What Really Counts

I was talking with a teacher this morning about her goals for the various children in her class.  She was able to talk about each child, and had a good idea already, even though it's early in the year, about what she wanted to emphasize in working with each of them.  Now you may be thinking, "OK, so probably one child has more difficulty with place value in math and another child has more difficulty with spelling multisyllable words. . ." and the like.  Yes, it's certainly true that this teacher knows all that, but the goals she was talking about this morning for the children in her care are more individual and more important than that.  With one child, she will be working on helping him to become more organized, to slow down and plan his work, to put more thought into it.  With another child, she will be working on helping her to become more assertive and to analyze and express her opinions more effectively.  With yet another child, she will be working on helping him to see others' points of view and to be more kind to his classmates and a better friend. . .

I'm sure that each of us has had some wonderful teachers in our past whom we remember to this day.  The teachers who made a difference in my life were the ones who knew me as a person, who showed me a new way to look at what I could possibly accomplish, and helped to open my horizons.  I remember my high school German teacher who took the time to work with me on my senior piano recital piece and sparked my confidence and love of music, and my 7th grade teacher who opened up the world of poetry to me and helped me to think that I could write. . .  I could go on, and I think that every one of us has stories like that and every parent has stories about a teacher who made that kind of difference in the life of his/her child.

I have recently finished reading an interesting book about children and character (How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough) that reveals and emphasizes the importance of character, including qualities like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control, for achievement and success in life.  These qualities are better predictors of both academic success and success in life, and Tough demonstrates how schools that work with children to develop these qualities help to give them the foundation for success that they need.  Today I also read a blog post discussing the other side of the same concept -- how blind faith in numbers leads to obsession with winning and failure to realize what's really important ("How Our Love For Numbers Warps School Reform", from "The Answer Sheet" in the Washington Post).  As noted in this entry:

In education, the question “How do we assess (kids, teachers, schools)?” has morphed over the years into “How do we measure…?” We’ve forgotten that assessment doesn’t require measurement — and, moreover, that the most valuable forms of assessment are often qualitative (say, a narrative account of a child’s progress by an observant teacher who knows the child well) rather than quantitative (a standardized test score). Yet the former may well be brushed aside in favor of the latter — by people who don’t even bother to ask what was on the test. It’s a number, so we sit up and pay attention. Over time, the more data we accumulate, the less we really know.

As you may have noticed, the school MCAS scores were released this week.  We did well, which I'm happy about, but I am much more happy about the fact that our teachers work with children in the way I described in the first paragraph of this post, and I hope we don't ever lose sight of that.

Some Thoughts On Chicago

I read an excellent post yesterday, written by a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, explaining why Chicago teachers are striking, and the Los Angeles Times had a very thoughtful editorial on the same subject, discussing the problems with using tests for purposes for which they were not designed, and also explaining some of the issues relating to the seniority provisions. Take a look at the LA Times editorial if you have a chance -- it's very thoughtful and informative.

I do think that many of today's "education reformers" do not understand schools and teachers very well, and I thought I'd also offer my own two cents on a couple of the most important misunderstandings.

First of all, most of the proposed "reforms" only make sense if you assume that most teachers are only doing the bare minimum and if they were just motivated using things like pay and punishments tied to student test scores they would all work harder and do a better job.  In my experience, and as noted in the LA Times editorial, this is an assumption for which there is no evidence.  After college, I went to Harvard Law School and then worked as a corporate lawyer in a big firm in Boston for 10 years, and when I became a teacher I found that it required just as many hours, if not more.  In my time in education, I have met very few teachers who were not also working incredibly hard, spending long hours before school, after school, at home, and on weekends, and the teachers that I know and have known are passionate and caring about their work and doing the best they can to make it work for their students.  Attaching rewards and punishments will not help people work any harder if they are already working as hard as they can -- it will simply demoralize them and make it more difficult for them to do a good job. 

Second, the whole issue of provisions such as seniority in teacher contracts is a difficult and complicated issue -- much more complicated than it may seem, and it's clear that there is much misunderstanding about it.  For example, as the Times editorial also noted, one of the problems for schools is that there is huge pressure to reduce costs.  In the absence of contractual protections for teachers, such as seniority, there would be irresistible pressure to keep only newer, less experienced, and cheaper teachers, which would eventually lead to teaching becoming not a profession but a form of public service in which young people would engage for two or three years after college, to the detriment of our children's education.  Most well-done teacher contracts, such as ours, are not entirely based on seniority, but have a number of factors, including evaluations, that are taken into consideration with respect to layoffs and the like, in order to balance these interests. 

Finally, I want to say again that the characterization of the American educational system as underperforming is incorrect, as has been demonstrated time and time again.  The truth is that there are huge differences between and among schools and districts in this country -- U.S. schools with low poverty rates score at or above the level of the top countries in the world, but U.S. schools with high poverty rates are performing at the level of Third World countries.  Many of the current "reforms" have been shown to be not helpful and some are actually harming our children's education.  Those of us in schools are still working as hard as we can to make it work for the kids, but are becoming increasingly demoralized by the broad brush attacks on schools and teachers.  I hope that the Chicago teachers' action will help to foster more conversation about the issues and that we will be able to make appropriate changes before it's too late.

Education is Not a Zero-Sum Game!

Education is not -- or should not be -- a zero-sum game.  In a zero-sum game, anything gained by one participant has to be lost by another participant or participants and the net change is zero.  For example, in an election, when two people are running for the same office, the total number of votes cannot exceed the number of voters so an increase in votes for one candidate results in a decrease in votes for the other candidate.  There are many situations in life where that is the case.  If you and I both interview for the same job and you get the job, I do not.  If we both bid on the same house and your bid is accepted, mine will not be.  Competitive situations are often zero-sum games.

There is no need, however, for education to be a zero-sum game.  If I study hard and learn to speak fluent French, there is nothing that prevents you -- or a hundred other people -- from learning to speak French equally fluently.  If the students in our school all achieve at a very high level on the state math exam, there is no reason why the students in any or all other schools cannot achieve at the same level.  In fact, we would like them to! Unfortunately, though, our current state testing system, the MCAS, which was originally intended to be a "criterion-referenced assessment" (an assessment which measures achievement against fixed standards with no limits on how many students can meet those standards), is being changed by the use of student growth percentiles into a zero-sum game.  Student growth percentiles (SGPs) compare a student's change in score from one year to the next to the changes in score of his/her "academic peers," so, for example, if a student receives an SGP of 65 that means that his score grew more than 65% of his "academic peers."  If his peers do better, he receives a lower SGP -- a zero-sum game.  The state, in its information on this topic, indicates that students with SGPs of less than 40 are considered to have "low growth," students with SGPs between 40 and 60 "moderate growth," and students with SGPs of 60 or better "high growth."  The problem, of course, is that no matter how high the actual achievement of Massachusetts students, there will always be 40% of students who will be labeled "low growth," and their schools and teachers will be penalized.

The Massachusetts DESE has taken this even further in its recommendations for district assessments, by suggesting that districts do pre- and post-assessments, calculate the difference in scores for each student, order the results from highest to lowest, and divide the results into thirds, with the bottom third being labeled "low growth."  Once again, no matter how well a district's students do -- and they could all be achieving at high levels -- one-third of them will be labeled as achieving "low growth."   It's also important to note that if a student in that lowest third moves up into the middle third, that will automatically push a student in the middle third down to the lowest third -- a zero-sum game.

This type of system has very real negative consequences for schools and for our children's education.  Particularly in Massachusetts, which had overall math and science achievement at the level of the top countries in the world on the 2009 international math and science assessment, and was the highest state in the nation on the past two national educational assessments, why are we deciding to automatically label 40% of our students (on the MCAS) or one-third of our students (on district assessments) as low achievers?  I cannot think of any purpose for labeling students this way other than to make sure that some students and schools appear to be failing even though their absolute level of achievement is high.  Is this really what we want to do to our children or our schools?  Couldn't we just use set standards, celebrate the students and schools that meet those standards, and help those that don't?

Evaluating Public Education: A Case of the Emperor's New Clothes

Remember the story of the Emperor's new clothes?  The story put out to the public was that the Emperor was wearing wonderful suit of new clothes, glorious to behold.  Actually, the Emperor was naked, but only one child was brave enough or confident enough in his perceptions to say it.

Unfortunately, most of the publicity around "education reform" these days is very similar.  Recently I was reading one of the latest publications from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (the "DESE") regarding how to determine whether a teacher's students have achieved "high growth," "moderate growth," or "low growth," and was appalled at what I learned about the DESE's approach to this measurement.

First of all, with respect to reading and math, which are subjects with MCAS tests, the DESE produces a number known as the "Student Growth Percentile" (or "SGP"), which purports to measure a child's growth as compared to his/her peers.  There are two problems with this number, both of them significant.  First of all, although the DESE believes that its formula takes into consideration students with disabilities or students who are just learning English, in fact when you look at correlations those students generally have significantly lower SGP numbers than students without disabilities and students whose first language is English.  Second, in my analysis of the SGPs for the past two years, I have found correlations between lower SGPs and other kinds of student difficulties, such as a death in the student's family, parents divorcing, behavioral or social issues, and other kinds of problems, and have not found any correlations by teacher.  Aside from these two problems, though, there is a larger problem -- the DESE defines low growth as anything less than 40*, but since these are percentiles that means that no matter how well Massachusetts students are doing (and remember that Massachusetts students scored 1st in the nation on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress and 1st in the world on the most recent international math and science assessment), 40% of Massachusetts students will be deemed low achieving. Let me say that again -- no matter how well Massachusetts students are doing or how much they have achieved, the bottom 40% will always be labeled as "low growth."

Second, the DESE's advice to districts on other subjects not measured by MCAS is that districts should develop tests, measure growth on those tests from the beginning to the end of the year, and divide the growth scores into thirds, the lowest third being defined as low growth, the middle third as moderate, and the top third as high growth*.  This means that no matter how well students in a particular district such as Southborough are doing, one-third of students will be deemed low achieving.  On these measures, high achievers would also be penalized, as the assessments will not measure the extra challenges provided for high achievers and thus they will show little "growth."  (It also means that in a struggling district, no matter how much difficulty students are having, one-third will be deemed high achieving.)

As far as I know, only in Lake Wobegon can all students be above average!  I truly do not understand why, if the idea is to "leave no child behind," we are using percentiles and other comparative measurements rather than setting standards and working toward having as many students as possible meet those standards.  Education should not be a zero-sum game; there is no limit on how many students can meet the standards.  The Emperor truly has no clothes, and I am hoping that people will realize that soon, before we destroy an excellent public education system.**

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*Information from Part VII of the Massachusetts Model Educator Evaluation System, released this August and found on the DESE website.
**Another resource you may be interested in is this blog post entitled "Three Ed Reforms Parents Should Worry About Most," on the Washington Post website.