Why Join the Future exists

This piece provides as good a rationale as we have read for why Join the Future exists

"The public common school is the greatest discovery made by man," said Horace Mann. There is a direct link between public education and this nation's civility among citizens, its standard of living and its pivotal position in the world community. Multiple forces, such as the greed associated with for-profit education ventures, the philosophy that education is primarily a private benefit instead of a common good and that sectarian and other private purposes, should be supported from the public largess are unraveling the public common school system. A massive focused, committed offensive is required to preserve the public common school.

During the common school movement in the early and middle 19th century, there were strong forces that opposed the implementation of a tax-supported education system, free to all the children of all the people. Some of the opponents wanted tax money for their sectarian and private purposes. Others opposed tax funds used for the education of the children of others but tolerated public education so long as the public cost was minimal.

The common school movement was successful in spite of strong opposition because the proponents were united and totally committed to the concept that quality educational opportunities should be provided for all children via the public common school system. Thus, the constitutional provision for a thorough and efficient system of common schools was adopted by Ohioans in the mid-19th century. This provision prodded state officials in every generation to enhance educational opportunities within the state system.

The priority for improving the public system changed in Ohio in the early 1990s when the governor joined forces with a current for-profit charter school kingpin to start the voucher and charter school programs. These programs began as "pilots" and thus most local public school personnel and advocates tended to ignore these public policy changes. "This isn't my problem since it doesn't affect me" seemed to be the view. Now that charters and vouchers have grown to the point of extracting about $1 billion from school districts this year, some are becoming concerned that the public common school is unraveling; however, many within the public school community have withdrawn by indicating, "This isn't my problem. 'They' will have to fix it."

HB 59 is a prime exhibit that it is not being fixed. The entire public K-12 common school community must become involved in fixing the problem. "They" are not going to rid the mischief in HB 59 but "we", if, united in the cause of the public common school, determine to do so.

The expansion of choice and short-changing of public K-12 school districts, inherent in HB 59, demand a collective response, immediately.

William Phillis
Ohio E & A

The Foolish Endeavor of Rating Ed Schools by Graduates’ Value-Added

Via School Finance 101.

Knowing that I’ve been writing a fair amount about various methods for attributing student achievement to their teachers, several colleagues forwarded to me the recently released standards of the Council For the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, or CAEP. Specifically, several colleagues pointed me toward Standard 4.1 Impact on Student Learning:

4.1.The provider documents, using value-added measures where available, other state-supported P-12 impact measures, and any other measures constructed by the provider, that program completers contribute to an expected level of P-12 student growth.

http://caepnet.org/commission/standards/standard4/

Now, it’s one thing when relatively under-informed pundits, think tankers, politicians and their policy advisors pitch a misguided use of statistical information for immediate policy adoption. It’s yet another when professional organizations are complicit in this misguided use. There’s just no excuse for that! (political pressure, public polling data, or otherwise)

The problems associated with attempting to derive any reasonable conclusions about teacher preparation program quality based on value-added or student growth data (of the students they teach in their first assignments) are insurmountable from a research perspective.

Worse, the perverse incentives likely induced by such a policy are far more likely to do real harm than any good, when it comes to the distribution of teacher and teaching quality across school settings within states.

First and foremost, the idea that we can draw this simple line below between preparation and practice contradicts nearly every reality of modern day teacher credentialing and progress into and through the profession:

one teacher prep institution –> one teacher –> one job in one school –> one representative group of students

The modern day teacher collects multiple credentials from multiple institutions, may switch jobs a handful of times early in his/her career and may serve a very specific type of student, unlike those taught by either peers from the same credentialing program or those from other credentialing programs. This model also relies heavily on minimal to no migration of teachers across state borders (well, either little or none, or a ton of it, so that a state would have a large enough share of teachers from specific out of state institutions to compare). I discuss these issues in earlier posts.

Setting aside that none of the oversimplified assumptions of the linear diagram above hold (a lot to ignore!), let’s probe the more geeky technical issues of trying to use VAM to evaluate ed school effectiveness.

There exist a handful of recent studies which attempt to tease out certification program effects on graduate’s student’s outcomes, most of which encounter the same problems. Here’s a look at one of the better studies on this topic.

• Mihaly, K., McCaffrey, D. F., Sass, T. R., & Lockwood, J. R. (2012). Where You Come From or Where You Go?

Specifically, this study tries to tease out the problem that arises when graduates of credentialing programs don’t sort evenly across a state. In other words, a problem that ALWAYS occurs in reality!

Researchy language tends to downplay these problems by phrasing them only in technical terms and always assuming there is some way to overcome them with statistical tweak or two. Sometimes there just isn’t and this is one of those times!

[readon2 url="http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/revisiting-the-foolish-endeavor-of-rating-ed-schools-by-graduates-value-added/"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Education News for 11-26-2012

State Education News

• Many Ohio 3rd-graders at risk of failing (Chillicothe Gazette)

Thousands of Ohio third-graders face being held back in school if they can’t improve their reading proficiency by year’s end — and the problem could be even worse next year…Read more...

• Schools critics open new front in seclusion-room fight (Columbus Dispatch)

Furthering its quest to end Columbus schools' use of seclusion rooms for disabled students, a state disability-rights group has filed a formal complaint against the district with the Ohio Department of Education…Read more...

• Education conference reflects tough economy (Middletown Journal)

Local school administrators were among the nearly 10,000 education professionals who attended the 57th annual Ohio School Board Association Capital Conference and Trade Show last week in Columbus…Read more...

• District’s financial recovery may take 5 years (Middletown Journal)

Members of the state-appointed Financial Planning and Supervision Commission said it will take three to five years before the effects of Monroe Schools’ passed levy will be seen…Read more...

• State Educators Agree to Replace the OGT (WSYX)

State education leaders have agreed on a plan for replacing the Ohio Graduation Test with a nationally standardized college readiness test, such as the ACT, and 10 subject-area exams…Read more...

Local Education News

• Schools in Singapore may provide lessons for educators here (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Helen Williams knew little about Singapore before traveling there this spring to learn about its education system. What she had heard were the tales of people caned for minor offenses and stereotypes about Asian schools…Read more...

• Pay freezes, cuts saving millions at local schools (Hamilton Journal-News)

Staff pay freezes have become the rule, rather than the exception, at Miami Valley public school districts…Read more...

Editorial

• Cleveland-area school districts must work harder to keep children who move frequently from falling (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Students who often change schools -- making them hard to track and harder to teach -- have long been a problem in many Ohio school systems…Read more...

• Fair assessment (Columbus Dispatch)

As Ohio lawmakers work through this lame-duck session, one item on the hurry-up agenda demands attention: revamping the report cards…Read more...

A narrative path forward for teachers

One of the best responses to the corporate education reformers we've read in a long time.

In every country in the world, poverty impedes educational success. Our biggest education problem is that more of our kids are in poverty than any other developed nation. When America's public school teachers get kids who are well-fed and healthy and live in stable homes with parents who have good jobs, those kids do better in school than any other children in the world.

But a group of people who do not teach (or taught for a short while and not very well) have decided to blame teachers - teachers! - for all the problems in our country. They say that "choice" will save our schools, but the "choice" they offer is between underfunded, crumbling public schools and corporatized, autocratic charter schools that they admit they will never serve all children. These schools cherry-pick their students and then falsely claim they have the secret for success. Their inability to educate all students proves that public schools are not the problem - poverty is. 

Why do these people sell this snake oil? Three reasons:

1) Many of them are looking to make money - a lot of money - off of education. They want to do to our schools what they did to our military, turning them into a bunch of Haliburton Highs.

2) They want to finally and completely break the unions. Once the teachers fall, it's all over for the middle class.

3) They need a scapegoat. Teachers didn't create these problems: the corporate titans of Wall Street did. These plutocrats are now paying a gang of carnival barkers a big bunch of money to blame teachers - teachers! - for the problems they themselves made.

Tea partiers threaten public education

Not content with the Governor's $3 billion dollar state budget assault on public education, tea partiers, supported by the far right "1851 Center for Constitutional Law" - an offshoot of the right wing Buckeye Institute, are seeking to assault public education funding at the local level too.

Taxpayers for Westerville Schools, a group that opposed a 6.9-mill levy that voters approved in March, has begun collecting signatures to repeal an equal portion of an 11.4-mill levy approved in 2009.

The group is reaching back to that levy because state law bars the repeal of temporary tax issues, such as the five-year levy passed this year. The 2009 tax issue is permanent.

This is a move so radical and extreme that it has only ever been proposed once in the history of the state. If the "Center for Constitutional law" really cared about the Ohio constitution and public education it would be lobbying for a constitutional funding formula for our schools instead of trying to defund them. But rather than do that, they have published a document that contains the broad tactics groups can use to defund public education, a document that contains such information as

Warning: if you follow the advice in this guide, proponents of higher spending and taxation will assert, as always, that children will suffer unless new levies are enacted, while current revenue sources are maintained. However, if you’ve read this far, you and your neighbors (1) have likely already heard and dispelled this argument; (2) are aware that your local school district has a spending problem, not a revenue problem; and (3) simply want to keep more of what you have rightfully earned, and want to this seemingly endless cycle of tax hikes to stop.

Clearly they think every district has a spending problem, and every citizen is over taxed - regardless of whether voters in places like Westerville disagreed by passing a levy just months ago. Their roadmap even includes this nugget:

(6) Keep a low profile. Remember, only once every five years can an attempt be made to reduce any given levy. If your school district’s teachers union gets wind of your plans too early in the process, they may quickly gather signatures and place a .000001 mil reduction of the levy tax on the ballot before you are able to gather and submit signatures for your more significant reduction.

Wanting to operate in the shadows was evident yesterday when confronted over twitter

@jointhefutureOH @DispatchEteam @dougcaruso @cbinkley We are all WCSD residents concerned about our schools' future-NOT a tea party group.

We responded

@TFWS1 Really? All just a coincidence you're involved with the 1851 center? Same agenda as the tea party, same support. Same, same.

As did others

@TFWS1 @jointhefutureOH Sounds like the tenets of the Tea Party? Why fight the association to Tea Party? What's the difference?

At this point, this tea party group tried to make ridiculous claims about the 1851 Constitutional Law Center

@ascheurer @jointhefutureOH They're a non-proft, non-partisan legal ctr dedicatd to protctng the constitut rights of Ohioans from govt abuse

A quick survey of their agenda and their board of directors quickly dispels any notion this is a non-partisan group.

What is striking about this recent move by the tea party to attack public education is their unwillingness to embrace their agenda. Instead, as the 1851 center urges, they want to "keep a low profile". We're going to see to it that that doesn't happen.

Merit pay and the candle problem

Let us pretend for one moment that many of the corporate education reforms being proposed offered more than just a metaphorical big stick with which to fire teachers more easily, but also a few carrots too in the form of extra money toward paying high performers as determined by their students test scores. Yes, yes, we know.

Let's go even further, and pretend that student test scores were the perfect means with which to judge the effectiveness of any teacher. What do we know of financial incentives? From Nature magazine.

here's a simple fact we've known since 1962: using money as a motivator makes us less capable at problem-solving. It actually makes us dumber.

In the 1940, an experiment was carried out, now referred to as the "Candle Problem". The experiment has the participant try to solve the problem of how to fix a lit candle on a wall in a way so the candle wax won't drip to the floor. The participant can only use (along with the candle) a book of matches and a box of thumbtacks.

Let's go back to that Nature article to explain the rest of the experiment, and it' counterintuitive results

The only answer that really works is this: 1.Dump the tacks out of the box, 2.Tack the box to the wall, 3.Light the candle and affix it atop the box as if it were a candle-holder. Incidentally, the problem was much easier to solve if the tacks weren't in the box at the beginning. When the tacks were in the box the participant saw it only as a tack-box, not something they could use to solve the problem. This phenomenon is called "Functional fixedness."

Sam Glucksberg added a fascinating twist to this finding in his 1962 paper, "Influence of strength of drive on functional fixedness and perceptual recognition." (Journal of Experimental Psychology 1962. Vol. 63, No. 1, 36-41). He studied the effect of financial incentives on solving the candle problem. To one group he offered no money. To the other group he offered an amount of money for solving the problem fast.

Remember, there are two candle problems. Let the "Simple Candle Problem" be the one where the tacks are outside the box -- no functional fixedness. The solution is straightforward. Here are the results for those who solved it:

Simple Candle Problem Mean Times :
WITHOUT a financial incentive : 4.99 min
WITH a financial incentive : 3.67 min
Nothing unexpected here. This is a classical incentivization effect anybody would intuitively expect.

Now, let "In-Box Candle Problem" refer to the original description where the tacks start off in the box.

In-Box Candle Problem Mean Times :
WITHOUT a financial incentive : 7:41 min
WITH a financial incentive : 11:08 min
How could this be? The financial incentive made people slower? It gets worse -- the slowness increases with the incentive. The higher the monetary reward, the worse the performance! This result has been repeated many times since the original experiment.

We've published a video on this phenomenon before, titled "As Teacher Merit Pay Spreads, One Noted Voice Cries, ‘It Doesn’t Work’", and an article from the Harvard Business Review, titled "Stop Tying Pay To Performance".

Here's another video - The surprising truth about what motivates us

Knowing all this begs the question, why are we going down the path of some of these corporate education reforms, when we have known for over half a century many of them are flawed concepts that have been demonstrated to fail time and time again?