According to a number of researchers (Marder, Ravitch, Darling-Hammond) our system of education is failing a huge number of students, especially in mathematics, and science.  Since 2003, when the NCLB Act was put into place that required schools to test all students beginning in grade 3, the Federal control by the U.S. Department of Eduction (ED) has intruded into the day-to-day work of all teachers and students in American schools.  The result of this has been to put our education system into a state of imbalance.   Many claim that the educational system is broken.  But who is at fault here?

Reform Iterations

Reform has been a part of the educational landscape ever since I entered the teaching profession.  Over the years the reform has gone through many iterations from the era of large scale curriculum reforms in mathematics and science in the 60s and 70s, A Nation at Risk and the Back to Basics Movement in the 1980s, the courses and competency model of the curriculum in the 1990s, systemic reform and national standards in the 1990s, and then the No Child Left Behind Act from 2003.  NCLB has morphed into the High-stakes testings and Standards movement during this decade.  And now we are in the midst of the Race to the Top and NCLB Waivers, the latest iteration.

Personally I was involved in a number of these reforms.  My first involvement was an NSF Summer Institute at Illinois Institute of Technology to study the first of the NSF project, PSSC Physics. As a high school teacher in Lexington, Massachusetts I co-designed a research study with my colleague Dr. Bob Champlin comparing and contrasting one of the large scale curriculum projects of the 1960s (Earth Science Curriculum Project).  In the late 60s, I attended the NSF Academic Year Institute at The Ohio State University and completed my work for a Ph.D. in science education and geology.  In the 1970’s I was a writer for the NSF project, ISCS (Intermediate Science Curriculum Study) at Florida State University.  Then from 1974 – 1978 I was a writer and test-center coordinator for ISIS (Individualized Science Instructional System, an NSF curriculum project also at Florida State.

In the 1980s and 1990s, I worked with colleagues in the USA, Russia, Australia, Spain, the Czech Republic to create a global environmental education innovation, The Global Thinking Project which interconnected students and teachers during the initial years of the Internet’s awakening.

The reforms of the 1960s were led by scientists and some science educators.  Teachers were on the receiving end as test center teachers, and then consumers of the NFS funded Projects. For a personal reflection on the curriculum projects, follow this link to the work of Thomas T. Liao.

In the 1970s science teachers argued that they should be centrally involved in the development of new curricula for science classrooms.  Teachers took a more active role as writers, and field test coordinators who worked with colleague to field test the new curricula.  Although scientists were involved in this second round of science curriculum projects, they tended to replaced by teachers who had earned Ph.Ds in science education.

From the 1980s to the present time, teachers have been on the receiving end of most “reform” efforts, starting with the Nation at Risks, but most distressingly with the advent of Standards Accountability and the No Child Left Behind Act.  And with the Race to the Top, and the ESEA Flexibility Waivers, all states will evaluate teachers by the unscientific model of Value-Added Modeling (VAM) which uses student achievement scores. 

Nature of the Present Reform

The present reform primarily seeks to (1)  improve achievement for all students, and (2) reduce the achievement gap between white and black students, and white and Hispanic students.  The consensus for preventing a further degradation of the education system is based on three “reform” ideas, suggested by  Marder, and discussed by Ravitch, Delpit and others.

1. Charters & Vouchers. The deregulation of public education through the creation of charter schools, and the promotion of vouchers.
2. The Teacher & Union Problem. The deregulation of teaching by means of alternative pathways to teacher certification, and the erosion of the influence of unions.
3. Weighing the Cow. Measuring the performance (achievement) of all students, and holding teachers and administrators for the results.  Measuring doesn’t make the kid smarter, nor the cow fatter.

As Marder suggests, these three ideas are interrelated.

These reforms reinforce each other. For example, it is much easier
to hold teachers accountable when unions cannot automatically protect them on the grounds of seniority, or when they work at charter schools with innovative reform-minded administrations.

We’ve come to believe that the way to improve schooling is create charter schools that don’t have play by the same rules, and fill them with “quality teachers” who can reduce the achievement gap.  In reality charter schools have increased the segregation of black and Hispanic students.   To be a teacher, all it really takes is a summer institute just prior to opening day of school.  Finally, we use an unreliable measure (VAM) which uses high-stakes student test scores to evaluate teachers’ and administrators’ performance.

For the past ten years, billions of dollars has been spent to test every child in reading, mathematics, science, and other subjects.  This test data is at the core of the present reformers madness.   The basic idea is to set performance standards but raise them each year for all students, and expect that 100% of our students will attain the ever increasing level.  It will never happen.

Teacher Quality

According to present day reformers such as Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education), Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee (former Superintendent of Washington D.C. schools) , Joel Klein (former NYC  Chancellor of Schools), the Broad Foundation, the failure or success of students in school is dependent on the teacher.  To these reformers, teacher quality is the most significant factor affecting the success or failure of students and schools.   If we could control the teacher factor (good vs bad), by firing or weeding out the bad teachers, the quality of teaching would rise, as would achievement test scores.

To these reformers teacher quality tied directly to improving student achievement test scores in reading, mathematics, science, English, social studies, etc.  There is absolutely no discussion of the personal, academic and social qualities that might contribute to the quality of teaching.

No, instead, quality of teaching will be a number that statisticians worked out that predicts student gain on academic tests.  A high quality teacher would surely raise academic scores; a low quality teacher would not.  Simple, don’t you think.

Value-Added Modeling (VAM)  This is the method of teacher evaluation that reformers claim can be determined for each teacher (as long as they teach a subject that is tested each year).  VAM measures the teacher’s contribution in a given year by comparing current school year test scores of their students to the scores those same students in the previous school year.

This method of teacher evaluation is being adopted by one state after another, even knowing that the measure is not scientifically valid or reliable.  Some say it is a fraud perpetuated by corporate and political leaders.

In a study that Professor Michael Marder included in his analysis of education, he cites a study in which 78 pairs of elementary teachers were studied for four years, and then randomly swapped their classrooms at the beginning of year five. Professor Marder writes:

The researchers predicted performance targets the teachers would reach. But as shown in Figure 1 the predictions were often off the mark. Following the random switching, supposedly lower-quality teachers obtained better student performance than supposedly higher-quality teachers around one third of the time. On average the teachers said to be better did get better student performance; this means measurement points landed above or below the target equally often. A reliable measurement of teacher quality would actually need to hit the target most of the time. Rewarding or punishing individual teachers when the best measurements of their quality look like Figure 1 not only would be very unreliable it would be unjust.

Figure 1. Data of Kane and Staiger, comparing predictions of student learning based on teacher quality to measured student performance. Teacher quality was defined by measuring student test score gains for four years in their classrooms. Teachers were grouped in pairs, and teacher quality was used to predict the relative learning gains of students in their classrooms. The teachers within each pair were randomly switched before classes began, and student gains measured near the end of the year. When teacher quality predicts student performance, points hit the bulls-eye. The more predictions are wrong, the further away points lie. Distance units are .25 standard deviations, which the authors say corresponds to around a year of learning. The actual value of the predicted student learning difference is indicated by the angle around the circle.  From Michael Marder, Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics, Use with Permission.  For more visualizations click on the target.

The Wisdom of Practice

One can search Google for qualities of great teachers, and by and large what one comes up with is a list, e.g. engaging personality, good management, good communication skills, strong background in content, passion for students and learning, etc.

The quality of one’s ability as a teacher really can not be measured.  And indeed, the aspects of teaching that really count if you are a student or a parent, are not measured by the reformers because they don’t think they are important.

I read on Valerie Strauss’ blog, The Answer Sheet, a wonderful post written by Donna McKenna, an ESL teacher which can be found at her blog. Here is part of what Donna McKenna wrote about teaching and teacher evaluation.

Teacher: I dare you to measure my ‘value’

Entitled, Teacher: I dare you to measure my ‘value’, the author confronts the mindless and birdbrained “value-added” model of evaluating the quality of one’s teaching.  Here are few of her comments:

Read more of Donna McKenna here.

What do you think? Are we looking in the wrong places to find out about teacher quality?