Union members spotlight - day 2

This is day two of our spotlight on union members who have decided to run for the Ohio general assembly. Candidates spotlighted on day one, can be found here.

It should be noted that the districts listed below are new as a consequence of the legislative redistricting process that happened last year.

House district 37 - Tom Schmida (D)

Tom is a member of OFT and has been President of Cleveland Heights Teachers Union for 20 years. Tom started his teaching career at Wiley Junior High School in 1972. He taught social studies there until 2005, when he became a social studies teacher at Cleveland Heights High School. He will be facing an incumbent Rep of former district 42, Kristina Roegner in November. Rep. Roegner voted against the middle class when she cast he vote for SB5 and HB153.

House district 45 - Teresa Fedor (D)

Rep. Teresa Fedor currently represents district 47. A member of OFT, she attended the University of Toledo, received a Bachelor of Science in Education and spent 18 years as a classroom teacher. She has no opponent in the primary of the general election. You can read more about Rep. Fedor, here.

House district 47 - Jeff Bunck (D)

Jeff is a member of OEA. Jeff is a retired high school government teacher and said the Republican attempt to thwart collective bargaining sparked his decision to run for a seat in the Ohio House against a GOP incumbent in suburban Toledo. The debate will still be fresh in the minds of voters next year, he said.

"It will level the playing field a whole lot even in gerrymandered districts like the one I'm running in," said Bunck, who's 59 and never run for office before.

With no opponent in the primary will be facing incumbent Rep. Barbara Sears who was a vote in favor of SB5 and HB153.

House district 57 - Matt Lark (D)

Matt Lark is now running unopposed in the primary and will face incumbent Rep. Terry Boose who voted for SB5 and HB153, and against the middle class. Matt is a member of OEA, and has spent the last twenty years working as a high school science teacher in Ohio. The first six years of his career were with the Toledo Public School system while the last fourteen years he has worked at Norwalk High School. Matt is currently the President of the Norwalk Teachers Association. You can learn more about Matt LArk, here.

House district 58 - Bobby Hagan (D)

Rep. Hagan was first elected to District 60 in 2006, but is running for re-election in District 58 in 2012. He is a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. He is unopposed in the primary and general election, as incumbent Terry Boose has decided to run for reelection in district 57.

Tomorrow we will highlight 5 more union members who are running for the Ohio general assembly.

Shame, errors and demoralizing

Shame, errors and demoralizing, just some of the emerging rhetoric being used since the NYT and other publications went ahead and published teacher level value add scores. A great number of articles have been written decrying the move.

Perhaps most surprising of all was Bill Gates, in a piece titled "Shame Is Not the Solution". In it, Gates argues

Value-added ratings are one important piece of a complete personnel system. But student test scores alone aren’t a sensitive enough measure to gauge effective teaching, nor are they diagnostic enough to identify areas of improvement. Teaching is multifaceted, complex work. A reliable evaluation system must incorporate other measures of effectiveness, like students’ feedback about their teachers and classroom observations by highly trained peer evaluators and principals.

Putting sophisticated personnel systems in place is going to take a serious commitment. Those who believe we can do it on the cheap — by doing things like making individual teachers’ performance reports public — are underestimating the level of resources needed to spur real improvement.
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Developing a systematic way to help teachers get better is the most powerful idea in education today. The surest way to weaken it is to twist it into a capricious exercise in public shaming. Let’s focus on creating a personnel system that truly helps teachers improve.

Following that, Matthew Di Carlo at the Shanker institute took a deeper look at the data and the error margins inherent in using it

First, let’s quickly summarize the imprecision associated with the NYC value-added scores, using the raw datasets from the city. It has been heavily reported that the average confidence interval for these estimates – the range within which we can be confident the “true estimate” falls – is 35 percentile points in math and 53 in English Language Arts (ELA). But this oversimplifies the situation somewhat, as the overall average masks quite a bit of variation by data availability.
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This can be illustrated by taking a look at the categories that the city (and the Journal) uses to label teachers (or, in the case of the Times, schools).

Here’s how teachers are rated: low (0-4th percentile); below average (5-24); average (25-74); above average (75-94); and high (95-99).

To understand the rocky relationship between value-added margins of error and these categories, first take a look at the Times’ “sample graph” below.

That level of error in each measurement renders the teacher grades virtually useless. But that was just the start of the problems, as David Cohen notes in a piece titled "Big Apple’s Rotten Ratings".

So far, I think the best image from the whole fiasco comes from math teacher Gary Rubinstein, who ran the numbers himself, a bunch of different ways. The first analysis works on the premise that a teacher should not become dramatically better or worse in one year. He compared the data for 13,000 teachers over two consecutive years and found this – a virtually random distribution:

First of all, as I’ve repeated every chance I get, the three leading professional organizations for educational research and measurement (AERA, NCME, APA) agree that you cannot draw valid inferences about teaching from a test that was designed and validated to measure learning; they are not the same thing. No one using value-added measurement EVER has an answer for that.

Then, I thought of a set of objections that had already been articulated on DiCarlo’s blog by a commenter. Harris Zwerling called for answers to the following questions if we’re to believe in value-added ratings:

1. Does the VAM used to calculate the results plausibly meet its required assumptions? Did the contractor test this? (See Harris, Sass, and Semykina, “Value-Added Models and the Measurement of Teacher Productivity” Calder Working Paper No. 54.)
2. Was the VAM properly specified? (e.g., Did the VAM control for summer learning, tutoring, test for various interactions, e.g., between class size and behavioral disabilities?)
3. What specification tests were performed? How did they affect the categorization of teachers as effective or ineffective?
4. How was missing data handled?
5. How did the contractors handle team teaching or other forms of joint teaching for the purposes of attributing the test score results?
6. Did they use appropriate statistical methods to analyze the test scores? (For example, did the VAM provider use regression techniques if the math and reading tests were not plausibly scored at an interval level?)
7. When referring back to the original tests, particularly ELA, does the range of teacher effects detected cover an educationally meaningful range of test performance?
8. To what degree would the test results differ if different outcome tests were used?
9. Did the VAM provider test for sorting bias?

Today, education historian Diane Ravitch published a piece titled "How to Demoralize Teachers", which draws all these problems together to highlight how counter productive the effort is becoming

Gates raises an important question: What is the point of evaluations? Shaming employees or helping them improve? In New York City, as in Los Angeles in 2010, it's hard to imagine that the publication of the ratings—with all their inaccuracies and errors—will result in anything other than embarrassing and humiliating teachers. No one will be a better teacher because of these actions. Some will leave this disrespected profession—which is daily losing the trappings of professionalism, the autonomy requisite to be considered a profession. Some will think twice about becoming a teacher. And children will lose the good teachers, the confident teachers, the energetic and creative teachers, they need.
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Interesting that teaching is the only profession where job ratings, no matter how inaccurate, are published in the news media. Will we soon see similar evaluations of police officers and firefighters, legislators and reporters? Interesting, too, that no other nation does this to its teachers. Of course, when teachers are graded on a curve, 50 percent will be in the bottom half, and 25 percent in the bottom quartile.

Is this just another ploy to undermine public confidence in public education?

It's hard to conclude that for some, that might very well be the goal.

Union members spotlight - day 1

When we predicted that the biggest fight over SB5 was still ahead, little did we think that almost 1 in 3 general assembly districts being contested would have candidates with union memberships, including 14 teachers. With just a week to go before the 2012 primary election on March 6th, we thought we would highlight a group of those individuals each day of the week.

It should be noted that the districts listed below are new as a consequence of the legislative redistricting process that happened last year.

House District 7 - Matt Patten (D)

Matt Patten represented the former 18th District from 2009 to 2011, and is affiliated with Laborers. You can learn more about Matt, here. He is in an uncontested primary and will face current state Rep Mike Dovilla in November. Rep. Dovilla voted for both SB5 and the budget HB153 which contained SB5 like provisions while simultaneously cutting billions from education funding.

House District 16 - Todd Laveck (D)

Todd Laveck is an OFT member, and Cleveland school teacher. He is running in a contested primary, and has garnered the following endorsements: Ohio Education Association, Ohio Federation of Teachers, Northern Ohio Fire Fighters Association, Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, Teamsters Local 407, Cleveland Teachers Union Local 279, Cleveland Custodians Union Local 777, Cleveland Stonewall Democrats, Fairview Park Mayor Eileen Patton, State Senator Michael Skindell, State Representative Nickie Antonio, State Representative Mike Foley, State Representative Kenny Yuko, Former State Representative Jennifier Brady, Fairview Park Democratic Club, Former North Olmsted Mayor Thomas O'Grady.

You can find out more about Todd, here. If he is successful in winning the March 6th primary, he will face incumbent Nan Baker who also voted against the middle class and schools, voting for SB5 and HB153.

House District 20 - Marco Miller (D)

Marco Miller is a retired member of IAFF (firefighters) having served 25 years in the Columbus Division of Fire. You can find out more about Marco, here. He too is running in a contested primary. Marco is running in a contest primary to replace incumbent Nancy Garland.

He has the following list of endorsements: Franklin County Democratic Party, Greater Columbus/Franklin County United Auto Workers- CAP Council, Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA), Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT), Plumbers and Pipefitters, Sheet Metal Workers, Stonewall Democrats of Central Ohio, Immigrant Citizens of Ohio PAC, Franklin County Commissioner Paula Brooks, Franklin County Commission John O’Grady, Franklin County Clerk of Courts Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, Franklin County Municipal Clerk of Courts Lori Tyack, Columbus City Council Member Hearcel Craig, Columbus City Councilman Zach Klein, Columbus City Councilwoman Eileen Paley, Madison Township Trustee Edward Dildine, Whitehall City Councilwoman Karen Conison, Whitehall City Council President Jim Graham, Whitehall City Councilwoman Leslie LaCorte, Whitehall City Auditor Dan Miller, State Representative Teresa Fedor, Franklin County Recorder Candidate Terry Brown, Past Franklin County Democratic Party Chairwoman Fran Ryan, Past Franklin County Democratic Party Chairman Denny White

House District 21 - Donna O'Connor (D)

Donna O'Connor is a member of OEA and a special education teacher in Dublin. She is endorsed by the Franklin County Democratic Party, the Ohio Education Association and Emily's List. if successful in her primary she will face incumbent Rep. Duffy whose votes for SB5 and HB153 also harmed the middle class. You can find out more about Donna, here.

District 24 - Maureen Reedy (D)

Maureen Reedy is also a member of OEA. She was Teacher of the Year for the Upper Arlington City School District in 2001 and the Ohio Teacher of the Year in 2002. Maureen is uncontested on the March 6th ballot and will face Stephanie Kunze in november in a contest to replace incumbent Ted Celeste who is running for Senate District 3.

You can learn more about Maureen, here.

Tomorrow we will take a look at another 5 union members running for the Ohio General Assembly.

Incompetent Teachers or Dysfunctional Systems?

Via

Incompetent Teachers or Dysfunctional Systems?

Popular modes of evaluating teachers are fraught with inaccuracies

In conclusion
New approaches to teacher evaluation should take advantage of research on teacher effectiveness. While there are considerable challenges in using value-added test scores to evaluate individual teachers directly, using value-added methods in research can help validate measures that are productive for teacher evaluation.

Research indicates that value-added measures of student achievement tied to individual teachers should not be used for high-stakes, individual-level decisions, or comparisons across highly dissimilar schools or student populations. Valid interpretations require aggregate-level data and should ensure that background factors — including overall classroom composition — are as similar as possible across groups being compared. In general, such measures should be used only in a low-stakes fashion when they’re part of an integrated analysis of teachers’ practices.

Standards-based evaluation processes have also been found to be predictive of student learning gains and productive for teacher learning. These include systems like National Board certification and performance assessments for beginning teacher licensing as well as district and school-level instruments based on professional teaching standards. Effective systems have developed an integrated set of measures that show what teachers do and what happens as a result. These measures may include evidence of student work and learning, as well as evidence of teacher practices derived from observations, video- tapes, artifacts, and even student surveys.

These tools are most effective when embedded in systems that support evaluation expertise and well- grounded decisions, by ensuring that evaluators are trained, evaluation and feedback are frequent, mentoring and professional development are available, and processes are in place to support due process and timely decision making by an appropriate body.

With these features in place, evaluation can be- come a more useful part of a productive teaching and learning system, supporting accurate information about teachers, helpful feedback, and well-grounded personnel decisions.

Kappan magazine - Teacher evaluation

What Teachers Want

Via

• An end to the teacher blame game.
• Administrators who have at least ten years of actual teaching experience.
• Involved, competent parents.
• Adequately funded schools.
• Input regarding curriculum decisions (and the input is actually followed).
• Flexibility when it comes to methodology.
• Administrative support in matters of discipline.
• An end to the “teach to the test mentality”.
• Acknowledgement that teaching involves so much more than test scores.
• Acknowledgement that as a teaching professional, teachers might actually know what’s best for the students.

Feel free to add to the list in the comments!