One More Thing on the Achievement Gap.....

A solution that the PESB looks primed to try and move through the legislature is to allow suitable SAT scores to serve as a proxy for the WEST-B; e.g., if your SAT scores were acceptable, you wouldn't have to bother with the WEST.

My one question would be: if the SAT is a good enough correlation with the WEST-B, then why do we even bother with the WEST at all?

Read more here, if any.

The Achievement Gap Before the Achievement Gap

Courtesy of the packet for the September Professional Educator Standards Board meeting, this is a graph that compares the passing rate on the WEST-B test of African-American students in teacher prep programs, to the passing rate of all students.  So not only are there less African-American students going into teaching, barely half of them are getting over this first bar.

A later slide says that of the 4,587 students who passed the WEST-B in 2010-2011, 75 of them were African American.

It's your classic chicken/egg question; if we had more teachers of color to inspire our students of color, more of them might go on to close the circle and become, themselves, teachers.  The question is how to get there, which is something the state has been struggling with for as long as I've been in teaching, and a societal issue that goes back to the sixties.

For more reading, try this article from the Huffington Post.

Read more here, if any.

Why Ed Reform in Washington State is Completely Full of Crap Right Now

From the most recent Quality Education Council meeting, the League of Education Voters summarizes:

Concerns about growing budget deficits and lack of funding to implement bold reforms. Ms. Ryan vehemently pushed back saying she hears the budget concerns, but now more than ever is the time to step up and put forward a strong vision for the state — our kids deserve it. Dr. Bette Hyde agreed “125 percent.”

I watched the segment (it's about 2.5 hours in), and I'd say the LEV transcribed it accurately.

I'd also say that Ms. Ryan, of the State Board of Education, and Ms. Hyde, of the Department of Early Learning, are both talking out of their ass, which seems to be the pattern right now.

Exhibit A, right here at the Quality Education Council. Ms. Hyde had anothe quote later on about how people are looking to the QEC for hope (hope of what, who knows?), and that meant they needed to fulfill their charge. Sorry, Bette, but from where I stand in the classroom I'm not looking to you for jack-squat. I'd just as soon you left me alone instead of creating work to justify your existence.

Exhibit B would be Ms. Ryan's very own State Board of Education, which just passed new graduation requirements despite there being absolutely no way to pay for those requirements. But the reasoning goes that, hey, things will get better, and the State Board of Education has to do something, so why not.

You've also got the Professional Educator Standards Board screwing around with cultural competency requirements, the Superintendent of Public Instruction signing on to the common core standards even though we didn't get the Race to the Top money, the Center for the Improvement of Student learning doing who-the-hell-knows what, the Local Levy Workgroup just had a meeting, too, and the districts involved in the Evaluation Pilot Project are also clicking along, and I assume the Department of Early Learning and the Higher Education Coordinating Board are also putting out the paperwork, too.

Right now ed reform in Washington is a sad, expensive Dilbert cartoon with board after board, committee after committee working on scores of different projects and none of them possessed of the moral fibre to admit that we're in a budget crisis and maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be re-arranging the furniture when the house in on fire. The first rule of being in a hole, the one about stop digging? That's not going to happen as long as the Big Shovel lobby that makes up all these commissions keeps thinking that their work trumps the reality that everyone else in the state is having to live with.

If you put them together, the packets from the last Quality Education Council and State Board of Education meetings come up to exactly 800 pages. Not 800 pages of how to preserve what we have, not 800 pages of acknowledgement that we're in the worst budget crisis since the Great Depression--800 pages of change that we just can't afford. And to put it bluntly, if the bureaucracy can't figure that out for themselves, then Lord let the legislature defund them and use the money for something worth a damn. There may well come a time where what Hyde and Ryan want can be--this is absolutely not that time.

And that's my rant.

Read more here, if any.

Measuring Teacher Effectiveness

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is the idea of linking test scores to teacher evaluation. It's a topic that's everywhere this summer:

• The EFF school report card makes the point.
  
• It's also the heart of Arne Duncan's remarks at the NEA Representative Assembly.
  
• The ASCD put out a newsletter recently on union/management collaboration; tying test scores to evaluation was a big part of it.
  
• And of course, there's the state-level hijinx going on vis-a-vis HB2261, the State Board of Education, and the PESB. Wheeee!

One of the notions that you often hear during these discussions is, "The good teachers have nothing to be afraid of." Let's talk about that for a bit.

Last year, for one of my Master's classes, I dug into testing data I had on hand for the first grade team in my building. These are real numbers and real averages with real kids behind them; the test in question is the Measures of Academic Progress, from the Northwest Evaluation Association.

Teacher A: In the fall, her class had an average score of 162.5 on the MAP. In the spring the class average rose to 184.3, an average gain of 21.8 points.

Teacher B: Her fall average was 164.7; her spring average, 183.85, for an increase of 19.15 points.

Teacher C: 169.05 in the fall, 189.35 in the spring, so an average gain of 20.3 points.

Teacher D: An average score of 155.30 points in the fall and 174.85 in the spring. Her fall-to-spring gain, then, was 19.55 points.

With this data, then, you could argue the case for two different teachers as the "winners" in the group. If you look at the average gain, Teacher A is your champion:

1. Teacher A: 21.8 points
   
2. Teacher C: 20.3 points
   
3. Teacher D: 19.55 points
   
4. Teacher B: 19.15 points

But, if you look at the overall class average at the end of the year, Teacher C is far and away your winner:

1. Teacher C: 189.35
   
2. Teacher A: 184.3
   
3. Teacher B: 183.85
   
4. Teacher D: 174.85

If we went strictly by these numbers from this year, then, you can see who your quality teachers are. If you were judging solely by the numbers, you might also think that you have a problem with Teacher D--her class average trails the class average of everybody else by almost 10 points, which on the MAP is very nearly an entire year's worth of growth.

But we have to dig even deeper before making a statement about teacher quality, because here the raw numbers aren't telling the whole story.

In the fall, the average score for this test is 164 points. In the spring, the average score is 178. Knowing that, here's some new data to chew on.

In Teacher A's room in the fall, 10 kids scored in the below average range. In the spring, 6 kids scored below average.

In Teacher B's room, 7 kids were below average in the fall, while 3 were below average in the spring.

In Teacher C's room, 6 kids were below average in the fall, and 3 in the spring.

In Teacher D's room, 16 kids were below average in the fall, and 6 tested below average in the spring.

With this new information, you can make two new arguments. First, Teacher B is your best teacher because she had more of her kids cross the finish line (the goal score, 178) than the other teachers did. You could also argue that Teacher D is your best teacher because she lowered her percentage of kids who were below standard more than any of the other teachers did.

So, who is your Most Valuable Teacher?

Is it Teacher A, who added the most value to her class over the course of the year?
Is it Teacher B, who had more of her kids meet the year-end goal?
Is it Teacher C, whose class scored the highest in the spring?
Is it Teacher D, who turned around more failing kids than any of the others?

"Value" is a homophone; there's the value signified by the numbers, but there's also the values of the school, the district, and the state which have to be superimposed atop any effort to link the data to the teacher. If the incentive pay/merit pay/whatever pay in this case goes to only one of the four teachers, you're making a statement about the value of the work the other three did, and it's a pretty lousy thing to say to the other three who also made progress that their success didn't matter as much.

Similarly, can we countenance a system where every one of these teachers is given the bonus money, indicating that they all did a good job? In the eyes of some reformers I could see that being too close to what we do now, where every teacher is assumed to be a good teacher. If a merit pay system is intended to have winners and losers, and to inspire the "less-capable" teachers to emulate the "better" teachers, can we really have a 4-way tie?

These are the questions that have to be answered going forward.

If you'd like to see the raw scores presented in a spreadsheet, you can find them here.

Read more here, if any.

The Best Thing the State Could Do Is to Stop Screwing With Certification

In the eyes of the state, I'm not a qualified reading teacher.

I've been teaching 1st grade for 8 years. For the last two years during our walk-to-read time I've taken on the lowest group, those kids needing the most remediation. I've planned before school intervention programs, after school programs, been trained in Read Naturally, DIBELS, and Reading Mastery, and I've got the test results to show that *it has worked.* I love, love, love working with developing readers, and I wouldn't trade for anything the feeling of seeing a kid turn on that light and become a capable, competent reader.

But in the eyes of the state, I'm not a qualified reading teacher.

In May I wandered up to Mead High School and took the WEST-E, which tests your teaching knowledge in a variety of subject areas. Passing is 240; I got a 288. By that measure, then, I'm amply qualified to teach reading.

But still, in the eyes of the state, I'm not a qualified reading teacher.

I can add an endorsement by doing the National Boards, which holds absolutely zero interest for me, enrolling in a program through one of the local colleges, which I don't have the money to do, or pursuing a Pathway II endorsement through one of the local colleges. If I did that, I'd pick Wazzu-Spokane. It'll cost me $1,600.

This is bullshit.





Reading around, one of the things that they say that you should do to make yourself useful to your employer is to have a varied skill set--don't be able to do only one thing, or when that one things goes away you're not needed any more. I've written about this before thinking about school psychologists and music teachers, but it holds true universally.

It used to be that with the Golden Certificate you could teach any subject, any time. That went away because of the stereotype of the ineffective teacher who was qualified in the eyes of the state but in reality sucked at their job.

So we substituted that for the initial/continuing paradigm, and added endorsements into the mix. Now the thought was that forcing teachers into getting continuing credits and clock hours would keep them fresh, keep them vital, keep them "in the game" in a way that would benefit kids.

Turns out, clock hours and continuing credits were often a joke. I've sat in the summer "workshops" filled with very honest, very cynical teachers who were there just so they could get their certificate renewed. So we threw away that system and piled on Professional Certification instead. Now, we'll be performance based! Portfolios! Evidence! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

By my math, how we "do" ProCert has changed at least 5 times since I was part of the first ProCert group to go through Eastern in 2004. Instead of actually paying attention to their students we have young teachers assembling binder after binder after binder to demonstrate their mastery of a profession that they shouldn't have mastered yet, usually putting out thousands of dollars that they don't have in the process.

The dream of a highly qualified and effective teacher in every classroom is a good one; it's where we should be. The certification process as we're doing it now, though, has become so divorced from that goal as to be totally irrelevent. Because "we" "can't" get rid of "bad teachers", the system has been constructed in such a way that good teachers can't get into positions that they would excel at, and at the same time people are faced with as steep an uphill climb as exists in any profession just to keep their jobs, and that's ridiculous.

What's the solution? Simple, to me: shitcan the whole set-up. Start taking power back from the Professional Educators Standards Board. Say a hearty "Hell no!" to the certification changes that were embodied in HB2261. Stop acting like National Certification is the be-all, end-all of teacher effectiveness, because the Board process was never intended to be for everyone.

There's more than compensation involved in job satisfaction. Want to make a teacher's job easier? Make it easier for them to actually be a teacher, without having to worry about 10 tons of crap falling from on high. The fixes to certification in Washington have broken the system even more--it's time to start over.

Read more here, if any.

The Education Budget #4: While Education Crumbles, Let's Study Education!

This is the *hit that drives me mad. From the Senate budget (p. 90, line 29):

$50,000 of the general fund--state appropriation for fiscal year 2010 and $50,000 of the general fund--state appropriate for fiscal year 2011 are provided solely for implementation of Engrossed Senate Bill No. 6048 (relating to education). If the bill is not enacted by June 30, 2009, the amounts provided in this subsection shall lapse.

Cheeky, putting aside money for a bad education bill while at the same time rocking education to the tune of $1.5 billion dollars in cuts.

Not nearly as cheeky as their counterparts in the House, though (p. 96 line 36):

$1,819,000 of the general fund--state appropriation for fiscal year 2010 and $1,181,000 of the general fund--state appropriation for fiscal year 2011 are provided solely for the implementation of Substitute House Bill No. 2261. The funding supports preparation for the implementation of a new funding formula and accounting system, including convening and staffing costs for technical working groups and funding for reprogramming apportionment and accounting information systems at the office of the superintendent of public instruction.

If you go by the House number, and the $80,000 average cost of a teacher that we've used before, that means you could save 22 teaching jobs by not implementing HB2261.

And why, oh why oh why, do some of our legislators equate improving schools with adding staff at OSPI? This is why I despise the new accountability system that the State Board of Education is working to ram through--it's most practical impact won't be to improve schools or districts, but you can bet the mortgage that OSPI will be coming to the legislature hat in hand in a couple of years asking for 20+ more FTE to staff their school improvement corp.

What you're seeing this year more than ever is the balkanization of the education stakeholders, where the League of Education Voters works against the Washington Education Association, the WEA rises against the State Board of Education, the SBE works at cross-purposes against the Professional Educator Standards Board, the PESB work runs afoul of the vision that Stand for Children has, and on, and on, and on. Politically it's dynamite to watch; in practicality, it's a slowly unfolding disaster.

Meanwhile the budget is a quickly unfolding disaster.

It's not a good time to be in education.

Read more here, if any.

The Education Budget #2: Useless Programs at the Professional Educator Standards Board

The Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) is the body here in Washington State charged with developing the criteria for teacher certification. In the last few years they've been responsible for implementing Professional Certification (which is a miserable flop), WEST-B testing of ed students at the colleges (which isn't doing any good), and the WEST-E alternate pathway to certification (which is poorly designed, stupidly onerous, and isn't working as it should.)

I'm not a big PESB guy.

In the proposed Senate budget, on page 88, you can read the earmarks for the PESB. There's a lot there to talk about:

• The overall budget for the PESB is $5,278,000 in fy2010 and $5,176,000 in fy2011.
  
• Within that, $1,070,000 a year is for operating costs for the PESB.
  
• $3,431,000 is for alternate certification programs, including:
  
  1. $500,000 a year for scholarships for people going into sped, math, science, or bilingual ed;
     
  2. $2,372,000 each year for a different alternative program for the high-need areas;
     
  3. $102,000 for work on the achievement gap in fy2010;
     
  4. $231,000 each year for the "Recruiting Washington Teachers" program;
     
  5. $200,000 a year for the "Pipeline for Paraeducators" program;
     
  6. $244,000 a year for current teachers to switch into math or science endorsements
• $1,146,000 each year to develop a student information database.

Here's the thing: when we're talking about laying off 3,000+ teachers, when hundreds more teachers graduate every year looking for jobs, when hiring at job fairs is waaaaaay down....do we really need to expand the pipeline? Sure, some of those programs are to create bodies in high-need fields, but with less slots (and more people looking to fill those slots!), is the need still there?

My suggestion: suspend all of the alternate-route certificate programs for the next bienium, saving 42.5 teaching positions.

Read more here, if any.