenure reform. But it should have. Again, I wish her the best, but she just isn't qualified to opine on these things; she doesn't have a substantial record of success (at least, not yet). And now, she may be headed out the door.

Michelle Rhee drives our national debate about "reform," but she's never done anything of note. Steve Engravalle is the sole school superintendent on an extremely important committee on school finance, but he has little record of success as an education leader. Janine Caffrey is interviewed as an expert on tenure reform in the press and before the state legislature, but she hasn't done the job even for a year; further, she's already in a swirl of controversy.

Inexperienced people are informing our school policies. Isn't it obvious that this is a recipe for disaster?

ADDING: A little more on Engravalle; here's an article from June of 2010, when he first came to Fort Lee as an assistant superintendent:

Steven Engravalle is 32 years old and has only worked as an administrator in the education sector for six years, but officials are optimistic that Engravalle, the current superintendent and principal of the Hamburg school district in Sussex County, will bring great value to Fort Lee when he takes over as the assistant superintendent for the 2010-2011 school year. 

One clear challenge is the fact that Engravalle will be moving from a one school district with a little more than 300 students in Hamburg, to Fort Lee, which educates approximately 3,500 students within six elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. 

"He hasn’t had the experience of working through other administrators to the extent that you would in a larger district," Bandlow explained. "But the advantage of course is that he’s been responsible for all those functions and has had first-hand responsibility that many of the people he will supervise have." 

"There’s always a learning curve for anyone and we know there’s going to be a period of adjustment," Bandlow added. "But he also has a lot he can contribute right away."

Less than two years later, he is now running the entire district. There was concern about that last fall:

Colbath said the board was acting too quickly in appointing Engravalle when there are other options and that public input had not been taken into consideration. She said that while she believes Engravalle has a bright future ahead of him, he is not, in her opinion, right for the position of Acting Superintendent of Fort Lee Schools at this time.  

“He’s young; I think he’s going to be doing great things,” Colbath said Tuesday. “He’s energetic; he’s enthusiastic; he’s smart. He’s going to go places, but I don’t think he’s qualified today to run a district with our diversity; with our issues; with our referendum and with the number of schools.”

Again: I wish the man the best (a word of advice, though: cool it with the union bashing. You're not the governor; you actually have to work with your teachers and their local).

But this task force on school aid is very important. Maybe after a few years, he'll have a record of success that qualifies him; right now, however, he's just not ready.

ADDING MORE:

Oh, my...

I would have loved to have embedded this, but I can't. And no commenting. Huh.