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NCLB’s 10th Anniversary No Cause For Celebration

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Via NEA, to mark today being the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law by former President George W. Bush 10 years ago this Sunday. NCLB changed the focus of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), from emphasizing equal access and closing achievement gaps in education, to focusing on high stakes testing, labeling, and sanctions.

NEA believes the 10th anniversary of NCLB is no cause for celebration and that drastic changes should be made before students and educators are forced to mark yet another anniversary living with this flawed law.

“I meet with thousands of educators as I travel around the country, and the concern I hear most often is the overwhelming burden NCLB presents in classrooms and schools,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “From high-stakes testing to narrowing of the curriculum, this law has missed the mark. Instead of creating a generation of critical thinkers, we are graduating a generation of test takers. Let’s get back to the core purpose of public education and let’s re-balance the federal role: ensuring every student has access to a great education that prepares them for lifelong learning and success in the 21st century.”

School progress cannot accurately be measured by a snapshot of test scores from one test, given on one day in the school year. These high-stakes tests are leaving behind too many students. As members of Congress prepare to consider reauthorization this year, NEA is urging them to get it right this time by listening to those affected most by the law—students, teachers and parents.

NEA’s priorities for ESEA reauthorization are:

  • Promote innovation, high expectations, and encourage development of 21st century skills in public schools.
  • End the obsession with high-stakes, poor-quality tests, by developing high-quality assessment systems that provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they have learned.
  • Provide great educators and school leaders for every student.
  • Promote public education as a shared responsibility of parents, students, educators, and policymakers.
  • Provide increased funding to all states and school districts to meet the growing demand for educating U.S. students to be globally-competitive.

“The time and funds spent on complying with NCLB red tape should be used to promote teacher collaboration, identifying and addressing students’ individual needs and restoring great programs that have been slashed from school offerings because of a focus on math and reading and dwindling funds,” said Van Roekel. “Our students and educators have been calling out to Congress for years now to invest in classroom priorities that build the foundation for student learning.”

New Gates Study on teacher evaluations

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A new Gates study released today finds effective teacher evaluations require high standards, with multiple measures.

ABOUT THIS REPORT: This report is intended for policymakers and practitioners wanting to understand the implications of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project’s interim analysis of classroom observations. Those wanting to explore all the technical aspects of the study and analysis also should read the companion research report, available at www.metproject.org.

Together, these two documents on classroom observations represent the second pair of publications from the MET project. In December 2010, the project released its initial analysis of measures of student perceptions and student achievement in Learning about Teaching: Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project. Two more reports are planned for mid-2012: one on the implications of assigning weights to different measures; another using random assignment to study the extent to which student assignment may affect teacher effectiveness results. ABOUT THE MET PROJECT: The MET project is a research partnership of academics, teachers, and education organizations committed to investigating better ways to identify and develop effective teaching. Funding is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The report provides for 3 takeaways.

High-quality classroom observations will require clear standards, certified raters, and multiple observations per teacher. Clear standards and high-quality training and certification of observers are fundamental to increasing inter-rater reliability. However, when measuring consistent aspects of a teacher’s practice, reliability will require more than inter- rater agreement on a single lesson. Because teaching practice varies from lesson to lesson, multiple observations will be necessary when high-stakes decisions are to be made. But how will school systems know when they have implemented a fair system? Ultimately, the most direct way is to periodically audit a representative sample of official observations, by having impartial observers perform additional observations. In our companion research report, we describe one approach to doing this.

Combining the three approaches (classroom observations, student feedback, and value-added student achievement gains) capitalizes on their strengths and offsets their weaknesses. For example, value-added is the best single predictor of a teacher’s student achievement gains in the future. But value-added is often not as reliable as some other measures and it does not point a teacher to specific areas needing improvement. Classroom observations provide a wealth of information that could support teachers in improving their practice. But, by themselves, these measures are not highly reliable, and they are only modestly related to student achievement gains. Student feedback promises greater reliability because it includes many more perspectives based on many more hours in the classroom, but not surprisingly, it is not as predictive of a teacher’s achievement gains with other students as value-added. Each shines in its own way, either in terms of predictive power, reliability, or diagnostic usefulness.

Combining new approaches to measuring effective teaching—while not perfect—significantly outperforms traditional measures. Providing better evidence should lead to better decisions. No measure is perfect. But if every personnel decision carries consequences—for teachers and students—then school systems should learn which measures are better aligned to the outcomes they value. Combining classroom observations with student feedback and student achievement gains on state tests did a better job than master’s degrees and years of experience in predicting which teachers would have large gains with another group of students. But the combined measure also predicted larger differences on a range of other outcomes, including more cognitively challenging assessments and student- reported effort and positive emotional attachment. We should refine these tools and continue to develop better ways to provide feedback to teachers. In the meantime, it makes sense to compare measures based on the criteria of predictive power, reliability, and diagnostic usefulness.

MET Gathering Feedback Practioner Brief

A bridge too far

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If you're a school administrator, wondering what your next budget is going to look like, waiting for the release of a new school funding formula, our advice is "don't hold your breath".

Ohio had a school funding formula. Strangley, it still has a website dedicated to it

After 20 years of controversy over its school funding system, Ohio now has a new method for providing funding to its public schools. Enacted as part of the 2010-2011 state budget, the Ohio Evidence-Based Model is designed to fund strategies that have the best chance to help students learn.

While economic realities require that the new approach be phased in over 10 years, the principles underlying the evidence-based model are now in place.

What's more, the new funding model is tied to education reforms designed to build a 21st-century system of education for Ohio.

Unlike the current Attorney General, Mike DeWine, who is winning plaudits for continuing and building upon much of the work of the previous administration, the Governor decided that everything the previous administration had done must go. Whether it worked or not. The Evidenced based model, which brought together hundreds of stakeholders and took years to develop was immediately scrapped. Replaced with a make-it-up-as-we-go-along "bridging formula". It is increasingly likely that a continuing "bridging formula" is on the horizon

But nearly a year later, Kasich, like governors before him, has found that overhauling the way Ohio funds education is not simple math.

The Republican administration concluded a series of public meetings on the issue in September but has yet to release a draft proposal promised for October. And now the governor’s office appears certain to miss a self-imposed deadline of January for unveiling its method of paying for Ohio schools.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said the administration is working on its plan, and he doesn’t know when it will be ready.

We asked the Governor's education Czar, Bob Sommers, if he could provide some timetable guidance.

@RDSommers can you give us some guide as to when we might see a funding formula? Is it close, not close? Thanks!
@jointhefutureOH wish I could, but the issues are complex. We continue to study the possibilities. Ideas welcome

We suggested they look at successful models elsewhere in the country, but apparently they don't think there are any. We'd also suggest that they were a little trigger happy in shooting down the Evidence Based Model, and perhaps they could perform some CPR and bring it back with their own modifications.

Either way, the administration has clearly learned that this is no simple task with obvious answers.

Their difficulties will certainly have been further complicated by severe funding cuts as a result of HB153 raiding school budgets, and alienating most school districts and communities with bills like SB5 and HB136. It's hard to collaborate with hundreds of stakeholders when the previous 12 months have been spent attacking them and their mission.

If the administration have learned this lesson we should expect to see more outreach and consultation, and eventually arrive at a funding formula that works for most. Otherwise the administration is going to find itself having traveled a bridge too far.

Final note. We'd like to thank Bob Sommers for engaging in our questions with honest and forthright answers. While we sometimes disagree on fundamental policies, being able to have open and honest policy dialogue is our number one goal, his efforts in this repect advance that.

Stop Tying Pay to Performance

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The evidence is overwhelming: It doesn’t work.

That's the headline from a Harvard Business Review article. If the HBR can conclude that pay for performance doesn't work for big business executives, it's not a giant leap to understand it won't work for the teaching profession where there is no profit motive, but instead relies on collaboration and teamwork.

Time frame: next week | Degree of difficulty: operationally easy, psychologically hard | Barrier: greed, economic theory

We’ve talked about this since the financial meltdown. Now it’s time to do it: Unlink pay from performance. The evidence keeps growing that pay for performance is ineffective. It also may induce executives to take company-killing risks. There are other ways to motivate employees that yield better results at lower cost.

It may take a while before actual evidence and research finally convinces corporate education reformers they have it wrong, but month after month the moiuntain of evidence grows.

Where the GOP Presidential candidates stand on education

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With congress unable to pass any meaningful legislation, the executive branch has wielded ever greater power in the education policy setting realm, most notably using Race to the Top to bribe cash strapped states to compete with each other in a race to implement all manner of unproven education reforms.

No doubt then, whomever wins the voters approval this coming November to become President, will have a large impact on public education and education policy for at least the next 4 years.

So it is, that tonight is the first step in selecting the next President, the Iowa caucuses. Where members of the Iowa Republican party will select their preferred candidate to face President Obama in November. (the Democrats will select a candidate too, but President Obama is unchallenged). For how this caucus works, the Desmoines Register has a handy guide.

We thought it would be useful to provide a guide on what each of the main GOP Presidential candidates have put forth as their education agenda.

Mitt Romney

A quick look at Mitt Romney's campaign website reveals that education isn't a priority. Under his issues tab he lists only jobs, healthcare and foreign policy. We have to turn to third party reporting then to discern his intentions. A reading of various articles reveals a candidate who falls in the corporate education reform camp. More testing, teachers with less influence, pay for test results. While he once supported the abolition of the Department of Education, he has since changed that stance.

Ron Paul

Ron Paul does feature education on his campaign website.

Ron Paul works towards the elimination of the inefficient Department of Education, leaving education decisions to be made at the state, local or personal level. Parents should have the right to spend their money on the school or method of schooling they deem appropriate for their children.

It was arduous researching into Ron Paul's political positions as one quickly descends in to a carnival of the bizarre. This post sums up the problem quite well.

Rick Perry

Like Mitt Romney, Rick Perry doesn't feature education among his list of issues on his website, but he does feature some education policy on his Gubernatorial website

Education reform has been a top priority for Governor Perry during his 20 years of public service. He has worked to raise the overall quality of education in Texas by aligning the higher education standards more closely with the needs of business, balancing accountability with incentives for teacher and school performance and increasing the emphasis on core subject areas like math, reading and science.

One of the most memorable policy positions Rick Perry has put forth has been his desire to abolish the Department of Education

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum doesn't have any education policy listed on his campaign website. This seems to be an evolving theme of the Republican candidates, and one we find troubling.

Perhaps his largest contribution to education policy was the "Santorum Amendment", which Wikipedia describes as follows

The Santorum Amendment was an amendment to the 2001 education funding bill which became known as the No Child Left Behind Act, proposed by then-Republican United States Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, which promotes the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in U.S. public schools. Though the amendment only survives in modified form in the Bill's Conference Report and does not carry the weight of law, as one of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns it became a cornerstone in the intelligent design movement's "Teach the Controversy" campaign.

Santorum is another Republican who believes in a limited role in education for the Federal government.

On Friday, he said people often ask what he would do at a federal level to promote his education ideas.

"I say darn little, other than talking about it. One of the things a president can do and it's important for a president to do is lead a discussion about important things in America," Santorum said.

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich features a very lengthy policy list related to education on his campaign website. The bullet points include

  • Empower parents to pick the right school for their child.
  • Institute a Pell Grant-style system for Kindergarten through 12th Grade.

  • Require transparency and accountability about achievement.
  • Implement a “no limits” charter system.

  • Establish a pay for performance system.
  • Welcome business talent in our communities into the classroom. 
Restore American history and values into the classroom.
  • Protect the rights of home-schooled children 
Encourage states to think outside outdated boundaries of education.
  • Shrink the federal Department of Education

Those are the positions, as best as we could discern, of each of the current top tier candidates in the GOP primary as they head in to tonight's Iowa caucus. According to the reputable polling prognosticator, 538, here's the current polling state of play

Teacher Retention: Estimating and Understanding the Effects of Financial Incentives

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There is currently much interest in improving access to high-quality teachers (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2010; Hanushek, 2007) through improved recruitment and retention. Prior research has shown that it is difficult to retain teachers, particularly in high-poverty schools (Boyd et al., 2011; Ingersoll, 2004). Although there is no one reason for this difficulty, there is some evidence to suggest teachers may leave certain schools or the profession in part because of dissatisfaction with low salaries (Ingersoll, 2001).

Thus, it is possible that by offering teachers financial incentives, whether in the form of alternative compensation systems or standalone bonuses, they would become more satisfied with their jobs and retention would increase. As of yet, however, support for this approach has not been grounded in empirical research.

Denver’s Professional Compensation System for Teachers (“ProComp”) is one of the most prominent alternative teacher compensation reforms in the nation.* Via a combination of ten financial incentives, ProComp seeks to increase student achievement by motivating teachers to improve their instructional practices and by attracting and retaining high-quality teachers to work in the district.

My research examines ProComp in terms of: 1) whether it has increased retention rates; 2) the relationship between retention and school quality (defined in terms of student test score growth); and 3) the reasons underlying these effects. I pay special attention to the effects of ProComp on schools that serve high concentrations of poor students – “Hard to Serve” (HTS) schools where teachers are eligible to receive a financial incentive to stay. The quantitative findings are discussed briefly below (I will discuss my other results in a future post).

[readon2 url="http://shankerblog.org/?p=4633"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

The full paper can is below:

TEACHER RETENTION: ESTIMATING AND UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF FINANCIAL INCENTIVES IN DENVER