Athletes define themselves by their success or failure: did they win or lose? Entrepreneurs define themselves by profit and loss: the fiscal “bottom line.” As teachers we define ourselves by the successes and failures of our students.
We want our students to do well on standardized tests, on Regents, and if they don’t, we wonder, deep down, was it their failure or ours?
But the 321 Empowerment Schools are being evaluated in a different manner. Rather than “how many students are at Level 3/4,” schools are being evaluated by “average pupil growth.” Not whether they are at Level 1, 2, 3 or 4, but rather by how much they improved over a baseline calculated from using school data from the last few years. The “average pupil growth” will be expressed in a letter grade based upon the schools standing vis-a-vis all other schools. Next year all schools will be evaluated through this letter grade/average pupil growth system.
Each Empowerment School will undergo five interim assessments of student work. Most schools are using a Princeton Review assessment tool, although a few are designing their own assessments. This data is meant to inform instruction.
The Empowerment Schools will be receiving their first Progress Report shortly, and I expect many will be surprised.
Under NCLB, schools are measured by the number of kids at Level 3/4 in ELA and Math – in reality schools are evaluated by zip code!
Schools in Bayside with all Level 3/4 students may get a “D” or an “F” because the students didn’t improve, while schools in Brownsville with Level 1/2 students may received an “B” or an “A” because the students showed considerable progress.
It is conceivable that the Feds and the State can laud a school for the number of kids at Level 3/4 while the DOE chastises the school for lack of student growth, or, the converse, the Feds/State places a school on the SURR or SINI list while the DOE praises the school … Alice in Wonderland??
And, of course, a couple years down the road the DOE can point to Ms. Smith, her kids have shown consistent “growth” while Ms. Jones’ kids have not shown growth … should Ms. Smith receive a “gold star,” or additional remuneration?
6 Comments:
1 institutional memory
· Nov 18, 2006 at 11:19 am
SCAM-BASED TEST RESULTS CONTINUE TO FOOL THE PUBLIC; NO RELIEF IN SIGHT
“Progress Reports” are another quasi-statistical scam promulgated by the public relations experts at Tweed.
“Progress” measurements are as flawed as “performance” scores, since they’re all based on the same, norm-referenced exams.
I remember, a few years ago, when a principal got a performance bonus when her school improved from 6% to 19% at or above the fiftieth percentile on the NYS reading test.
The same year, a principal whose school went from 89% to 92% on the same test didn’t get the bonus.
Once again, I repeat the wisdom of my late father-in-law: “Figures lie and liar figure.”
2 Persam1197
· Nov 19, 2006 at 9:25 am
One of my 12th grade students asked how these tests are going to help them. At least the answer was honest: “It won’t.” The data will supposedly help the school identify concerns for the future.
The loss of instructional time thus far has been about 4 hours and there’s more to come. Supposedly these tests will identify where our kids need help with. Gee, and all this time I erroneously thought that was part of my job.
I can’t help but think that this “data” is being collected to push future merit pay/perfomance pay schemes. I wonder how many teachers if asked would have requested these new student assessment tests? Why must the disconnect between management and classroom teachers grow wider every passing year?
3 Schoolgal
· Nov 19, 2006 at 11:41 am
This is a two-way sword.
There was a time when the statistics would tell us how much growth a child made
from year to year. So if a child scored a
40 percentile, but made a year’s growth, that was good.
However last year some of my students went from 4’s to high 3’s on the new state ELA. And I understand that there were less 4’s than in previous years.
Without understanding the scoring, how are we supposed to gauge the improvement?
4 TMAO
· Nov 19, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Peter writes: “As teachers we define ourselves by the successes and failures of our students.”
No we don’t. We define ourselves by our self-perception of the self-assessed quality of our own efforts, a quality that is all too often divorced from the reality of student achievement and student growth. We then turn to any number of handy scapegoats: parents, myspace, Mayor whoever, the District, the great Satan of standardized testing, and lay at their doorstep all culpability for student failure, while retaining for ourselves nearly all credit for student success.
If we truly defined ourselves by student success and failure we would embrace systems of growth-based performance pay, we would stop abdicating control over that which we can control, and we would temper our well-justified critiques of power-abusing sups, misguided admin, and clueless Boards with the assurance that we’ll succeed anyway, even if everyone keeps making it harder.
5 institutional memory
· Nov 20, 2006 at 11:36 am
Schoolgal,
Your perception is correct. There were significantly fewer students scoring in Level 4 on last year’s state tests than there were in the previous year.
Why? Because very quietly, in the dead of night, the tests were re-normed. As a result, more students scored closer to the 50th percentile.
If you believe the state, the city, and the test publishers, this is impossible, because the tests are “standards-based,” not norm-referenced. This sounds nice, but, statistically, there is no such thing as a “standards-based” test. An exam is either norm-referenced, (e.g., questions are assigned “P-value” degrees of difficulty, which are determined by a norming sample), or it’s criterion-referenced, (e.g., the Department of Motor Vehicles test, which is strictly based on material in the handbook, with no adjustment for how easy or how difficult a particular item may be).
Did you see the article in today’s Times about how NCLB has failed to close the achievement gap between white students and minority students?
Of course it has! The results of norm-referenced tests correspond almost perfectly to socio-economic status. As long as we have an income gap, we’ll have an achievement gap. Duh.
Continued denial that these tests are normed is a perfect example of “If at first you’re not believed, lie, lie again.”
6 Persam1197
· Nov 21, 2006 at 2:35 pm
TMAO,
Are you a teacher? You sound like the editorial staff of the NY Post.
“We define ourselves by our self-perception of the self-assessed quality of our own efforts, a quality that is all too often divorced from the reality of student achievement and student growth. We then turn to any number of handy scapegoats: parents, myspace, Mayor whoever, the District, the great Satan of standardized testing, and lay at their doorstep all culpability for student failure, while retaining for ourselves nearly all credit for student success.”
Most of the teachers I know work hard and take the challenges of student success personally. But we are also in the trenches and we are well aware of the problems inherent within a system that has poor resources, inexperienced administrators, misplaced priorities, monies flowing to consultants and corporate interests all at the expense of our children. If you are a teacher, you know that standardized testing is a necessary slice of the instructional pie, but it certainly is not the whole pie. Teaching to tests is not education.
“Embracing performance pay” as you would have it is a joke. You would have your livlihood determined by criteria beyond your control? Tweed, with their cooked books that don’t match the state? Adminstrators doling out loyalty and favors? How do you rate teachers who don’t teach classes based on standardized classes? How do you “reward” teachers who provided the foundation for students to succeed while the current teachers reap the harvest? Your own list of negatives is daunting enough.