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.**
________________________________
*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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Your posts are informative and entertaining, thank you. I am a teacher and a parent, and now my second child is attending Neary. I couldn't agree more about your post on the DESE evaluations. If only they could take the time and money spent on the implementation of this program, and turn it into a project where teachers receive time for professional education. As a teacher, I know how empowered I feel by new teaching strategies, courses, ideas, and advanced learning in my content area. Teach us more, give us time to collaborate with others in the field. Teacher training results in enthusiasm and expertise in the classroom.
ReplyDelete