Value-Added Measures
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Federal
Opinion
John Thompson: GAO and Elaine Weiss Converge on Harsh Appraisal of Race to the Top
how can educators attempt to comply with distractions like the RttT and still find the time and money necessary to implement more promising reforms?
Ed-Tech Policy
Opinion
John Thompson Reviews "Confessions of a Bad Teacher"
When Bill Gates or Arne Duncan tour a high-performing school that supposedly serves the "same" kids as failing neighborhood schools and proclaim, "Amazing!," do they really believe it?
Teaching Profession
Teacher Evaluations Tied to Test Scores: What the Public Thinks
Two national polls released this week come to different conclusions about whether the public supports incorporating standardized test scores into teachers' evaluations.
Teaching Profession
Tennessee Teacher-Pay Plan Riles Union
The recent adoption of a new teacher-pay plan in Tennessee has spurred backlash from many union members, including calls for the state's education commissioner to be fired, reports The Tennessean.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Can Our Unions Praise Common Core Standards and Defeat High Stakes Tests?
If we embrace the Common Core, and position ourselves as expert implementers, we cannot help but legitimize these standards as a solid set of benchmarks for student performance.
Teaching
Opinion
HR Educator Evaluation Cheat Sheet: 8 Best Practices From Recent Research
Over the past three years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has lead some of the most influential work around multiple measures in education through their Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, a partnership of more than 3,000 public school teachers who voluntarily opened up their classrooms to researchers. The study looked at three measures: value-added analysis, evaluation, and student surveys with the purpose of investigating "better ways to identify and develop effective teaching" as well as "help teachers and school systems close the gap between their expectations for effective teaching and what is actually happening in classrooms." Participating districts included Denver Public Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Memphis Public Schools, Pittsburgh Public Schools, New York City Schools, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and Hillsborough County Public Schools.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
The Common Core Loses This Teacher's Support
By attaching them to government initiatives such as high-stakes testing and teacher evaluation, the standards are being used as an instrument to standardize and control public education in the US.
Teaching Profession
Baseball Sabermetrics and the 'Effective Teacher'
In a blog post for The Brown Center on Education Policy, Thomas Kane proposes a new definition for an "effective" teacher: one whose "predicted impact on students exceeds that of the average novice teacher."
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Will the Data Warehouse Become Every Student and Teacher's "Permanent Record"?
inBloom, the non-profit started with a hundred million dollar investment from the Gates Foundation, is planning to create a digital record which, barring catastrophe, truly could be a permanent record of every K12 student, from their first interaction with the schools to the last. The amount of information they are planning to collect is staggering. Here are the several hundred categories, which include academic records, attendance records, test results of all sorts, disciplinary incidents, special ed accommodations, and more.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Dystopia: A Possible Future of Teacher Evaluation
This is a future I believe is possible given the systems and structures being promoted by technocrats like Gates. This is NOT the way the system has been described by Bill Gates or any of his representatives. They tend to use the language of feedback and collaboration. But as I have been asking, if collaboration is the goal, why must this be embedded in an evaluation process, which has the goal of determining who ought to be fired?
Ed-Tech Policy
Opinion
Bill Gates' TED Talk: Are Video Cameras the Missing Link?
Bill Gates has described himself as a technocrat, so perhaps it is natural that he would fixate on some piece of technology as the missing element. But the real things that are missing are the time that teachers need to work together, and the understanding that this time will be most fruitful when teachers are given the autonomy to tackle the challenges they face, rather than micromanaged and driven by test score data.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Will a Year's Delay Save the Common Core? A Response to Weingarten's Proposal
Teachers - and union leaders -- may feel as if they should get on board, to try to steer this process. However, I think this is a ship of doom for our schools. I think its effect will be twofold. It will create a smoother, wider, more easily standardized market for curriculum and technology. This will, in turn, promote the standardization of curriculum and instruction, and further de-professionalize teaching. The assessments will reinforce this, by tying teachers closer to more frequent timelines and benchmark assessments, which will be, in many places, tied to teacher evaluations. And the widespread failures of public schools will be used to further "disrupt the public school monopoly," spurring further expansion of vouchers and charters and private schools.
School & District Management
Opinion
John Thompson: Education Reform Party is Over -- What a Mess!
Guest post by John Thompson.
Back when "Dandy Don" Meredith was host of Monday Night Football, when the game was all over but the shouting, he would break into song. We need a 21st century way of saying the obvious. Test-driven school "reform" failed. To borrow a phrase regarding "closing time," test-driven "reformers"do not have to go home, but they can't stay here in our children's schools.
Back when "Dandy Don" Meredith was host of Monday Night Football, when the game was all over but the shouting, he would break into song. We need a 21st century way of saying the obvious. Test-driven school "reform" failed. To borrow a phrase regarding "closing time," test-driven "reformers"do not have to go home, but they can't stay here in our children's schools.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
TNTP Report Recommends Focused Supports For First-Year Teachers
Today, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) released a report, Leap Year: Assessing and Supporting First-Year Teachers, that examines the unique characteristics of a teacher's initial year in the classroom. An interesting topic for sure; ask any educator about his or her first year of teaching, and chances are you'll hear at least one of the following descriptors: hectic, crazy, confusing, challenging, tough, hard, exhausting. So what is the best way to support these individuals and assess their progress? The study attempts to address this question by examining the performance of over 1,000 new teachers in hard-to-staff subjects located in 15 regions around the country. Measures used included classroom observations, principal ratings, student surveys, and student growth data.