Last night’s meeting of the Seattle School Board was a raucous affair. Except the part where everyone agreed. Kids first. No, seriously, kids first.
Orange t-shirts and messages on flyers and public testimony all aligned, put kids first in the teacher contract negotiations. There was also pretty unanimous agreement that the most important element in kids’ learning is the teacher in the classroom. Whether you were wearing a blaze-orange t-shirt or carrying a union placard, there was unanimity on at least these two points.
Unfortunately, the agreement broke down not long after we got into the devil of the details of how to improve teacher effectiveness, close the achievement gap and raise achievement overall. Measuring student progress and using these scores as some percentage of a teacher’s evaluation remain the big sticking points in how to move the conversation forward.
If you don’t read the national education blogs every day and don’t find student achievement data fascinating, you might have missed that these issues are being settled elsewhere at a pretty fast clip. We don’t need to invent the wheel here. We need to get the wheel on the axle and roll. In districts throughout the country, including Tennessee who won the first round of Race to the Top, model districts in Washington and the schools receiving federal School Improvement Grants, the debate is not about whether to tie student progress into a teacher’s evaluation. The discussion is how, and how much should it count. That’s the same conversation we should be having here in Seattle. Teachers are professionals. Professionals are evaluated on the results of their work. Here, results have to mean – at least in some part – student progress.
We heard and read a lot about “historic change” last night. Unfortunately, the proposals used to illustrate that change are more history than historic. Other districts in Washington have been using the same evaluation method that is being proposed by the SEA for over 8 years now. In fact, neither side is proposing anything really historic here. These evaluation methods are already in use throughout the country.
There was a lot of passion in the room last night. And the commitment to kids is obvious. But that same commitment has to extend to doing things in new ways. The old ways have largely stopped working. Especially for low income kids and kids of color.
Kids first. All kids.
Most of this post made sense and was right except this part:
“There was also pretty unanimous agreement that the most important element in kids’ learning is the teacher in the classroom.”
That’s simply not true. The primary determinant of a student’s academic achievement is the active involvement in the student’s education by an adult in the student’s home.
I’m surprised you didn’t know that.
This study (http://www.mccsc.edu/~curriculum/cumulative%20and%20residual%20effects%20of%20teachers.pdf) found that teachers are “the single most dominant factor affecting student academic gain is teacher effect.”
This study, thank you for sharing it, attributes a significant portion of student academic gain to teacher effectiveness (as defined by the Tennessee formula).
Student gain is not student achievement. The effective teacher can mean a difference of 20 or 30 points added to a base of 600-700. The bulk of that 600-700 points, however, continues to be a result of other influences.
Let’s not confuse speed with distance.
The primary determinant of student academic achievement is the active participation in the student’s education by an adult in the student’s home.
To presume otherwise would lead to some very strange conclusions. It would, for example, lead us to believe that students in the schools in Northeast Seattle have higher test scores than students in schools in Southeast Seattle largely because they have better teachers. Does anyone really believe that? Do you really believe that if Eckstein and Aki Kurose swapped teaching staffs for five years that it would be Eckstein that wasn’t making AYP and would be in Step 5 of sanctions subject to closure or re-invention while Aki Kurose would have a stellar reputation and be overcrowded?
I think the mistake is the broadly stated “most important factor”.
Research would support the statement “The most important factor within a school framework is the TEACHER.”
Then, outside of the framework of the school, the research would support that PARENTS are the most important factor.
Teachers have no control over what children are in their classes, what they eat, how much tv they watch, how much sleep they get, if they have glasses or dental care, what level of education their parents have, etc. All of those things come into play even before the student walks through the classroom door.
So, therefore, you could have the best teacher in the world (and good for the kid who is not well-prepared when he/she walks through that door) and yet, that teacher still might not be able to help that child overcome his/her challenges.
I think it important to make that difference clear.
Additionally, teachers have no control over the dictates handed down by increasingly centralized and authoritarian district bureacracies: If the district tells a 3rd grade teacher to use a great curriculem, the students might just do better: If the district then tells those children’s 4th grade teacher to use a crappy curriculum, those children just might suffer. But I guess we better fire that unqualified 4th grade teacher, eh?
And what of the tests themselves? The district proposes using a test to evaluate teachers that it told the board was for formative purposes as a tool to help teachers understand student abilities. The test is the wrong test (if there is even a “right” one, which I very much doubt) for the purpose. The district itself tells us that MAP scores go DOWN over the year, then back up!
Nevermind that the MAP test is a product of NWEA (CEO: $500,000; 42 employees at $100,000 or more each) and that the superintendent is on the board of NWEA! Nothing to see here, folks, move along! It’s ALL about the points on these tests, how many points did you score?
Is civics tested? How did Tennessee’s schools do on civics during the time cited by the “research”? How did they do with advanced/gifted students? District tells us the higher one is on the MAP test, the smaller the degree of improvement that should be expected of that student! So students who know the material are bored and reasy to move, right? How are THEY being served, how’s Tennessee doing with THEM?
Hey, Chris, you wrote (about the PG&E) “We are going to take a look at this issue and will offer more on it next week.”
That was on August 11. When will we see either more from you about it or an updated timetable?
I’m particularly interested in your position on the element of SERVE that gives the superintendent the authority to over-ride any teacher’s evaluation without appeal or grievance. Do you support that authority as a critical element of reform? Is what your reform is about – concentrating absolute authority with the superintendent?