Ohio Value-added measures poverty

Congratulations Ohio corporate education reformers, you have discovered yet another way to measure poverty. Unfortunately you seem to believe this is also a good way to evaluate teachers.

Value-added was supposed to be the great equalizer -- a measure of schools that would finally judge fairly how much poor students are learning compared with their wealthier peers.

Meant to gauge whether students learn as much as expected in a given year, value-added will become a key part of rating individual teachers from rich and poor districts alike next school year.

But a Plain Dealer/StateImpact Ohio analysis raises questions about how much of an equalizer it truly is, even as the state ramps up its use.

The 2011-12 value-added results show that districts, schools and teachers with large numbers of poor students tend to have lower value-added results than those that serve more-affluent ones.

Of course there are going to be defenders of the high stakes sweepstakes

"Value-added is not influenced by socioeconomic status," said Matt Cohen, the chief research officer at the Ohio Department of Education. "That much is pretty clear."

That is the same Matt Cohen who admitted he is no expert and has no clue how Value-add is calculated

The department’s top research official, Matt Cohen, acknowledged that he can’t explain the details of exactly how Ohio’s value-added model works. He said that’s not a problem.

“It’s not important for me to be able to be the expert,” he said. “I rely on the expertise of people who have been involved in the field.” 

Perhaps if Mr Cohen became more familiar with the science and the data he would realize that:

• Value-added scores were 2½ times higher on average for districts where the median family income is above $35,000 than for districts with income below that amount.
• For low-poverty school districts, two-thirds had positive value-added scores -- scores indicating students made more than a year's worth of progress.

For high-poverty school districts, two-thirds had negative value-added scores -- scores indicating that students made less than a year's progress.

• Almost 40 percent of low-poverty schools scored "Above" the state's value-added target, compared with 20 percent of high-poverty schools.

At the same time, 25 percent of high-poverty schools scored "Below" state value-added targets while low-poverty schools were half as likely to score "Below."

• Students in high-poverty schools are more likely to have teachers rated "Least Effective" -- the lowest state rating -- than "Most Effective" -- the highest of five ratings. The three ratings in the middle are treated by the state as essentially average performance.

Is there really any doubt what is truly being measured here? Ohio's secret Value-added formula is good at measuring poverty, not teacher effectiveness.

We predict districts and administrators and those connected to the development of Value-added measures are going to be deluged with lawsuits once high stakes decisions are attached to the misguided application of these diagnostic scores.

Value-added: How Ohio is destroying a profession

We ended the week last week with a post titled "The 'fun' begins soon", which took a look at the imminent changes to education policy in Ohio. We planned on detailing each of these issues over the next few weeks.

Little did we know that the 'fun' would begin that weekend. It came in the manner of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and NPR publishing a story on the changing landscape of teacher evaluations titled "Grading the Teachers: How Ohio is Measuring Teacher Quality by the Numbers".

It's a solid, long piece, worth the time taken to read it. It covers some, though not all, of the problems of using value-added measurements to evaluate teachers

Those ratings are still something of an experiment. Only reading and math teachers in grades four to eight get value-added ratings now. But the state is exploring how to expand value-added to other grades and subjects.

Among some teachers, there’s confusion about how these measures are calculated and what they mean.

“We just know they have to do better than they did last year,” Beachwood fourth-grade teacher Alesha Trudell said.

Some of the confusion may be due to a lack of transparency around the value-added model.

The details of how the scores are calculated aren’t public. The Ohio Education Department will pay a North Carolina-based company, SAS Institute Inc., $2.3 million this year to do value-added calculations for teachers and schools. The company has released some information on its value-added model but declined to release key details about how Ohio teachers’ value-added scores are calculated.

The Education Department doesn’t have a copy of the full model and data rules either.

The department’s top research official, Matt Cohen, acknowledged that he can’t explain the details of exactly how Ohio’s value-added model works. He said that’s not a problem.

Evaluating a teacher on a secret formula isn't a practice that can be sustained, supported or defended. The article further details a common theme we hear over and over again

But many teachers believe Ohio’s value-added model is essentially unfair. They say it doesn’t account for forces that are out of their control. They also echo a common complaint about standardized tests: that too much is riding on these exams.

“It’s hard for me to think that my evaluation and possibly some day my pay could be in a 13-year-old’s hands who might be falling asleep during the test or might have other things on their mind,” said Zielke, the Columbus middle school teacher.

The article also performs analysis on several thousands value add scores, and that analysis demonstrates what we have long reported, that value-add is a poor indicator of teacher quality, with too many external factors affecting the score

A StateImpact/Plain Dealer analysis of initial state data suggests that teachers with high value-added ratings are more likely to work in schools with fewer poor students: A top-rated teacher is almost twice as likely to work at a school where most students are not from low-income families as in a school where most students are from low-income families.
[…]
Teachers say they’ve seen their value-added scores drop when they’ve had larger classes. Or classes with more students who have special needs. Or more students who are struggling to read.

Teachers who switch from one grade to another are more likely to see their value-added ratings change than teachers who teach the same grade year after year, the StateImpact/Plain Dealer analysis shows. But their ratings went down at about the same rate as teachers who taught the same grade level from one year to the next and saw their ratings change.

What are we measuring here? Surely not teacher quality, but rather socioeconomic factors and budget conditions of the schools and their students.

Teachers are intelligent people, and they are going to adapt to this knowledge in lots of unfortunate ways. It will become progressively harder to districts with poor students to recruit and retain the best teachers. But perhaps the most pernicious effect is captured at the end of the article

Stephon says the idea of Plecnik being an ineffective teacher is “outrageous.”

But Plecnik is through. She’s quitting her job at the end of this school year to go back to school and train to be a counselor — in the community, not in schools.

Plecnik was already frustrated by the focus on testing, mandatory meetings and piles of paperwork. She developed medical problems from the stress of her job, she said. But receiving the news that despite her hard work and the praise of her students and peers the state thought she was Least Effective pushed her out the door.

“That’s when I said I can’t do it anymore,” she said. “For my own sanity, I had to leave.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer and NPR then decided to add to this stress by publishing individual teachers value-added scores - a matter we will address in our next post.

Adequately funding my school

JTF recently recieved this essay from Worthington City Schools senior, Hassan Mizra.

Education helps broaden the minds of young individuals to help them achieve success in the future. All across America students go to school to learn and prepare for their futures. Just imagine the students walking into a classroom with new desks with four stable legs, new chairs that aren’t cracked or missing parts and sitting down to their personal laptop provided by the school. This sounds like a school that most parents would want their children to attend. Wouldn’t it be great if all schools had all these? Wouldn’t it be fascinating if all students were able to partake in an improved quality of education for every school?

The state's previous budget cut public school funding by $1.8 billion, which ultimately hurt Ohio's public education system. Ohio Governor John Kasich introduced a new state budget, which proposed a reform of the school funding formula. The new budget promised more money to the less funded school districts, but the promise proved empty. But the Governor, through the Republican dominated legislature, is doing the exact opposite. They are continuing to underfund public schools while increase funding to charter schools and further pushing public education into the hands of private corporations.

For the 2011-12 school year, Worthington Schools received $54,952,536 all total funds, and Olentangy Local Schools received $50,863,323. These two districts are 2 of the best in central Ohio, where they benefit from higher than typical property valuations. An essential aspect for each of these districts' high ratings is because they receive the necessary funding that a public school district should have.

However, the underfunding of public schools in Ohio is an enormous issue that affects many people, especially students. There is a need to re-work the current formula used by Ohio to determine how school funds are disbursed and also to increase public support for education funding. Limited funds for public schools have primarily affected the poor and have put them at a disadvantage in getting a quality education. Whitehall, generally speaking, has a lower property valuation. The schools in Whitehall do not receive the sufficient funding they deserve as a public school district.

Unequal funding throughout the state demonstrates the unfairness some school districts face. Is it fair that schools that reside in low property valuation areas don’t have the necessities to educate their youth?

The reason that some schools can't do things like buy computers and maintain their buildings to begin with is because the school funding system is so ineffective. The US government pays only 7% of all school money, and the rest is up to the state and the local tax-payers. Whatever money the state won't pay is paid as school income tax or property taxes, which are higher or lower depending on how much the property is worth, and the incomes of the districts residents. But this means that schools in poor neighborhoods get little money while wealthy schools get nearly all they need.

The Governor needs to start funding public education fairly and adequately. According to the Ohio Association of Independent Schools (OAIS) the vast majority Ohio students, roughly 1.85 million attend public schools, so it would make sense for the Governor to turn his attention towards public education. Despite whether a child's parents are wealthy or poor, it is in everyone's interest to guarantee that America's future generations are both highly skilled and well educated.

What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?

Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?” In this piece he writes about whether the emphasis that American school reformers put on “teacher effectiveness” is really the best approach to improving student achievement.

Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.

“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested. Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.

In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.

In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.

For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being. Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.

[readon2 url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/?wprss=rss_education"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Governor's school funding bamboozle

Yesterday, finally, the Governor released his district by district breakdown of school funding. To say that the numbers didn't reflect the rhetoric given at the rollout would be quite the understatement. During the rollout the Governor and his education advisors led everyone to believe that funding levels would be based upon district property wealth and income. The breakdowns produced however show almost the opposite.

David Varda, executive director of the Ohio School Business Officials Association, said he suspects many school officials in poor districts expected more state aid under Kasich’s plan.

“Based on the premise that this funding was going to deal with disparity, I’m surprised by some of the lower-wealth districts not getting any increase while some higher-wealth districts are getting more, although they seem to be districts with growing enrollment,” Varda said.

If districts were expecting more, the vast majority are going to be greatly disappointed. We looked at the percentage funding increase being offered for 2014 and produced the following chart

As you can see from this chart, 396 of 614 districts received zero extra dollars for 2014. When one factors in inflation, the number grows in real terms to over 400. Worse still, the funding data released by the Governor does not include money that districts will lose to charter schools and voucher recipients - in 2012 that was over $700 million in Ohio.

The Governor had promised $1.2 billion in extra funding, but when totaling the increases for 2014 and 2015 we can only count to $563,713,406. Even accounting for the $300 million "Straight A fund" we're struggling to see how we get to the promised $1.2 billion

In order to explain this bizare school funding formula, the Governor's education advisors had to resort to even more bizarre word games with reporters

Kasich education policy advisor Barbara Mattei-Smith said that’s because school districts that many people think of as “poor” are not actually poor for the purposes of determining state funding under the Kasich plan.
[...]
Kasich education advisor Dick Ross said, while the funding estimates may surprise some, they represent “reality.”

“Maybe the perception needs to be recognized as not being what’s real,” he said.

What is real is the ongoing underinvestment in Ohio's public schools by this Governor. The numbers, which he was reluctant to release, speak for themsevles.

Close failing charters quickly

Close failing charter schools quickly. That's the message from the latest study. The NTY times reports on a new charter school study that ought to send policy chills down the spines of those advocating for more failed choice

The charter school movement gained a foothold in American education two decades ago partly by asserting that independently run, publicly financed schools would outperform traditional public schools if they were exempted from onerous regulations. The charter advocates also promised that unlike traditional schools, which were allowed to fail without consequence, charter schools would be rigorously reviewed and shut down when they failed to perform.

With thousands of charter schools now operating in 40 states, and more coming online every day, neither of these promises has been kept. Despite a growing number of studies showing that charter schools are generally no better — and often are worse — than their traditional counterparts, the state and local agencies and organizations that grant the charters have been increasingly hesitant to shut down schools, even those that continue to perform abysmally for years on end.

As the Governor advocates for even greater charter school expansion in Ohio, where the experiment has failed even more catastrophically, there needs to be a serious look at closing down failed charters quickly. As the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University study noted

It debunked the common notion that it takes a long time to tell whether a new school can improve student learning. In fact, the study notes, it is pretty clear after just three years which schools are going to be high performers and which of them will be mediocre. By that time, the charter authorizers should be putting troubled schools on notice that they might soon be closed. As the study notes: “For the majority of schools, poor first year performance will give way to poor second year performance. Once this has happened, the future is predictable and extremely bleak. For the students enrolled in these schools, this is a tragedy that must not be dismissed.”

We're not just wasting tax payers dollars that could be better spent in higher performing traditional public schools, we're wasting educational opportunities of students who are attending these failing charter schools.