Silver Linings

It's probably no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I'm a Democrat. That said, in my professional life, I have worked for non-partisan and non-profit organizations committed to working with public officials of all political persuasions. And I think that both political parties -- as well as political independents -- are potential partners in improving pubic education. Nonetheless, I can't honestly say that November 2010 was an uplifting month from my (electoral) perspective.

But this is the Education OPTIMISTS blog, right? I guess I'm a little self-aware in that I recognize that a majority of my posts grouse about something or other and too few are offered in a truly optimistic vein. So here is my attempt at weaving a silk purse from an elephant's(?) ear.

Newly elected Republican governors and state legislators have opportunities to improve education in ways that some of their Democratic counterparts may not. They may be more politically willing and able to take on certain vestiges of the education status quo that may not be research-based, may not be working, and may be not be in service of student outcomes. I'm talking about things like the traditional steps-and-lanes teacher salary schedule, the length of the school day and year, and largely purposeless teacher evaluation systems. They may be able to construct new human capital systems and reform outdated school practices and processes. Certainly, these opportunities will vary depending upon numerous contextual factors, including state systems of educational governance, the intellectual and policy foundations for such work, the existence of non-governmental advocates and thought partners, existing vehicles for collaboration (such as p-16 councils), etc.

A number of past Republican governors emerged as leaders, or so-called "education governors." Some that immediately come to mind are former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, outgoing Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, and former Tennessee Gov. (and current U.S. Senator) Lamar Alexander (who also served as U.S Education Secretary under President George H.W. Bush).

That said, here's where my pessimism takes over. There are certainly members of the current Republican gubernatorial circle that are certainly not in the running for such an earned label, such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. With less than a year in office, he has moved in a decidedly confrontational direction. His actions and rhetoric makes him better suited for talk radio than as a collaborative education governor who needs to work with a Democratic-controlled state legislature and, yes, with teachers. Christie is casting himself as a modern-day Archie Bunker and is relishing the attention and headlines he is getting. The sad fact is that such rhetoric is what garners attention in today's media rather than the dogged policy work that actually changes the equation for students and teachers.

Christie seems to think that leadership consists of rhetoric rather than results. And that's dangerous if our collective goal is the creation of meaningful reform as opposed to simply talk or threats of it. Christie has attacked his own state's relatively good educational performance in order to further his demonizing of the state teachers' union, which appears to be his primary priority. He fired his first education commissioner who dared to strike a compromise with teachers around New Jersey's aborted Race to the Top application. That former commissioner said that the Governor "placed fighting with the state teachers unions and his persona on talk radio above education reform." Good luck to those who seek to thrust him upon America as a 2012 candidate for President.

My fear is that there those within the ranks of new Republican governors that are more likely to fashion themselves in the style of Christie than as "old school" education governors. Texas Governor Rick Perry's ascension to head the RGA probably doesn't help either.

With the exception of the 12 Race to the Top winners, one challenge that these new office holders of both parties will face is the distinct lack of new resources to inject into the educational system, either from state or federal sources. They won't be able to buy reforms by increasing education funding or refashion teacher pay with a major infusion of cash.

My hope is that governors of both parties will seek to work with educators to accomplish their policy objectives rather than force their desires onto them. There is good evidence to suggest that collaboration leads to more resilient and relevant policies that are likely to trickle down to actually change practices and processes within classrooms and schools. That's where the real work gets done.

I am hopeful that some quiet leaders will emerge.

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Adding Value to the Value-Added Debate

Seeing as I am not paid to blog as part of my daily job, it's basically impossible for me to be even close to first out of the box on the issues of the day. Add to that being a parent of two small children (my most important job – right up there with being a husband) and that only adds to my sometimes frustration of not being able to weigh in on some of these issues quickly.

That said, here is my attempt to distill some key points and share my opinions -- add value, if you will -- to the debate that is raging as a result of the Los Angeles Times's decision to publish the value-added scores of individual teachers in the L.A. Unified School District.

First of all, let me address the issue at hand. I believe that the LA Times's decision to publish the value-added scores was irresponsible. Given what we know about the unreliability and variability in such scores and the likelihood that consumers of said scores will use them at face value without fully understanding all of the caveats, this was a dish that should have been sent back to the kitchen.

Although the LA Times is not a government or public entity, it does operate in the public sphere. And it has a responsibility as such an actor. Its decision to label LA teachers as 'effective' and 'ineffective' based on suspect value-added data alone is akin to an auditor secretly investigating a firm or agency without an engagement letter and publishing findings that may or may not hold water.

Frankly, I don't care what positive benefits this decision by the LA Times might have engendered. Yes, the district and the teachers union have agreed to begin negotiations on a new evaluation system. Top district officials have said they want at least 30% of a teacher's review to be based on value-added and have wisely said that the majority of the evaluations should depend on classroom observations. Such a development exonerates the LA Times, as some have argued. In my mind, any such benefits are purloined and come at the expense of sticking it -- rightly in some cases, certainly wrongly in others -- to individual teachers who mostly are trying their best.

Oh, I know, I know. It's not about the teachers anymore. Their day has come and gone. "It's about the kids" now, right? But you know what? The decisions we make about how we license, compensate, evaluate and dismiss teachers affects them as individual people, as husbands and wives, as mothers and fathers. It effects who may or may not choose to enter the profession in the coming years. If we mistakenly catch a bunch of teachers in a wrong-headed, value-added dragnet based upon a missionary zeal and 'head in the sand' conviction that numbers don't lie, we will be doing a disservice both to teachers and to the kids. And, if we start slicing and dicing teachers left and right, who exactly will replace them?

(1) Value-added test scores should not be used as the primary means of informing high-stakes decisions, such as tenure and dismissal.
One primary piece of evidence was released just this week from the well-respected, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute. The EPI report, co-authored by numerous academic experts, said:

• Student test scores are not reliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, even with the addition of value-added modeling (VAM).
  
• Though VAM methods have allowed for more sophisticated comparisons of teachers than were possible in the past, they are still inaccurate, so test scores should not dominate the information used by school officials in making high-stakes decisions about the evaluation, discipline and compensation of teachers.
  
• Neither parents nor anyone else should believe that the Los Angeles Times analysis actually identifies which teachers are effective or ineffective in teaching children because the methods are incapable of doing so fairly and accurately.
• Analyses of VAM results show that they are often unstable across time, classes and tests; thus, test scores, even with the addition of VAM, are not accurate indicators of teacher effectiveness. Student test scores, even with VAM, cannot fully account for the wide range of factors that influence student learning, particularly the backgrounds of students, school supports and the effects of summer learning loss. As a result, teachers who teach students with the greatest educational needs appear to be less effective than they are.

Other experts, such as Mathematica Policy Research, Rick Hess, and Dan Goldhaber have offered important cautions as well.

The findings of the IES-funded Mathematica report were “largely driven by findings from the literature and new analyses that more than 90 percent of the variation in student gain scores is due to the variation in student-level factors that are not under the control of the teacher. Thus, multiple years of performance data are required to reliably detect a teacher’s true long-run performance signal from the student-level noise…. Type I and II error rates [‘false positives’ and ‘false negatives’] for teacher-level analyses will be about 26 percent if three years of data are used for estimation. In a typical performance measurement system, more than 1 in 4 teachers who are truly average in performance will be erroneously identified for special treatment, and more than 1 in 4 teachers who differ from average performance by 3 months of student learning in math or 4 more in reading will be overlooked. In addition, Type I and II error rates will likely decrease by only about one half (from 26 to 12 percent) using 10 years of data.”

Hess has “three serious problems with what the LAT did. First … I'm increasingly nervous at how casually reading and math value-added calculations are being treated as de facto determinants of "good" teaching…. Second, beyond these kinds of technical considerations, there are structural problems. For instance, in those cases where students receive substantial pull-out instruction or work with a designated reading instructor, LAT-style value-added calculations are going to conflate the impact of the teacher and this other instruction…. Third, there's a profound failure to recognize the difference between responsible management and public transparency.”

Goldhaber, in a Seattle Times op-ed, says that he “support[s] the idea of using value-added methods as one means of judging teacher performance, but strongly oppose[s] making the performance estimates of individual teachers public in this way. First, there are reasons to be concerned that individual value-added estimates may be misleading indicators of true teacher performance. Second, performance estimates that look different from one another on paper may not truly be distinct in a statistically significant sense. Finally, and perhaps most important, I cannot think of a profession in either the public or private sector where individual employee performance estimates are made public in a newspaper.”

Multiple measures to inform teacher evaluation seems like the right approach, including the use of multiple years of value-added student data (one thing the LA Times DID get right). That said, the available research would seem to suggest that states (particularly in Race to the Top) that have proposed basing 50% or more of an individual educators evaluation on a value-added score may have gone too far down the path. LA Unified officials have said (LA Times, 8/30/2010) they want at least 30% of a teacher's review to be based on value-added and that the majority of the evaluations should depend on observations. That might be a more appropriate stance.

(2) Embracing the status quo is unacceptable.
As reports such at The New Teacher Project's Widget Effect have chronicled, current approaches to teacher evaluation are broken. They don’t work for anyone involved. Critics of VAM cannot simply draw a line in the sand and state that, "This will not stand!" If not this, then what? Certainly not the current system! Fortunately, efforts led by organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers and the Hope Street Group are developing or have offered thoughtful solutions to this issue. [Disclosure: I participated in Hope Street's effort and my New Teacher Center colleague Eric Hirsch serve on AFT’s evaluation committee.] Sadly, LA Unified and the LA Teachers Union both are culpable –along with the LA Times – in bringing this upon the city's teachers by refusing to act to analyze or utilize available value-added data. An adherence to the status quo created a void that the LA Times sought to fill in order to sell more newspapers in a wrong-headed attempt to inform the public.

(3) The ‘lesser of two evils’ axiom should not be invoked.
Even if you agree that all the factors we currently use to select and sort teachers is worse than a value added only alternative, as argued by Education Sector's Chad Aldeman, our current arsenal does not meaningfully inform high-stakes decisions (apart from entry tests with largely low passing scores and the aforementioned impossible-to-fail evaluations). That's, of course, both a condemnation of the current system's inability and/or unwillingness to differentiate between teachers, but it's also a recognition that we haven't struck the right balance or developed the value-added systems to inform high-stakes decisions in this regard in all but a few promising places.

(4) Don't lose sight of the utility of value-added data to inform formative assessment of teaching practice.
If one of the takeaways from research is that value-added data shouldn't be used to drive high-stakes decisions, it is helpful to think about the use of this data to inform teacher development. Analysis of student work, including relevant test scores, is an important professional development opportunity that all teachers, especially new ones, should have regular opportunities to engage in. Systems such as the NTC’s Formative Assessment System provide such a tool in states and districts with whom it works on teacher induction. Sadly, this is not the norm in American schools, but is built into high-quality professional development approaches, as Sara Mead wisely discusses in her recent Ed Week blog post. As I noted under #2, LA Unified missed an opportunity to embrace such data to inform its educators in such a way. In the LA Times value added series, several teachers bemoaned the fact that they had never had the opportunity to see such data until it was published in the newspaper.

(5) Valid and reliable classroom observation conducted by trained evaluators is critical.
Other elements of an evaluation system are even more important than value-added methodology if for no other reason that the majority of teachers do not teach tested subjects. Unless we, God forbid, develop multiple-choice assessments of more and more subjects and grade levels, we're going to need valid and reliable ways of assessing the practice of educators who cannot be assessed by value-added student achievement scores. Despite some of the criticisms lobbed at the District of Columbia's new IMPACT evaluation system, this is an element at the heart of DC’s approach to teacher evaluation. Further, the Gates Foundation’s on-going teacher effectiveness study holds great promise.

(6) We've got to get beyond this focus on the 'best' and 'worst' teachers.
How about we focus on strengthening the effectiveness of the 80-90% of teachers in the middle? We know how to do that through comprehensive new teacher induction and high-quality professional development, but we're just lacking the collective will to pull it off and invest in what makes a difference. These are similar roadblocks to what has prevented the use of student outcomes from being considered in teacher evaluations. It raises discomfort, requires a change in prevailing (often mediocre) practices, demands greater accountability, and necessitates viewing teaching not as a private activity but as a collective endeavor. But I keep making this point over and over again about the importance of a teacher development focus within the teacher effectiveness conversation because I see too few reform advocates taking it seriously. Take off the blinders, folks. It is not primarily about firing teachers.

(7) Teacher effectiveness is contextual.
Teaching and learning conditions impact an individual educator’s ability to succeed. It is entirely possible that an individual teacher's value-added score is significantly determined by the teaching and learning conditions (supportive leadership, opportunities to collaborate, classroom resources) present at their school site than about their individual knowledge, skills and practices. In Seinfeldian terms, teachers are not 'masters of their domain' necessarily. The EPI report makes this point. So do my New Teacher Center colleagues through statewide teaching and learning conditions surveys. So does Duke University economist Helen Ladd (also a co-signed on the EPI report) and the University of Toronto’s Kenneth Leithwood.

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Where to Begin?

Where do I begin in critiquing such wrong-headed and vitriolic analysis of Florida Governor Charlie Crist's veto of SB 6, which would have eliminated tenure for teachers and based their evaluations primarily on a single year of student test scores?

One cannot accurately and fairly evaluate an individual educator's performance by test scores alone, especially based on a single year's worth of data (as the Florida legislation would have done) and particularly for new teachers. I've said it before and before that -- and I'll undoubtedly say it again. On this specific issue, I'll take the "what they said" approach. Read Claus von Zastrow, Sherman Dorn, David Kirp, and Steve Peha who provide the right amount of counsel and insight. Today's blog post by Rick Hess on value-added methodologies is also worth reading.

But, first, I'll say a little more. It appears that a fair number of the forces pushing SB 6 and now bemoaning its veto admit that it was a flawed bill. But, those parties then say, ANYTHING is better than the current system. No doubt the current system needs fixin', but why didn't Florida policymakers craft legislation that took a more nuanced view of teacher effectiveness and which recognized the shortcoming of evaluating teachers based on one year's worth of test scores? Dear Florida and Dear Reformers: Just because you believe the status quo sucks doesn't excuse your lack of effort in designing a reform that sucks just slightly less.

As for politics, it seems like, if anything, especially as Crist is a candidate for US Senate in a Republican primary, this veto was an act of political courage. How former Bushie John Bailey can claim it represents the opposite seems to me to represent fanciful, Republican-style logic that might play at a Sarah Palin rally, but that this Education Optimist ain't buying.

And, as for claims (here and here), that Crist's veto will cost Florida funding in Phase Two of the Race to the Top competition, check back here in September. I predict that Florida will be holding a bag of money at that point, this veto notwithstanding.

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You're Fired!

I am deeply troubled to read columns like this ("Improve education, fire bad teachers") -- both the title and the content -- from a reputable source like the Center for American Progress (CAP). Much as the likes of FOX News are in desperate need of balance and breadth of perspective, so is this column.

Where is the discussion about the need to support teachers to become more effective through improved preparation, stronger induction and mentoring, and job-embedded professional development? What about more than a throwaway line about the role of teacher evaluation systems to provide constructive feedback to help teachers identify strengths and weaknesses and help them become more effective?

I don't mean to pick on CAP too harshly, for some of its prior reports (such as this one) approached the teacher effectiveness issue more comprehensively and accurately. But if all we do is focus on firing teachers, without addressing other elements of teacher quality policy, we're going to dig ourselves into a hole that we'll never crawl out of. While stricter license and tenure requirements and more meaningful teacher evaluation systems might weed out truly ineffective teachers (a small minority), it won't do anything to help the vast majority teachers become more successful without a clear focus on individualized teacher development.

Another recent example of oversimplification and the repetitive 'teachers suck' mantra appeared on the pages of Newsweek masquerading as an actual news article. (I'm glad I canceled my subscription years ago.) The authors pontificated that, "Nothing, then, is more important than hiring good teachers and firing bad ones." Um, OK. Nothing, huh?

We need a broader vision here, folks, along the lines that the Obama Administration has articulated in its initial ESEA blueprint. It is not as simple as just firing more teachers. Columns like these do not convey the complexity and comprehensiveness of the policies, practices and implementation that is needed to truly improve teacher effectiveness across the board. They simplify the problem and cast the responsibility for educational failure solely on teachers.

Speaking of balance, here are more of my thoughts....

UPDATE: Eduwonk and Claus von Zastrow make good points on this issue -- as does Diane Ravitch (here and here). Bill Maher offers his own 'new rule, raising the important issue of parental involvement.

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Race To The Top: Under The Hood

My colleagues and I at the New Teacher Center submitted revised language during the public comment period to strengthen proposed Race to the Top (RttT) regulations. (8/28/2009: "RttT: Redefining Teacher Effectiveness".) I am delighted that most of our suggestions were adopted. Specifically, three changes I am pleased to see in the final RttT regulations and state application released by the U.S. Department of Education today are:

(1) A focus on multiple measures in teacher evaluation.

We have defined effective teacher to mean “a teacher whose students achieve acceptable rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice). States, LEAs, or schools must include multiple measures, provided that teacher effectiveness is evaluated, in significant part, by student growth (as defined in this notice). Supplemental measures may include, for example, multiple observation-based assessments of teacher performance.”

We have revised criterion (D)(2)(ii) to read, “Design and implement rigorous, transparent, and fair evaluation systems for teachers and principals that (a) differentiate effectiveness using multiple rating categories that take into account data on student growth (as defined in this notice) as a significant factor, and (b) are designed and developed with teacher and principal involvement.”

(2) A stronger focus on school leaders and the inclusion of positive teaching and learning conditions in the definition of effective principal.

We have changed the definition of effective principal as follows: (a) replaced “States may supplement this definition as they see fit” with “States, LEAs, or schools must include multiple measures;” (b) added ”Supplemental measures may include, for example, high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates, as well as evidence of providing supportive teaching and learning conditions, strong instructional leadership, and positive family and community engagement;” and (c) replaced “so long as principal effectiveness is judged, in significant measure by student growth” with “provided that principal effectiveness is evaluated, in significant part, by student growth.”

(3) Greater attention to the need for high-quality teacher induction, mentoring and professional development.

We agree that induction programs and coaching by accomplished teachers and principals can be important and effective strategies for supporting novice teachers and principals upon their entering the profession. We are revising the criterion to clarify that States’ plans in response to this criterion should provide for coaching and induction programs as supports for teachers and principals. Changes: We have revised criterion (D)(5)(i) to clarify that plans should include providing effective, data-informed “coaching” and “induction.”

We agree that professional development, including mentoring and coaching, are important aspects of teacher effectiveness. For this reason, criterion (D)(2)(iv)(a) focuses on using evaluations to inform decisions regarding developing effective teachers and principals, including by providing relevant coaching, induction support, and/or professional development. Criterion (D)(5) also provides for evaluation of the extent to which a State has a high-quality plan for its participating LEAs to provide effective, data-informed professional development, coaching, induction, and common planning and collaboration time to teachers and principals.

Sources of great analysis on the final RttT regulations here:

• Education Week (Michele McNeil): "Rules Set for $4 Billion 'Race to Top' Contest"
• New York Times (Sam Dillon): "After Criticism, The Administration Is Praised for Final Rules on Education Grants"
  
• Teacher Beat: "Teacher Elements of Final Race to the Top Guidelines"
  
• Eduflack: "Just The Race Facts"
• Eduflack: "The Race Officially Begins ... Now"
• Eduwonk: "Racing To The Top"

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Can Baby Steps Win the Race To The Top?

It looks like the state of Wisconsin may become the canary in the coal mine with regard to data firewalls and the Race to the Top (RttT) competition. Last week, the State Legislature passed legislation, signed today by the Governor, that theoretically removes Wisconsin's statutory firewall restricting the use of student achievement data in teacher evaluations. I say theoretically because the bill prevents student test data from being used to discipline or dismiss teachers. And it requires that any changes to teacher evaluation systems be bargained separately in each of the state's 426 school districts.

A quote (included in the Wisconsin State Journal's editorial criticizing the legislation) from John Ashley, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, is damning:

"The language that's being presented is more interested in protecting teachers," Ashley said. "It doesn't seem to be in the spirit of what the secretary and the president were talking about."

It seems like the state made the fewest number of changes possible to at least try to create the appearance of reform without actually guaranteeing any real reform will take place. Perhaps it was done with legislative vote counting in mind. Perhaps it was done due to an honest disagreement with the teacher evaluation requirement of RttT. Perhaps it was done because the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) -- the state teacher's union -- likely would have opposed greater changes and its support was needed to get Democratic votes. The biggest cynics might say that the state is guilty of racing to the trough, chasing money without abandoning the status quo, and that WEAC could decide to recommend that its locals oppose ANY use of student achievement data in teacher evaluation.

Personally, I am not opposed to evaluation being subject to collective bargaining. Getting teachers' buy-in to any evaluation system and, even more ideally, jointly designing a system with teachers is preferable to subjecting them to an undesired one. At the same time, I believe that student learning must come into play as one of multiple factors in teacher evaluation and that states are the appropriate actors to draw that line in the sand. This, too, is what the U.S. Department of Education's proposed RttT regulations require. Wisconsin's bill does not guarantee it. What would have made this bill meaningful would have been the inclusion of an affirmative requirement (a 'shall' rather than a 'may') that student learning be a factor in teacher evaluation. To not go that far statutorily suggests that Wisconsin's baby steps may not help it reach the Top.

The Education Department will soon have its say when it evaluates the first round of RttT applications in early 2010. Final RttT regulations could be issued as early as mid-week.

See Teacher Beat's post here. (Great seeing Stephen at APPAM in DC last week!)

See background from the Education Optimists here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE (Wisconsin State Journal, 11/10/2009): Let the controversy erupt...

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Using Value Added to Assess Teacher Effectiveness

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management -- an organization not widely known outside of academia and technical policy circles -- puts on truly meaty conferences. I've attended three APPAM conferences to date, including the Annual Fall Research Conference going on in Washington, DC this week.

Education is merely one strand at APPAM, but the sessions feature some of the biggest names in educational research addressing some very policy relevant issues. The current conference features sessions on value-added modeling, school choice, teacher certification and teacher induction, teacher performance pay, financial aid, college persistence, and more.

The session I attended yesterday on "Using Value Added To Assess Teacher Effectiveness" was excellent. It featured four papers each of which I will undoubtedly oversimplify in this brief blog post. (I encourage you to seek out the papers and read them closely -- below I've linked to those that are available.) One by Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen (University of Washington) suggests that year-to-year correlations in value-added teacher effects are modest, but that pre-tenure estimates of teacher job performance do predict estimated post-tenure performance in both math and reading. A second by Julian Betts (UCSD) and Cory Koedel (University of Missouri-Columbia) suggests that bias does exist in value-added models due to student sorting, but that it can be overcome through the use of multiple years of value-added data; further, the study suggests that data from the first year or two of classroom teaching may be insufficient to make reliable judgments about teacher quality. A third by Michael Weiss of MDRC suggests that that teacher variability carries implications for measuring program effects within randomized controlled trials when those teachers are not randomly assigned. And a fourth by John Tyler (Brown University) and Tom Kane (Harvard University) found that teacher assessments made using classroom observation rubrics (such as Charlotte Danielson's) are closely aligned with value-added ratings of teachers.

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California Knocks Down Data Firewall

California is adept at building firebreaks to stop advancing wildfires throughout the state. The inferno that is the student-teacher firewall issue was apparently doused yesterday when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that eliminates a statutory ban on using student achievement data to evaluate teachers. The existence of such a restriction would have deemed California ineligible for a federal Race to the Top competitive grant award.

Here is the Governor's press release.

Here, here and here are background posts on the student-teacher data firewall issue in California.

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