The president's education leader has endorsed the public humiliation of teachers.

[madfloridian]

This is becoming a little scary. This attack being mounted against public education is happening with the endorsement and approval of this administration.

There is great power on the side of the "reformers". There is not so much on the side of the teachers who have limited resources and not much money. The "reform" movement is so powerful that now the private personnel evaluations of teachers will be published in a newspaper.

In the future this will be viewed in much the same light as the McCarthy hearings in the 50s. Many a good career was ruined by propaganda pushed by the mainstream media.

It really worked. Someone put the word out that teachers were not evaluated, not held accountable now at all. The word spread like wildfire, and now there is a cry for teacher "accountability."

Naming Names

Create any old value-added assessment you want.

Use tests that were never meant to be used for value-added assessment.

Run the scores through a computer and come up with a list of "good teachers" and "bad teachers."

Publish those names in the LA Times on Sunday.

Have the Obama administration publicly endorse the publication through a statement by the Secretary of Education.

And here is Arne's endorsement, clear and to the point. In fact Michelle Rhee in DC is now going to reveal the personal files of teachers there since it is all fine and good with this administration.

Arne Duncan thinks it's great for L.A. Times to release private teacher data publicly.


U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, posing with ninth-graders Asha Antoine, left, and Arielle Watkins during a summit in Washington last week, endorsed The Times' report on teacher effectiveness. This type of public analysis, he said, “can really empower teachers to strengthen their craft and find out who are the great teachers around them.” (Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images / August 10, 2010)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Monday that parents have a right to know if their children's teachers are effective, endorsing the public release of information about how well individual teachers fare at raising their students' test scores.

"What's there to hide?" Duncan said in an interview one day after The Times published an analysis of teacher effectiveness in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest school system. "In education, we've been scared to talk about success."

Duncan's comments mark the first time the Obama administration has expressed support for a public airing of information about teacher performance — a move that is sure to fan the already fierce debate over how to better evaluate teachers.

My husband and I spent hours working and donated often during 2003 for Dean, 2004 for Kerry, and 2008 for Obama.

Now I see that the profession I worked in for over 30 years is being degraded and held up to public ridicule and scorn.

I never expected this from any Democrat. I don't know what to think anymore, and I don't know who to believe.

[EFerrari]

1. K&R.

In addition to union busting, this is a profound attack on academic freedom and it's appalling to see so many people simply go along with it.

[madfloridian]

3. Yesterday someone here said...

that they have contempt for the teachers at DU.

I guess that pretty much sums up a lot of it.

:shrug:

[EFerrari]

14. I guess it does. n/t

[kickysnana]

30. Education has been under professional attack by the RW since the 1980's

But until Obama the Democratic Party supported teachers and Public Education.

[Hannah Bell]

7. +100.

[bvar22]

2. He is joined by about 1/2 of DU,

...if you go by the number of Anti-Teacher/Anti-UNION posts in recent threads.
.
.
.
.
What has happened to the Party of FDR that I joined in 44 years ago?

"In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

*The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

*The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

*The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

*The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

*The right of every family to a decent home;

*The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

*The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

*The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world."--FDR

"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

[Joe Fields]

48. And the other half does nothing but whine and make excuses...

:eyes:

[NoNothing]

4. I don't see it that way, personally

Teachers are public employees. Evaluations of public employees made by other public employees and paid for by public money, should be available to the public. There's no excuse for persecution, but there's no excuse for secrecy either.

[Hannah Bell]

6. The ratings *aren't* teacher evals & weren't paid for with public money.

The Times' crunching of *already publicly-available* test score numbers was paid for by BILL GATES.

[Brickbat]

8. This is not done by public money and these are not job evaluations.

[NoNothing]

21. Then I misunderstood the bolded text

I thought that's what the controversy was about.

[EFerrari]

9. Just because you don't have information doesn't mean it's a secret.

I've never met a teacher that wasn't evaluated or that didn't have those evaluations in an employment file, and that file is not under their personal control.

[LWolf]

13. So...when will you be lobbying for the release of the evaluations

of ALL public employees? Firefighters, law enforcement, social workers, forest service employees, coast guard, army, navy, airforce, marines, etc., etc., etc.?

[NoNothing]

20. As far as I know they are already available to anyone who wants to file a FOIA request

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[EFerrari]

23. That's an entirely different situation.

Your prospective employer can request your driving record. But if s/he publishes in the paper, that's an invasion of your privacy.

[LWolf]

41. Test scores are.

I don't think employee evaluations are. Using that test score to publicly call out teachers is not an evaluation of their effectiveness.

That's another issue.

An outside agency using public test score data to create it's own "effectiveness" rating to publicly publish is dangerous.

First of all, test scores are not a valid tool for teacher evaluation. For a wide variety of reasons that have been repeatedly pointed out.

Secondly, the political use of that public data has the obvious potential for corruption and abuse.

Finally, as a public employee, I'm evaluated by the public entity that hired me, not by the general public or by some corporate foundation lackey who has never met me, has never been on my campus, and has no idea what I do.

The bottom line? Those numbers aren't a valid reflection of teacher effectiveness, but they are a potentially harmful political tool when misused.

[Hannah Bell]

64. publish them in the newspaper: what have they got to hide?

why should people have to go through foia -- cost, time, & likely getting denied?

publish them!

[mopinko]

24. bring it on. cops especially.

in chicago there is a lot of racism still involved in public hiring. i would like to see all these numbers. that goes double for anyone who spends extended amounts of time with my kids. and they are all my kids.

not trying to cause trouble here, just trying to give the other side of this debate. parents look at this stuff in a really, really different light.
school 'report cards' with aggregate scores are already available. if a teacher 'scores' poorly, but is a great teacher in other ways, the parents and the principal will know.
i oppose high stakes testing in all it's manifestations. that includes hiring and firing teachers. but i think that we need to find a way to make sure that we have quality teachers. it is harped on because it is the largest variable in the education equation.

i know a lot of great teachers. i am not bagging on all teachers. but parents and kids deserve some sort of measure.

[LWolf]

31. How about a more constructive measure?

How about this:

Invite families to take a more active role ON CAMPUS. Invite them to staff meetings, give the school site council a more active role in decision making, make all hiring by a committee of teachers, parents, and admin, and have an open door policy for parents to spend as much time observing or participating as they want, with guidelines for student protection and non-disruption.

They'll know more about their schools, and their teachers, that way than by a politically motivated hit-piece using standardized test scores to "evaluate" teachers. Those numbers are measuring student effort and achievement, not teacher "effectiveness."

Racism in public hiring? I think the committee would help with that.

What numbers do you think we should publish for cops? The number of arrests?

[mopinko]

83. I was part of a move to get crime stats for chicago

I think it might have gone through 3 mayors. they finally gave the raw data in the form of FBI reports to northwestern university. they put it into a computer database that communities could examine. it was a big deal at the time. I'd sure as hell like to see which cops are getting sued.

I did a lot of work trying to bring parents into our school. it was a real chore.
filling out a teacher eval form at the end of the year like they do in colleges would go a long way.

I repeat- nobody should be boiled down into a number.

[LWolf]

118. I agree with that. Nobody should be boiled down into a number.

Not students, not their teachers, not their schools.

[EFerrari]

33. I can agree with all of that. They're all my kids, too.

But that isn't what is going on here.

Teachers and their unions are being singled out. What the hell is that? Don't these people know anything about problem solving or about how to up performance? Why would anyone attack the people who spend the most hours with our kids in this way?

It makes no sense to me. Duncan is acting as if there are no consequences to our kids for how he behaves. He is obviously not a teacher himself.

[mopinko]

107. teachers, cops and firefighters are the last unions standing

it seems. you know, i just don't think that it is that simple, one evil genius destroying our schools. and it is hard as hell to get a grip on it all.

i will tell you this, tho- the illinois legislature is in a big, big pickle, and little is getting done. but my state rep came to our monthly meeting to report about the stuff they did for rttt. they are progressives to their souls. to their bvd's. and they felt good about what they did. they didn't give us the minutia, but it did sound positive. nobody here is talking about using test scores period. i think that long term tracking of students is an excellent way to judge a school, for sure. and if they are sophisticated enough to track the students of one teacher, and that weeds out a dangerously bad teacher, good. if it gives some bonuses to some teachers who do a demonstrably above average job, cool. the system as it exist now in mostly places is designed to homogenize things so that neither good nor bad are all that evident.
iirc, the deal they are talking to ctu about right now is 50% of their evaluation will be test scores. imho, that is an appropriate measure.

[madfloridian]

39. So you are saying that private evaluations of teachers should be made public

in a newspaper?

You think personnel files of cops should be public also?

[NoNothing]

52. Not necessarily "should"

But a newspaper has a right to publish any public records.

And absolutely police personnel files should be public records. Honestly, I can't think of a good reason they shouldn't be.

[Dappleganger]

68. Personnel files should not be made public unless criminal activity has occurred.

I happen to think that even "bad" teachers should have a right to privacy as well. Just because they are public servants doesn't mean they should be humiliated and intimidated by the threat of letting everyone see their file. In particular, if a case is under appeal that kind of damage is something which cannot be undone. If this kind of thing happens you can be damn sure that less and less people will be going into the teaching profession.

[mopinko]

145. i'm not interested in how many days of work were missed

or trivial shit like that. although it would be nice to know which teachers never miss a day, and which teachers never miss a day off. major disciplinary actions ought to be known. continuing education would also be something interesting.
what is being proposed in rttt, tracking student success in finishing high school, and going on to college, graduating college, i am for that both on a school level, and at the teacher level. hard for that to be anything but scores and data, but it is a big enough aggregate to filter out the kid who is having a bad day or whatever.


i understand the difficulty of it all, especially the disparity in what teachers have to work with. but i still think that there is a lot to learn, especially when you are talking about special populations.
educational theories come and go. usually from bright idea, to big plan, to dissection, to failed idea, to history. but sometimes that is all more political and financial than educationally sound. buy-in in the classroom is never perfect. execution is never perfect. often the fall is not so much on the merits. we really need to be able to track these things in a larger way, with more data. it makes no sense to experiment if you aren't gonna collect the data.

every once in a while the idea comes around here in chicago to give parents a report card. to which the parents always reply, as long as the teacher gets one, too. and there it dies. i think both could lead to solutions for the intractable problems that we all face. parents know who the good teachers are. if they filled out an eval, make that a part of the 'grade', peer eval, admin eval, hell, let the kids fill one out after 4th grade or so, plus long term student achievement, a lot of bad teachers would be gone.

education is just too important, and right now, it is just too hard to know who is a good teacher and who is not.

[madfloridian]

149. You think one high-stakes test makes a good student and teacher?

Because that is exactly what this is about, you know.

[mopinko]

153. no, i support no such thing. and afaik, that is not what is

being suggested. in fact, it is sort of the opposite of what is being suggested. the rttt teacher evaluations are based on long term results, looking at which combination of teachers throughout a kid's school life led to the most kids graduating from college. not test scores. achievement. iirc, the illinois proposal is for current test scores to be 50% of the evaluation.

i have said it before and i will say it again, i am opposed to high stakes testing for kids, for teachers, for schools. no one should be boiled down to a number. what i am in favor of is, however, some accountability. this is not only about public employees, it is about everyone's future.
parents are entitled to know. voters are entitled to know. home buyers are entitled to know. tax payers are entitled to know.

[madfloridian]

154. That is what the paper is printing, the results of one test..

The schools had to give them the info from the teachers' files so they could compare one year to the other....but only on one test.

I am amazed at how few care.

[mopinko]

156. it is a measure of frustration. we all went to school.

most of us sent kids to school. the word teacher is second only to the word mom in dragging up suppressed pain.

[newspeak]

160. you mentioned tests

some people do not do well on tests--may be very intelligent, but actually freeze on tests. I gave a written OPEN BOOK driving examination to a woman, and told her to take her time and she could look up the answers. She was there well over an hour and finally broke down crying. Even though it was open book, she apparently, panicked when it came to tests.

[joeglow3]

155. One? No. Over multiple years? Yes

If over the course of 5 years there are 2 teachers teaching the same grade at the same school and one outperforms the other on a single "high-stakes test" by a large margin every year, you are damn right I think that says something about the 2 teachers.

[madfloridian]

157. Do you think teachers should stop keeping grade books?

And just not bother with essay assignments and such?

I mean why bother when only one test counts toward everything?

[joeglow3]

212. I NEVER said it should be the sole criteria

To discount everything because no single item tells the whole story is just ignorant.

[LWolf]

185. Or it says something about how rosters are compiled.

We know, we've KNOWN since before the introduction of high-stakes testing, that the biggest predictor of standardized test scores is not teacher, but parent SES.

Different districts and different school sites have different ways of putting rosters together, but the bottom line is this: the buck stops with administration, and any administrator (or, in a previous district I worked in, school secretary) can put rosters together anyway they please.

Those the admin likes? Give them the students most likely to succeed. Those the admin doesn't? Give them students most likely to struggle.

Whose class will show the most growth, every year?

How about comparing the teacher with a gifted cluster of students to a special ed teacher? Who's going to show more growth over time?

While I'm not suggesting that this is common, I HAVE seen manipulation of rosters to "reward" and "punish" teachers. There are all kinds of ways that rosters are compiled, but I've NEVER seen rosters developed by ensuring that every class had balanced SES numbers.

And they shouldn't be. While balancing them like that might get the comparison of growth over time a little closer to validity, there are other, more important balances and factors that affect classroom dynamics.

[joeglow3]

222. Honest question

Are you saying there is NO SINGLE WAY to grade a teacher? If so, this sounds like the perfect profession - you can be wrong more times than a meterologist, but always have excuses for discounting the reasons.

[LWolf]

230. There's no simple way to answer your question, that's for sure.

So I'll share what I think, when I read it.

I don't think "single ways" are appropriate for much, if anything. A "single way" is a one-size-fits-all solution, which, in reality, NEVER fits all.

Some examples:

There is no single way to grade the weather. We can measure temperature, wind speed, humidity, and barometric pressure. We can't use one of those measures to declare the weather "good" or "bad." We can use all those measures combined to predict, and to describe, weather conditions. It still won't be "good" or "bad," in most cases. We can probably agree that tornadoes and hurricanes are "bad." Bad for people, anyway. We can't, though, say that a warm, dry, sunny day is "good." It might be "good" for all those who enjoy that kind of weather, it might make for good driving conditions, it might make good weather for outdoor recreation. It might be "bad," though, for farmers and ranchers who've faced too long a stretch of those days, who need rain for crops, for hay, for pastures.

There is no single way to grade a person's health. There are all kinds of tests to be run, and data to be collected, and all of that data can give a decent picture of the whole. Is someone whose cardio-vascular system is healthy, but who has leukemia's health "good?" Is somebody's health "good" when most of their systems are healthy, but not all? Or "good" when, despite numerous nagging conditions, there are no major, life-threatening problems? Or "bad" when they have a common cold?

"Good" and "bad" are simply too simplistic for complex systems.

A teacher's job is complex. More complex than the general public recognizes, or wants to recognize. There is no single way to measure "effectiveness" or professional performance. Teachers are human beings. We are never perfect. There will always be areas of strength and weakness. Even the best teachers have room for improvement.

As we all do. So...is the teacher whose expertise on subject matter is beyond the norm "good," regardless of classroom management skills, organizational skills, people skills, and knowledge of brain development and instructional methodology? Does excellence in one or two of those traits and weakness in one or two make a teacher "good," or "bad?"

Test scores? Teachers influence student test scores. They are an important factor. They aren't the ONLY factor, though. Is it just and fair to evaluate their "effectiveness," to rate them as "good" or "bad" teachers, based on data when they aren't the only, or even the biggest, factor contributing to that data? Is it really ethical to evaluate someone based on what others do, instead of what they do?

There are many ways to grade teachers. The best systems will use multiple ways to look at multiple traits; just as the best way to evaluate students is to do the same. The best systems will focus on what teachers DO, not what their students do. Their students are not factory parts on an assembly line; they are not puppies to be trained to come, go, sit, or stay on command with clickers and liver treats. Students are human beings who are given opportunities to learn. They bear the responsibility for what they choose to do with their opportunities.

The best systems for evaluating teachers, recognizing all of this, will also be based on supporting the improvement of professional practice, even for the best. Because we all have room for improvement. The best systems will not be based on punishment, but on the evolution of practice.

The small fraction of those who cannot, or will not, engage in the career-long process of self-reflection and professional evolution should be counseled out of the profession. The way the school system works, that would mean a non-renewal of contract, which usually happens in May or June for the following year.

What is the purpose of "grading" the teacher? I can think of a few. For some people, they remember having bad experience with some teachers, and want to be able to punish those teachers. For some, they have bought into the propaganda that suggests that MANY, rather than a few, relative to the whole, teachers are "bad." There's that "bad" again; a one-size-fits all, broad-brush label that fosters political posturing, but doesn't accurately "grade" anyone. Some see the dysfunction and failure in many schools and systems around the nation and want to change them. Some are more interested in gaining political capital than any real "change." Some want the "changes" to benefit, not students, but their political supporters, and are happy to encourage propaganda and "solutions" that support that goal.

Some parents just want to know what teacher to request for their kids. In my experience, that kind of information is usually gained by parking lot gossip. I don't support constructing classroom rosters based on parent request, though. I've worked where that was the norm, and, inevitably, classroom rosters were terribly unbalanced. Healthy dynamics in the classroom depend, in part, on the balance of elements and personalities in that classroom, which is not achieved by parent request. The best balances are reached when the previous year's teachers get together and create the rosters for the next year, with balance as the framework.

In reality, teachers are not the source of the system's dysfunctions. The quality of the teachers in the actively teaching population follows the same continuum as anywhere else, from terrible to superb, with most somewhere in between. The sources of dysfunction in the system, though, aren't teachers. Teachers have to comply with the system. They didn't design it, they don't create policy. They comply. One of the reasons the system HAS dysfunctions is that teachers are deliberately excluded from the driver's seat when it comes to "reform."

[Dappleganger]

66. So tell us how humiliation and intimidation are an effective means of helping

ineffective teachers??

[NoNothing]

72. It's not about that

It's about the public's right to know.

[Dappleganger]

73. Know what?

You haven't answered the question.

[NoNothing]

74. Know what their government agencies are doing

As a general rule, everything the government does is open to the public, unless there is a really good reason why not. I favor this rule. Frankly, if there is a teacher receiving poor evaluations, the public who is paying those taxes has a right to know for transparency's sake, independent of what effect that has on teacher motivation.

[Hannah Bell]

134. Except the government didn't fund this, Bill Gates did. And they aren't

"teachers evaluations," they're ratings devised by a researcher Bill Gates paid.

The test data is publicly available already. You can search it on the internet if you want to find out how *your* child or his/her class/school/district is doing. If you want to know about his/her teacher, you can look at his work & go to student conferences and volunteer in his classroom.

You want to know what a "government agency" is doing, go find one. School districts aren't a "government agency," they're school districts, run by people elected by the public, not appointed by the government.

If you want to know about the teachers in your local school generally, you can volunteer in classrooms or get involved in programs. If you don't like what they're doing you can go complain to the board or start a protest group or vote down the next levy or take your kids out or picket the school or sue it.

And no, personnel files are not public information for a reason: because, as in nazi germany, as in the mccarthyite US, they can be used to persecute people. and will be.

Public funding leaves doctors, lawyers, counselors, police, firemen, social workers & many other professionals open to the same demand: open your personnel file, we, the public, demand to see.

You can hardly get a doc to let you see your own fucking medical records, but people are signing onto publishing these phoney bill-gates-funded "ratings" in the national news.

what a fascist travesty.

[proud2BlibKansan]

200. A+

[LWolf]

210. +1,000

[Fire1]

231. +1000.

[LWolf]

187. The release of test scores by teacher does not tell people

"what their government agencies are doing." Test scores are not teacher evaluations, and teacher evaluations aren't being released. A teacher's personnel file is available to that teacher's employers: the site admin and the district office. If a teacher transfers from one district to another, the personnel file follows, so that the new employers have that information.

[montanto]

148. Right, so we should be able to evaluate cops, and

fire fighters, and EMTs, and, well, heck, congress, and the President of the United States himself using the same squalid, potentially misleading, doubtlessly misapplied information. Under the circumstances there can be no success, because by virtue of uninformed democratic opinion, no one is beyond reproach. The problem continues to be the validity of the evaluation itself.

[Brickbat]

5. Madfloridian, thank you again for exposing Arne Duncan for what he is. I never once thought a

Democratic president would undo so much of the work unions and the public-school teachers I know and love have done. This is a fucking nightmare.

[madfloridian]

80. I never thought so either.

What is even more amazing is that so many at a Democratic forum agree with this tactic of humiliating a group of people in public.

[Jakes Progress]

90. The sorry, shameful truth is that they are hypocrites.

The very same DU posters who support Obama's race to the bottom would be storming the gates of Washington and marching arm in arm with teachers as brothers if bush or mccain did this. It is terrible to see that so many Democrats have no ethical center but rather just see governance as a game. Just as surely as the neo-cons took away the traditional Republican party, our party has been wholly consumed by people and ideas that Truman and Kennedy would spit at.

[Dappleganger]

96. I'm no longer amazed.

I've even stopped shaking my head, sadly.

[madfloridian]

131. I shouldn't be amazed anymore either.

But I keep having those hopes.

[madfloridian]

10. No matter how many unrecs....the post is still true.

So go for it.

[tnlefty]

11. K & R

I have no words for this right now - just stunning.

[laughingliberal]

12. K & R nt

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

15. I believe that teachers should be accountable...

but not like this. Hell, I get evaluated every year by my boss -- but the contents of that evaluation are confidential and publishing them would be a firing offense.

A belief in a fundamental right to privacy -- to say nothing for professional courtesy -- should dictate that the results of teacher evaluations should be held in strict confidence

[EFerrari]

18. The worst part of this isn't even the concerted shaming of the entire profession.

The worst thing is that, when you think about it, your relationship to your teachers is one of the most intimate ones you'll have in your life. In order to be in that relationship and to do a good job, a teacher needs to have a consistent working environment.

Can you imagine what happens to a teacher's ability to teach under this kind of constant threat? This is an attack on the relationships that make learning possible at the most basic level.

I just heard a presentation by the provost of Columbia University about stereotype threat and what it does to performance. He's spent his entire career studying this. When people feel they are at risk of being identified with a stereotype, their performance tanks. And the more capable that person is, the more their performance tanks because they care more than less capable individuals.

That is what Arne Duncan is doing to our most capable teachers.

Here is the presentation. It's about an hour and there is a transcript:

Whistling Vivaldi

The provost of Columbia University presents his study of the effects of stereotypes on learning and testing and the state of education in the U.S. He discovers that telling a group what a specific test is supposed to reveal significantly increases the likelihood that test outcomes will reflect ingrained stereotypes. The event was at the Harvard University Book Store.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/294708-1

[Dappleganger]

69. +10000

[DrDan]

16. this really needs to be challenged in court - these evaluations are private and should be treated as

such.

Time for the teacher's union to get involved by speaking out against this ridiculous suggestion.

[Starry Messenger]

17. It's a 21st century red scare in Education

No one is going to go to school to be a teacher in this climate.

[disillusioned73]

25. Exactly what the ..

for profit corps want - lower the overhead and swim in the profits.... Manufacturing has been fully tapped, it was just a matter of time before they targeted a new cash cow with the assistance of our own elected representatives:puke:

[Fire1]

232. That's the irony in all of this. They want the "brightest and the

best" but subject educators to piss poor salaries, public scrutiny, poor working conditions and no union. Good luck with that, arney.

[dflprincess]

19. So what would this prove but which teachers were more adept at teaching to the test?

In this case, it may very well be that the teachers who fall into the "bad" category are the ones who are still trying to actually educate the little darlings.

[vi5]

22. Look over there! It's a Republican! And he's doing stuff!!!

BOO!!! Now get out and vote for democrats and ignore stuff like this!!!

[immoderate]

26. If we want to be #1 in education...

Perhaps we should look at what the top school systems in the world do, and do that. Or give educators a voice in determining policy. Instead we've substituted test performance for education, in a system that is designed to self-destruct.

Among the progressive trends I encountered when I was a classroom teacher, was a move toward portfolios, journals, and more extensive projects, and less emphasis on test data. It accommodated students with different strengths, it opened avenues for motivation. Motivation now seems to be, "You better pass this fucking test!" :mad:

--imm

[Ignis]

27. But there's more money to be made in the test-focused approach.

So, here we are once again, taking public risks for private profits. :argh:

[EFerrari]

28. Raygun took us from being at the top to where we are now.

He was an over-achiever in that respect. :grr:

[madfloridian]

32. Those methods might allow for "success".

"a move toward portfolios, journals, and more extensive projects, and less emphasis on test data."

That is how it should be. But that is assuming the "reformers" WANT public schools to be successful. They have their own goals.

[katandmoon]

29. K&R

[Barack2theFuture]

34. This escalation of the rape of our public education system

is reason enough to questin support for continuation of this administration's policies.

[Lance_Boyle]

35. If your job evaluation is humiliating and there's no way to fire you,

what else to do but shame? Teachers, once again, are not some sainted class exempt from job performance scrutiny. If you are a public school teacher and you suck, the people paying you deserve to know about it.

[madfloridian]

37. That is not true. Teachers can be fired for cause at any time...

Even if on tenure.

[Lance_Boyle]

42. Is one of those causes 'poor performance?'

Removing ineffective teachers is not as simple as you make it out to be.

[madfloridian]

45. Yes, for cause.

You are falling for propaganda that is not true.

[Lance_Boyle]

55. I don't think I am.

You appear to be promoting the concept of teacher infallibility, which is demonstrably not true. What is the harm in allowing the people who pay public school teacher's salaries to see the performance evaluations of their employees?

[vssmith]

114. A teacher with a bad eval made public would be the laughing stock of his/her students

How would that help anyone?

[Hannah Bell]

137. maybe they'd be hounded to quit. or kill themselves. that would be a plus for some, apparently

[Hannah Bell]

136. she's doing no such thing. but you're promoting mccarthyism.

and sorry, the entire population of the country doesn't pay teachers salaries in any district.

and also, sorry, this "rating" wasn't devised with public funds -- it's the result of an analysis funded by BILL GATES. To encourage just the kind of mccarthyism you're signing on to.

[Diane R]

161. Thank you, Lance. Many of us have been trying to make that point.

Teachers are NOT infallible. Some of them are horrible.

Yet we have daily threads whining every time a teacher's work might be questioned.

[Hannah Bell]

223. bullshit.

[Diane R]

225. Is that your best reply? I hope you're not a teacher.

[Hannah Bell]

226. why are you hiding your profile, diane?

[EFerrari]

44. What color is the sky in your world, Lance?

[Joe Fields]

53. I get evaluated at my job on a daily basis. So what?

I do my job to the best of my ability and don't worry about the evaluation. As with teachers, there are forces beyond my control that can affect my performance, but guess what? That's life. I'm a grown up and can accept it. It goes with the territory of being a manager. Frankly, it gets tiresome hearing all the whining and excuse making done by the teachers on this forum. A lot less of it might improve the perception of same teachers here.

[eridani]

95. Oh. And I suppose everyone's evaluations that are NOT above average

--gets publicized on the company website and they all get fired?

[Joe Fields]

99. I really wouldn't know. I'm too busy working.

[eridani]

133. Nice non-answer

If your evaluation is kept in a locked HR department drawer, why should teachers be any different? And why isn't everyone in your company who is below average every year fired?

[TheKentuckian]

36. Want to improve education? Ignore conservatives

[LWolf]

58. Ignore conservatives AND neoliberals. Including those in the Democratic Party. nt

[TheKentuckian]

93. Absolutely correct. All those mentioned are conservatives. Neolibs and neocons are the same fucks

giving different rhetoric to explain the same horrible policies.

[LWolf]

119. They make "new" a disease.

Which is a damned shame.

[Hannah Bell]

138. +100. actual & neo-lib.

[City Lights]

38. K&R.

You're a gem, madfloridian.

[Common Sense Party]

40. "not so much on the side of the teachers who have limited resources and not much money"?

Teachers unions don't have power or money?

[madfloridian]

43. Not compared to the Billionaire Boys Club that is taking over education.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/5787

[Common Sense Party]

47. the NEA is one of the top 10 most powerful lobbyists in Washington D.C.

Can't they do SOMETHING to address this? Or do they not care?

[madfloridian]

50. Not under this administration, no, they are not.

All Democrats are on board with the crusade against public teachers...or should I say that none are speaking out for teachers now.

:shrug:

This is Bush's education policy being implemented by the Democrats. I think the unions were caught off guard or were infiltrated.

[Hannah Bell]

139. link? i think you're mistaken, in terms of number of lobbyists & dollars spent.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s

Top spenders

US Chamber of Commerce $651,035,680
American Medical Assn $236,012,500
General Electric $214,234,000
Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America $185,063,920
AARP $183,922,064
American Hospital Assn $183,723,431
AT&T Inc $155,217,314
Northrop Grumman $152,085,253
Blue Cross/Blue Shield $148,121,902
National Assn of Realtors $146,697,380
Exxon Mobil $144,796,942
Verizon Communications $141,394,841
Edison Electric Institute $141,085,999
Business Roundtable $136,944,000


http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=c

By sector

Sector Total
Agribusiness $1,257,895,616
Communic/Electronics $3,419,489,294
Construction $453,677,155
Defense $1,191,252,953
Energy/Nat Resource $3,025,096,324
Finance/Insur/RealEst $4,179,199,446
Health $4,110,153,970
Lawyers & Lobbyists $330,764,295
Transportation $2,195,544,303
Misc Business $4,038,020,055
Labor $416,224,839
Ideology/Single-Issue $1,445,466,875
Other $2,160,178,151


Education/nea don't make either cut. "The powerful teachers' union," as the NYT always calls it, is not as powerful as all that. Its power is in its membership numbers, & its membership has traditionally been pretty docile.

Maybe that's about to change -- maybe not.

Here's the page on teachers' unions: they spent about $3 million in 2009 and had about 28 lobbyists. compare that to the chamber of commerce, which spent over half a trillion.

ooh, the powerful teachers unions!


http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/induscode.php?year=2009&lname=L1300&id=

nea has about 10 lobbyists.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/induscode_lobs.php?lname=L1300&year=2009

[madfloridian]

159. Thanks for that. Was going to search for that info today.

Now I don't have to. The NEA has always sort of sat back and not pushed anything too hard. I was PEA, FEA, NEA...and the local was very strong. But as it went up the line.not much.

[Hannah Bell]

164. you're welcome. teachers' unions have the biggest membership of *all* unions now.

i was thinking that the ptb were very smart the way they went about picking off unions.

picked off the militants first, saving the most docile for last.

[madfloridian]

189. "the militants first, saving the most docile for last"

Well-said and true.

[Hannah Bell]

163. nothing to say about the lobbying data, common sense?

[Joe Fields]

46. If teachers do their job, then they shouldn't have anything to worry about.

[EFerrari]

51. That makes as much sense as if you are doing nothing wrong

you shouldn't be worried about being stopped by the police.

[Joe Fields]

54. lol

If a teacher is doing their job, they don't have to worry about losing it, unless budget cuts force layoffs.

BTW, do you spend all of your time worrying about things that are remotely possible?

[EFerrari]

57. Teachers are being layed off all over the country.

So, the answer to your question must be, no.

[Joe Fields]

61. That's "laid" off.

So are a lot of other folk, in case you hadn't noticed.

[EFerrari]

63. I stand corrected. n/t

[LWolf]

56. There are so many things wrong with that statement, I don't know where to begin.

I'll let Steven Krashen address it:

The LA Times ("Who's teaching LA kids?" August 15) is practicing educational research without a license, and is practicing it poorly. The value-added analysis of teacher quality used by the Times is based on test scores. It assumes that the test scores are valid, that teachers are randomly assigned to classes, and that the results for individual teachers are stable. None of these assumptions have been validated.



The analysis also ignores the potent influence of other factors on student achievement, such as poverty, which is typically a stronger predictor of student achievement than teaching quality.



The Times also neglected to follow the usual procedure of sharing work with the academic community before making it public to millions of readers. They also put reporters in the role of expert observers of teachers. What's next, a value-added analysis of brain surgery, with newspaper reporters critiquing surgical procedures?

http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1250

Add to that the potential for political misuse, and there's plenty to be worried about.

[Starry Messenger]

62. Beautifully stated.

[Joe Fields]

65. Here we go again with the excuses.

As I stated earlier, I get evaluated every single day at my job. I have outside factors over which I have no control that can and do affect my performance. I understand that and deal with it. You don't hear me whining and making excuses. I do my job to the best of my ability and do a good job and get positive evaluations. I suggest all teachers do the same and the odds are they won't have anything to worry about.

[LWolf]

75. Is that you, Ronnie?

I get evaluated at my job, too. As a matter of fact, my last evaluation was superb.

I didn't suggest that teachers shouldn't be evaluated. Backing into accusations of "whining" and "making excuses" because there is no legitimate justification for what the L.A. Times did doesn't strengthen your position.

What, exactly, did Krashen say that you disagree with? Or what did I say?

[YvonneCa]

88. So you want us to gamble...

...and play the odds?

[knitter4democracy]

125. You think we aren't?

We are evaluated every day by students, parents, fellow teachers, student teachers, administrators of all levels--heck, even the support staff evaluate us daily. That's teaching. We're used to it.

The reality is, the evaluation tool they're using doesn't work, has been shown to be bogus repeatedly by everyone's research, and isn't anything we ever knew about or agreed to in contract talks.

By the way, if you really think your job is secure because you work hard and get positive evaluations, you need to stop drinking the kool-aid. People with so-called secure jobs are getting fired left and right these days. I'm betting that, when they start talking about cutting your job, you'll wish you had a union to back you up.

[Dappleganger]

70. LOL!

:eyes:

[knitter4democracy]

124. Same with all those great GM and Ford employees, right?

This is about busting a union and destroying public education, not actually doing anything positive.

How about this: how about we publish your ACT score next to your name in the paper? Your college GPA? If you're doing your job, you shouldn't have anything to worry about, right? The test scores my students earn have the same relevance to my job as my college GPA. They're just numbers, and the reality is, the myth is that we have any control over those numbers.

Liars do a lot of figuring all the time. Standardized test scores are actually standardized--curved, messed with, and then spit back out. If students do poorly that year, the company bumps up all the scores to fit a standard. For example, the College Board that runs the ACT messes with their scores all the time. It came out about 10 years ago that they'd bumped up all scores 2 entire points, so my 30 that I earned in high school was now worth a 32. They got so much flack for that that the next time they messed with the scores, they didn't tell us how much they bumped all the scores up. So, if the scores don't mean the same from year to year, and if the scores are messed with to meet some mean or some paradigm, why on earth would we use them at all to judge individual students or to judge teachers?

There's a good bit of research out there that clearly states that, if you take a teacher from one district or one school and put that teacher in a different environment (say, from college-prep high school to an alternative high school), the test scores go up or down with socioeconomic levels. Same teacher, same materials, same topic--different students. So, why on earth would we use test scores from the students (which are obviously based on more than which teacher they have) to judge the teacher if they aren't standardized from district to district, school to school, class to class, student base to student base?

[Hannah Bell]

140. bullshit.

[madfloridian]

49. If this is done to teachers, it follows that ALL public employees...

could be soon in line for public humiliation.

And what kind of country does that make us?

Remember that the Billionaire Boys Club is leading the way on the teacher attack....

so I wonder what is the next step in the privatization of everything?

[madrchsod]

77. more to the point---is this legal?

[madfloridian]

78. Good question.

Unless someone sues, we won't know that.

[Hannah Bell]

141. and not just "public" employees -- for example, about half the medical/pharma sector

is funded via medicare/medicaid & other such government monies.

i want to see surgeons ranked on the front page of the times. maybe by the death rates of their clients, or infection rates, or rates of serious complications.

[Joe Fields]

59. You can call your profession being held up to ridicule and scorn,

but I say it is being held up to scrutiny, and it's about damned time. And what you are espousing is propaganda, using tactics not any different than the other side. When you use flame words like "ridicule" and "scorn" to describe shining a public light on the teaching profession, which I see nothing wrong in doing, then you are no different than the other side. Why are teachers so afraid? What do they have to hide? If they all did their damned jobs to the best of their abilities, then they shouldn't be scared of evaluations. And you can use all the excuses in the world as to why it isn't fair, but a grown up accepts it and deals with it, understanding just what is expected from them, and working to deliver on those expectations.

[EFerrari]

60. A very public attack by a cabinet member is not shining a light on anything

except that cabinet member's desire to intimidate that profession.

[Joe Fields]

67. Show me where he "attacks" your profession.

[EFerrari]

82. Um, Joe, I'm not a teacher at the moment. And endorsing the release of

fabricated evaluations to the public is a professional attack by any measure.

Seriously, don't listen to anyone here. You yourself keep track of Arne Uncle Joe Duncan for one week and make up your own mind.

[MichiganVote]

102. Do you work? If so, please post your most recent job evaluation. Plz.

include your salary and health information. Also, include your full name, address and dependents. If you are employed as a consultant, plz. include your contact list, the percentage of work that you have garnered for your employer as well as any expenses the company has had to incur because of your employment. If you work on commission, please include your target goals as well as how well you have met these goals. You may include any award that you have received but its really not important. Absences, sick days from work and so on should be included. If you have documentation related to employment discipline that should be included.

If you are doing your job to the best of your ability, you shouldn't be scared of providing this information to the general public via DU. As a grown up, you'll just deal with it.

Right?

[Joe Fields]

108. You first...lol

First, publishing health information is against the law, so you are stretching quite a bit here. If you are talking strictly about job performance, I would have no problem with that, although you wouldn't believe it. Besides, my profession is a little different from the teaching profession. Most students have little or no choice of who educates them. In my profession, if the customer doesn't like our food and our service, then there are many other options. The marketplace dictates.

[MichiganVote]

110. Well you see that's where we agree.

You see, publishing some health information is acceptable in education circles. For example, you have a right to maintain privacy on the type of insurance you have, its costs and what the stats are for your workforce in terms of usage, disease etc.

Public educators and their districts do not have that same protection.

The fact that your profession is different is not a problem as I see it. Do you or your company utilize public services during the course of any part of your business? Maybe taxpayers are entitled to know that. Do you or your company realize any tax advantages? If so, you should be accountable for that. Do you or your company lobby representatives for specific items? Seems like a good cause but should include that in the package.

Now as to who your customers are and how much choice they have over who to do business with or in the case of your example-who will educate them. Let's see...do all of your customers look the same, act the same, have the same resources or even think the same? Doubtful. Public teachers take whomever walks in their door based on parent preference, administrative division of students based on class size or on the basis of special needs.

But if the parent or the administrator or the needs of the student dictate, another choice may be made by just about anyone but a classroom teacher.

So by all means, publish your specific work or labor history. OR--consider why Arne Duncan actually said what he did and is supporting this silly idea. Do you know anything about federal-state-local finance when it comes to schools? Thought not.

Do some reading on the subject. You might find it interesting and illuminating.

[Joe Fields]

123. Nowhere have I read where the L.A. Times intends to publish

any of your above mentioned suppositions. They only intend to publish the evaluations. And with HIPPA laws , I find it hard to believe that anyone's private health information is being published.

[shimmergal]

129. It's not against the law

for a person to publish health information about themselves.

[damntexdem]

71. Well, just those who can't teach to the test, or get students programmed to the test.

Hey, maybe they could start branding with a scarlet E.

;-)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

76. Seems like a particularly dishonest accusation to me.

[madfloridian]

79. If teacher personnal files are to be made public...I want to see files of others.

Like policemen, city and county employees, state employees...all of our administrators in the school system as well.

I expect them in the newspaper front and center.

I see that many have no concerns over privacy issues of teachers. That scares me a lot.

[LoZoccolo]

81. You have been posting the contents of your files on DLC members and associates for years.

[Fumesucker]

84. madfloridian has access to DLC members' and associates' personnel files?

You have a citation to back up that accusation?

[LoZoccolo]

86. Didn't I say "your files"?

[Fumesucker]

98. What does that have to do with the discussion?

The discussion is about personnel files, that's why I asked if madfloridian had access to DLC members' personnel files.

[LoZoccolo]

101. Where does the article say anything about personnel files?

[Fumesucker]

103. The post you were replying to was specifically about personnel files..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8968522&mesg_id=8970502

[LoZoccolo]

104. Yes, it does look like I failed to acknowledge the confusion of the two different things.

[madfloridian]

87. lol that's funny.

I could not see that post, but that is funny. Not sure what it means, but lol

So that is what it said.

[LoZoccolo]

89. I'm being publicly humiliated by someone's ignore list.

[madfloridian]

85. Christian Science Monitor: Test Score Bomb, how far is too far

when it comes to accountability.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0817/Test-score-bomb-How-far-is-too-far-in-teacher-accountability-push

"California Secretary of Education Bonnie Reiss told the paper that she would encourage more districts to use their data to develop and release value-added scores for teachers.

Teachers, however – many of whom say they would welcome getting such scores privately to help them improve their teaching – seem largely unhappy, and
the local union is outraged.

“We’re playing blame the teacher,” says A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, who is calling for the boycott and says he will consider legal options. He dismisses the data as largely useless in measuring the big picture of what teachers do, and notes that standardized tests only cover about 15 percent of the curriculum. “Value-added doesn’t work with human beings, it doesn’t work in an education system,” he says."

[Stinky The Clown]

91. Chilling and disgusting

[madfloridian]

92. Well said, Stinky.

Indeed it is.

[madfloridian]

94. 15 unrecs....that's a lot.

General Discussion
The president's education leader has endorsed the public humiliation of teachers.
48 recs : By madfloridian

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=greatest_threads&topten=1

Says a lot about priorities and values.

[madfloridian]

106. 21 unrecs now. must be a record.

[Dr.Phool]

147. Your fan club is at work.

[activa8tr]

97. OH PLEAUZZZZE!!! As a retired teacher, who worked 9-11 hours a day for

years and years, who cared about those "failing students" before we called them "learning disabled" "ADHD" or worse...

I have to wonder what teachers today think is the bottom line of what they are expected to do. I have to wonder whether their "STATUS" and "EGO" is more important than their career.

All teachers, everywhere, in any place in the world, no exceptions, here's the way the expectations go down for teachers, who are NEVER able to meet them at 100%. They are expected to give children a path to success in this world, no matter what that requires. True the world is a little tougher and more complex than it was in some previous times. But I worked in a world of non-integrated schools in the South, a drop out rate of 50% for women at 16 in some places in America, some schools that didn't allow pregnant women to teach when they "showed", where pregnant teens had to drop out as there was no way they could finish the year "big". This was the 60's-70's when I first started.... not in MY school but less than 20 miles away these were the rules. So there are challenges now, but there are a lot of battles won, mostly by the action of teachers after school hours, changing the rules.

But teachers I knew and respected never flinched from a challenge, never ran away from another hour or two of work after school hours.

Teaching is more an art than a rocket science. If you can't spend 10-15 hours a day over 200 days a year doing this, as so many OTHER professions spend at THEIR careers, (and if one doesn't love spending their day with children and helping all of them succeed) why would one choose to be a teacher?

[knitter4democracy]

126. The classroom today is a different place.

Trust me, talk with some of your former colleagues. I took a few years off to be a stay-at-home mom, and I've been shocked at the difference in just that time. NCLB and RTTT have entirely changed the game plan and not for the better.

I'm a parapro in an alternative high school (haven't gotten a full teaching job yet), so it's not like I don't know what you're talking about hours and helping kids of all abilities and issues. In our school, we have to meet AYP like everyone else; so, we get the students the other schools kick out for low test scores and then have to get them to pass a certain score level on the ACT (that's the test Michigan uses for AYP). The ACT was not designed for this, and our students tend not to score well. Given that we get students with a fourth grade reading level and even lower, that makes a lot of sense. Now we're being told that, by state and federal law, we have to only use state-approved teaching methods for the state-approved curriculum, as those are backed up by research. The problem is, research is very clear that traditional methods (the only ones researched these days) do not work in alternative schools. So, by law, we have to use research-based methods that research says won't work.

That's teaching in 2010.

[MichiganVote]

100. Someone needs to inform Obama that Arne Duncan doesn't want him re-elected.

[suffragette]

105. Taking a bad, discredited idea from the UK and ratcheting it up a notch

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6257063.stm

League tables: only half the story

They were created in 1992 by John Major's Conservative government as part of the Citizen's Charter.

The stated aim was to give parents the consumer information they needed to create a free market in school choice.

Since then though, governments have found another purpose for the tables, using them as a lever to direct the school system down one particular track or another.

They have become the Fat Controller's equivalent of the railway signal box. More focus on the 3Rs! Quick pull the maths and English lever. Worried about "coasting" schools. Throw the value-added switch.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/gloucestershire/7555625.stm
Top school head condemns tables

Speaking ahead of Thursday's release of A Level results, head Shaun Fenton said tables undermined education.

"League tables increase pressure on teachers to move away from authentic learning and towards merely preparation of students to pass tests," he said.

~~~

Last week, education watchdog Ofsted said government tables of top-performing schools were "meaningless".

It said contextual value added (CVA) scores - taking into account external factors such as poverty - were the best measure of education quality.

[ipaint]

109. Public humilation = war on teachers = neoliberal education policies.

"capitalism with the gloves off."

Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm

Amazing people defend this garbage.

[ecstatic]

117. If being sick & tired of the excuses teachers make for not educating

students, particularly disadvantaged students, makes me a neoliberal then so be it. Out of all of MF's threads, I've yet to see one that expresses concern for the students who are falling further and further behind the rest of the country and world. You think it's acceptable for certain segments of the student population to be ignored as long as the teachers can keep their jobs.

[ipaint]

146. The billiionaires and their charter schools make the problem worse.

Low test scores, increased segregation and less public/community control.

FUND the poorer schools. Innovate the public schools and tell the billionaires with the failed charter/privatization agenda to shove it up their asses. No one elected them to anything and they are not kings.

It amazes me that people will willingly give up their democratic power and control to these parasitic billionaires because they've bought the propaganda against teachers and for privatization hook, line a sinker.

What is about giving up your rights as a citizen to billionaire social engineers for profit that some find so damn appealing?

[Diane R]

162. Another voice of reason.

All these thousands of blog entries have just one theme: making certain teachers keep their jobs, regardless of performance.

[ipaint]

167. Yes, because fully funding and innovating public schools, without the "help"

of for profit billionaire vultures out to make a buck, can't possibly include assisting teachers to do the best job they can for the kids.

Not in some folks pea sized brains, apparently.

[msanthrope]

174. Actually, teacher efficiency had little correlation to funding,

"Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers' effectiveness were not. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students' performance.

Other studies of the district have found that students' race, wealth, English proficiency or previous achievement level played little role in whether their teacher was effective."


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story?page=2

While I support adequate funding, the LA data indicates that money had less to do with teacher effectiveness than previously thought.

[ipaint]

175. So the la times hired the rand corporation to conduct the study. Interesting

Money for the project came from a $15,000 grant from the Hechinger Project, a non-profit education news organization at Columbia University, and the paper commissioned Richard Buddin of the Rand Corp. to run the tests. Buddin evaluated the scores of more than 600,000 students taught by 18,000 teachers in 520 LAUSD schools between the 2002-2003 and 2008-2009 school years. Reporters Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith write: “In Los Angeles and across the country, education officials have long known of the often huge disparities among teachers…But rather than analyze and address these disparities, they have opted mostly to ignore them.” Later, Felch, Song and Smith write that the paper will publish the scores because parents often have “no access to objective information” about individual teachers, and little say in who teaches their children.

By engaging in this project the paper is not just jumping into the national conversation, it’s also tacitly endorsing the Obama administration’s education reform model that calls for similar test score-based evaluations of teacher effectiveness. Much of states’ ability to win Race to the Top federal grants hinges on their adoption of so-called “teacher accountability” mechanisms that tie a teacher’s job evaluations to their students’ test scores. Already, many states have overhauled their education laws and now allow teachers to be fired within two years if their students’ test scores are unsatisfactory. Unsurprisingly, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan loves what the LA Times is doing.

LAUSD chief Ramon Cortines issued a statement yesterday defending his teachers. “We reject the implication that test scores alone form the basis for designating a teacher as ineffective,” Cortines said. “Would a person be diagnosed with diabetes solely on the basis of a high blood pressure reading? No. Multiple tests or measures are necessary to determine the health of an individual or in our case, the effectiveness of a teacher or teacher leader.”

http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/08/post_94.html

The rand corp.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=RAND_Corporation


The public shaming makes sense now. The board at rand is a who's who of millionaire and billionaire foundations, blackrock, defense corporations, national security corporations, federal reserve, the carlyle group, etc.




"A report issued last month by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences concluded that "policymakers must carefully consider likely system errors when using value-added estimates to make high stakes decisions regarding educators."

And last fall, the National Research Council took a close look at the administration's promotion of the value-added methodology as a criterion for states to qualify for its $4.3 billion "Race to the Top" program.

The headline announcing its report, referred to briefly in the Times article, declared, "Value-added methods to assess teachers not ready for use in high-stakes decisions."

http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/test-scores-and-ethics-outing-teachers-1097


Can anyone spell AMBUSH?

[msanthrope]

179. So, are you saying they lied?

Falsified data?

Used an incorrect methodology?

You may not like the people running the numbers, but unless you've got something that disputes them, what's your point?

Would you accept an answer from a student that merely said "Well, the RAND corporation is evil, therefore I don't have to listen to them?"

What, precisely, did they do wrong in this specific study?

[ipaint]

190. I question, you accept. Over the last 30 years the vast majority of the time billionaires

and their tax dodging foundations lie and working people tell the truth.

Regarding public schools this goes all the way back to reagan fixing the results of the national study on public schools thereby building the foundation of lies that charter/privatization was built on and the current day witch hunt directed at teachers is the result of.

Don't trust them, don't believe, always question them and sure enough their claims are eventually debunked. The debunking is NEVER front page news.

[msanthrope]

191. Again, are you saying they lied about the numbers?

How is this particular study flawed?

If the best you've got is vague accusations and assertions of conspiracy, do you understand why these education threads tend to errode teacher support here?

[ipaint]

193. see post 192.

I'm surprised, your such an avid fan of this type of public humiliation via VAM, how could you not know the type of methodology used in the rand study isn't particularly reliable.

Reagan's lies in the study on public schools isn't a vague conspiracy just a proven fact. As is the private for profit direction these billionaire vulture capitalists want to take our democratic public education system.

You can use all the buzz words that you want, evil, conspiracy, vague assunptions, etc. They only point to your own ignorance of the history of the for profit attack on public education.

[msanthrope]

195. Again, can you be specific about this study?

What is the specific problem with methodology that you cite, IN THIS STUDY?

ETA--a note on your postings about Reagan and public schools. I don't disagree with what you have to say about Ronald Reagan. But you haven't made a case for why this study has anything to do with him.

[ipaint]

196. Your kidding, right?

Seems I've hit another brick wall.

I don't have the time to waste.

[msanthrope]

198. "Your [sic] kidding, right?" is not going to win an education debate. n/t

[ipaint]

202. Win?

I post and link to back up for my point of view so folks who are interested can make up their own minds.

If a method used to publicly rate and humiliate teachers is called into question by the National Academy of Science, U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences and the National Research Council then it's important that folks are aware of that.

If your position is that is ok to use questionable methodology (VAM) to not only rate teachers put publicly post those ratings, good and bad in the newspaper perhaps it's time you defend you're position.

Why is it ok to use potentially flawed data derived from an unreliable method to publicly humiliate teachers.

[msanthrope]

207. Explain how it's flawed?

You see, you've posted a concern from an opinion piece on VAM. That perhaps it hasn't been tested enough. Okay--but how does that make it flawed?

Statistics is a science. So, explain how, specifically, the methodology on THIS STUDY is flawed.

How is it flawed? How is this study questionable?


And why can't the Times publish this information? Is it defamatory?

[ipaint]

208. If a method used to publicly rate

and humiliate teachers is called into question by the National Academy of Science, U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences and the National Research Council then it's important that folks are aware of that.

[msanthrope]

213. Okay--so explain how this study is 'flawed.'

Explain, specifically, how VAM is flawed.

You've quoted an opinion piece that notes that it has not been studied extensively. But that doesn't equate with 'flawed.'

[ipaint]

218. .

You'll have to email these folks for the science behind their statements:

National Academy of Science, U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences and the National Research Council

[kwassa]

229. The studys usage by the LA Times is flawed.

It can be stated that the VAM is not going to be the sole tool used in evaluating teachers, but the LA Times is using it precisely that way in making it available to the public as a searchable database. This is how the public will interpret it.

The study might be flawed for a variety of reasons internally. You miss the obvious point that if a statistical method has not been extensively studied that there is no way to know if the results are valid. Correlation is not causation.

as the article says "A student's scores may be affected by many factors other than a teacher -- his or her motivation, for example, or the amount of parental support -- and value-added techniques have not yet found a good way to account for these other elements."

All teachers know this. Children walk into a classroom with all kinds of external influences, and the magical thinking in this reform movement is that those outside factors don't exist.

And it is not just an opinion piece that is being quoted; it is expert opinion piece on the highest level possible in this country.

[Diane R]

204. No need for a personal attack, just because someone disagrees with you.

I have a Master's Degree in Education. There are some crappy teachers out there, and I support our President in trying to make sure every kid has a qualified teacher.

There is a force on DU that believe no teacher should ever lose their job.

[ipaint]

217. Oh so "another voice of reason" wasn't sarcasm

but a statement of fact. Also show me where I said teachers should keep their jobs regardless of performance.

[Diane R]

219. Wow. Get a grip. No need to stalk people and insult them.

[ipaint]

221. Just responding to you. nt

[Hannah Bell]

224. bullshit.

[LWolf]

186. +1,000

[w4rma]

111. Duncan and Duncan's supporters are scum. (nt)

[Name removed]

112. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Safetykitten]

113. Mob mentality. What a amazingly bad decision. Duncan wants in on the teacher beating.

[madfloridian]

120. And it appears the beatings will continue until his goals met..

And his goals are those of Gates, Broad, Walmart, et al

[KakistocracyHater]

115. being a teacher isn't like being an athlete, with "stats" to list & compare

I think it's a real 'guy problem', men are obsessed with comparing & measuring......as for who you can trust-it's real difficult with so many Other Rightis who look & sound like Lefties when in Campaign Mode but act like the Right when in power. It underscores the need for a new way to evaluate candidates, psychological profiles are a good start & tests that would show what the person would ACT like once in power. Old Greek myths of the new king being forced to pass tests come to mind.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

116. NOW YOU TELL ME?!

I've got a whole friggin' shoe box full of trading cards.

[madfloridian]

121. From the comments at the first link.....the truth.

"I'm beginning to think that America is in line to become the next third world nation. The attack on teachers is nothing but union-busting, and if the oligarchs succeed, soon police, fireman, nurses, etc. will follow. If they can't ship us off shore, they will defile us until the masses are convinced of our worthlessness, and willing to give up our services. The economy is so bad, teacher compensation will surely be lowered soon, and done so based on these bogus value-added numbers."


It won't just be teachers on the firing line...more will follow.

[shimmergal]

130. Divide and conquer...

Setting citizens against each other is being given some new twists by RWers and just power-oriented PTB. Not content with setting races and ethnic groups at odds, now they're trying young-against-old with the Social Security "reform" attempts, and most recently, setting employees of "private" companies against public employees.

People need to realize this is what's going on. For what purposes. Pressing us into 3rd world status more quickly is my best guess.

[KakistocracyHater]

122. I wonder what the Billionaire Boys Club has in mind? Child labor again?

why ARE billionaires attacking public schools? what's in it for them?

[madfloridian]

127. One word.

Profit. Or perhaps another...control of the agenda. Or maybe both.

[KakistocracyHater]

228. yes, child wages are significantly less than an adult woman or man's wages

plus child labor builds character, & Americans need that more than ever:sarcasm:

[madfloridian]

128. When your leaders lack respect for teachers, how can you expect it of students?

And that is becoming a major problem.

[Whisp]

132. Here is what I have found out from an LA Times article. It does not fit with what you say.

your link on 'Naming Names'. is a comment from someone just as upset as you are about the whole issue so I can't really learn anything there.

Are you sincerely trying to get people on your side with this kind of bias? or are you just posting this to rally the people that are already totally against this. You most likely will not be winning anyone new over, but you will have the same people rehash and rehash the same one liners I've seen here countless of times.
Are you interested in teaching us or just pounding us over the head with your hammer if we ask questions?

==
on edit:
I had to dig quite a bit in the OP to find an actual article from the LA Times.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0817-teachers-react-20100817,0,4846188.story
I don't see anything here about releasing teacher's private information or health records or anything of that sort. But as there are pounds and tons of articles and words I surely could have missed that. A link from a reliable source and not just someone's opinion on the matter would be appreciated.

The value-added method tracks a student's performance on standardized tests year after year. Because the student's performance is measured against his or her own record, <[[i>I very much like this method of measuring progress]] the method adjusts for many of the differences among students that teachers have no control over.

The Times used the approach to analyze seven years of test scores in math and English to estimate the impact individual elementary school teachers had on their students. The analysis found huge disparities among teachers, sometimes just down the hall from one another. Students with the most effective teachers consistently made huge strides in a single year, despite challenges such as poverty or limited English skills.

Researchers have consistently found that within a school, teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in a child's ability to learn. But across the country, parents have no access to objective information about teacher effectiveness, and many districts have opted to ignore the data.

Later this month, The Times will publish a database of more than 6,000 elementary school teachers ranked by their ability to improve students' scores on standardized tests, marking the first time such information had been released publicly. Already, roughly 700 teachers have requested and received their scores, enabling them to comment before publication.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-invite-20100815%2C0%2C5886812.story
To me this sounds like the beef is with The Times more than anyone, aren't they the ones who choose to publish the ratings? I was under the impression that that was a prerequisite of the whole Obama/Arne plan - to 'out' the underperformers. Again, if you have anything concrete that would support that, please provide a link to a reliable source as I may be misunderstanding.

School districts that use value-added analysis to assess teachers' performance typically do not release the information on individual instructors.

The Times is publishing its ratings because they bear on the performance of public employees who provide an important public service, and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to the information.

[Scurrilous]

142. Thanks for finding that Whisp.

:thumbsup:

[CTLawGuy]

143. very nice

Whisp!

[SunsetDreams]

144. Nice find, K&R this post

[JuniperLea]

158. Excellent find, Whisp!

Thanks for that!

:toast:

[msanthrope]

168. The point of these threads is not to introduce facts. Or have a reasonable discussion.

The point is to bash the Obama administration.

So although it is the Times publishing the scores, the whole point of this thread is to bash Obama...


and then post endless journal links to 'prove' what a corporatist he is.

Not a single Obama-basher, though, wants to talk about these facts--

The Times used the approach to analyze seven years of test scores in math and English to estimate the impact individual elementary school teachers had on their students. The analysis found huge disparities among teachers, sometimes just down the hall from one another. Students with the most effective teachers consistently made huge strides in a single year, despite challenges such as poverty or limited English skills.

Researchers have consistently found that within a school, teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in a child's ability to learn. But across the country, parents have no access to objective information about teacher effectiveness, and many districts have opted to ignore the data.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0817-teachers-react-20100817,0,4846188.story

[proud2BlibKansan]

206. Reading. It's fundamental.

The original article in the LA Times that is the topic of this discussion begins like this:

The fifth-graders at Broadous Elementary School come from the same world — the poorest corner of the San Fernando Valley, a Pacoima neighborhood framed by two freeways where some have lost friends to the stray bullets of rival gangs.

Many are the sons and daughters of Latino immigrants who never finished high school, hard-working parents who keep a respectful distance and trust educators to do what's best.

The students study the same lessons. They are often on the same chapter of the same book.

Yet year after year, one fifth-grade class learns far more than the other down the hall. The difference has almost nothing to do with the size of the class, the students or their parents.

It's their teachers.

With Miguel Aguilar, students consistently have made striking gains on state standardized tests, many of them vaulting from the bottom third of students in Los Angeles schools to well above average, according to a Times analysis. John Smith's pupils next door have started out slightly ahead of Aguilar's but by the end of the year have been far behind.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815%2C0%2C2695044.story

In the event you still don't get it, I bolded the teacher's names.

[msanthrope]

209. How is a name 'private information?'

The LA Times listed teacher's names, and somehow, that's a problem?



Did they write something defamatory?

[proud2BlibKansan]

211. Names AND test scores

:eyes:

[msanthrope]

214. Again, explain to me how that's 'private information?'

Did the Times illegally obtain this information, or violate the privacy of students?

Did they write anything defamatory?

Are you suggesting that teachers have a right to privacy that blocks public-record requests?

[proud2BlibKansan]

216. The Times didn't publish public records

They published a study commissioned by a 'reform' group that tied teacher performance to student test scores. The science behind the study is questionable at best.

But this has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread. Perhaps you should go back and read some of the responses.

[msanthrope]

220. I didn't say they did. They obtained them, however, as they explained.

And that's what they used. How is that wrong? What private information was published??????

(Not for anything, but upthread, I was the poster that cited the actual study itself, when the OP 'forgot' to. In fact, I was the one that posted the findings of the study.)

Now, you state that the science behind the study is "questionable at best."

A previous poster cited a one-line concern in an opinion piece.

Do you have any links that indicate that VAM is not scientifically valid? Or that THIS STUDY is statistically flawed?

[Whisp]

215. so no personnel records or private info like medical status...

ok. These were being bandied about here that all this info will be published in the papers, that teachers will have their very private medical records out to the world to see.

glad you don't go along with this. I have no idea where this started, am looking to find some backup but hard to get anyone here to give me any answer as to WHY they believe this.

[Michigan-Arizona]

135. K&R n/t

[madfloridian]

150. This is not about true accountability...it is about results of only one test.

A very high-stakes test that is dooming public schools to their eventual failure whether you call it NCLB or RTTT.

I see the ways this has been twisted in the comments to make it sound like teachers aren't evaluated. That they don't want to be held accountable.

It's a familiar thing since 2000, and this administration is finishing Bush's goals now. Someone in this thread actually quoted the very same article to which I linked, argued, and failed to see the irony that they were making my point for me. Someone actually accused me of quoting a blogger who agreed with me.

Remember teachers' grade books? Out the window. A straight "A" student must pass THE test or be a failure.

Remember the files in which the teacher kept your work samples? Portfolios? Out the window. THE test matters more.

The papers, the essays you wrote? Out the window.

If you are a parent, why is this okay with you?

Here is what the teachers' union in LA had to say on the topic.

http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/california-union-prez-condemns-la-times-for-publishing-teacher-names-based-on-junk-science/

“Publishing the database assembled by the LA Times as an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness or even as a ‘value-added’ assessment model is irresponsible and disrespectful to the hard-working teachers of Los Angeles. This LA Times model oversimplifies what defines an effective teacher and is based solely on one set of student test scores — tests, I might add, that were never designed to measure teacher effectiveness or even student growth. The California Standards Tests are designed to measure grade-level standards, not student growth from the beginning of the school year to the end of the year. So trying to use that single test to create a value-added model in Los Angeles is impossible. In addition, all education research has concluded that using value-added models as a primary measure for evaluating teachers is not appropriate as the measures are too unstable and too vulnerable. It is impossible to fully separate out the influences of students’ other teachers as well as school conditions, classroom assignments, and student attendance. Parents know their child is more than a test score and so are teachers.”

But then again, who really cares? The deed is done, Arne has the power.

[msanthrope]

171. Seven years of tests, you mean.....Funny that you didn' t post the findings....

Among the findings:

• Highly effective teachers routinely propel students from below grade level to advanced in a single year. There is a substantial gap at year's end between students whose teachers were in the top 10% in effectiveness and the bottom 10%. The fortunate students ranked 17 percentile points higher in English and 25 points higher in math.

• Some students landed in the classrooms of the poorest-performing instructors year after year — a potentially devastating setback that the district could have avoided. Over the period analyzed, more than 8,000 students got such a math or English teacher at least twice in a row.

• Contrary to popular belief, the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas. Rather, these teachers were scattered throughout the district. The quality of instruction typically varied far more within a school than between schools.

• Although many parents fixate on picking the right school for their child, it matters far more which teacher the child gets. Teachers had three times as much influence on students' academic development as the school they attend. Yet parents have no access to objective information about individual instructors, and they often have little say in which teacher their child gets.

• Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers' effectiveness were not. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students' performance.


Other studies of the district have found that students' race, wealth, English proficiency or previous achievement level played little role in whether their teacher was effective.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story?page=2

[Whisp]

178. student performance is measured against his or her own record....

I can for the life of me find this evil or comparable to NCLB. wasn't NCLB about tests that all kids were graded on regardless of their individual strengths and weaknesses?
to measure a child's progress by his or her own work - I can't see how this is such a huge issue with some. What other way could possible be better?




from that la times link:
""The value-added method tracks a student's performance on standardized tests year after year. Because the student's performance is measured against his or her own record, <<[i>I very much like this method of measuring progress>] the method adjusts for many of the differences among students that teachers have no control over. ""

[msanthrope]

181. It's a huge issue for some because there's no excuse for

bad teaching using this methodology.

That's the 'problem' with this.

So, you have a very misleading OP screaming about posting the personnel files of teachers AND no posting of the actual findings of the study....

[Hannah Bell]

227. what are you babbling about, "no excuse for bad teaching using *this* methodology"?

you apparently don't even understand what *this* methodology is.

[ItNerd4life]

151. Let's see, DU thread says most Americans are stupid. hmm, interesting.

I love DU. One thread talks about how stupid Americans are. Another thread claims our teachers are doing a great job.

If teachers were doing a great job, wouldn't most American NOT be stupid?

My spouse works with good teachers and bad teachers. The bad teachers are still working. That is a problem! They can't be gotten rid of.
We do need accountability and ratings of teachers. Tenure is not the answer. Once tenured teachers and aids are nearly impossible to get rid of.

[madfloridian]

152. Based on one test only?

So that is what we have come to? Just one test?

Remember teachers' grade books? Out the window. A straight "A" student must pass THE test or be a failure.

Remember the files in which the teacher kept your work samples? Portfolios? Out the window. THE test matters more.

The papers, the essays you wrote? Out the window.

And using a test for a purpose for which it was not intended?

"“Publishing the database assembled by the LA Times as an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness or even as a ‘value-added’ assessment model is irresponsible and disrespectful to the hard-working teachers of Los Angeles. This LA Times model oversimplifies what defines an effective teacher and is based solely on one set of student test scores — tests, I might add, that were never designed to measure teacher effectiveness or even student growth. The California Standards Tests are designed to measure grade-level standards, not student growth from the beginning of the school year to the end of the year. So trying to use that single test to create a value-added model in Los Angeles is impossible. In addition, all education research has concluded that using value-added models as a primary measure for evaluating teachers is not appropriate as the measures are too unstable and too vulnerable. It is impossible to fully separate out the influences of students’ other teachers as well as school conditions, classroom assignments, and student attendance. Parents know their child is more than a test score and so are teachers.”

[msanthrope]

173. 7 years of tests. The Times study used SEVEN YEARS of test scores.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story?page=2

[ipaint]

176. Lots of questions about the methodology. I have a feeling the debunking of this nonsense by those

without a stake in privatizing schools and busting unions will be forthcoming. As soon as Rand gets the study out to their fellow academics so they can see how they came to the conclusions they did and the rather overblown conclusions of the 3 reporters who just sold a ton of newspapers by spinning a rand corp study.

[msanthrope]

180. What, specifically, about the methodology, then?

I get the Rand Corporation is 'evil.'

So what specifically did they do wrong here?

[ipaint]

192. I didn't use the word evil, so you can dump the quotes.

"One way of evaluating teachers, currently the subject of intense interest and research, are value-added approaches, which typically compare a student's scores going into a grade with his or her scores coming out of it, in order to assess how much "value" a year with a particular teacher added to the student's educational experience. The report expresses concern that the department's proposed regulations place excessive emphasis on value-added approaches. Too little research has been done on these methods' validity to base high-stakes decisions about teachers on them. A student's scores may be affected by many factors other than a teacher -- his or her motivation, for example, or the amount of parental support -- and value-added techniques have not yet found a good way to account for these other elements."

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12780

Value added estimates where used to rate teachers in the la times article.

I would say a high stake (stupid) decision would be to publish teachers names and scores using a little researched methodology whose effectiveness is questioned by the national academy of sciences among others.

[msanthrope]

194. Okay, but how does that prove anything about THIS study?

You've noted a concern about the USE of the results of value-added studies.

Now, PROVE that concern somehow affected the actual results. Or, PROVE that the results are being used to make 'high-stakes decisions' mistakenly. Has a single teacher been fired over this study?

If there any concerns about validity, then what are they, specifically? And why shouldn't the parents of children in the LA schools have access to these numbers and the Times' interpretation of them?


"The Times used a statistical approach known as value-added analysis, which rates teachers based on their students' progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student's performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors. "

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story?page=1

ETA--what do you think the study failed to control for, AND why is it important?

[ipaint]

197. Value added method-

"Too little research has been done on these methods' validity to base high-stakes decisions about teachers on them"

If there is too little research done on a particular methods validity then using that method to rate someones job publicly calls into question the validity of the rating.


As I said above if you want to play the brick wall you can do it without me. Waste of my time.

[msanthrope]

203. Again, how does that relate to this study?

What 'high-stakes decisions' are being made here about teacher's jobs?

LA doesn't use value added studies as part of their evaluation process. These ratings don't affect teacher jobs in LA at all.

"But in Los Angeles and other districts that don't use value-added as a part of teachers' evaluations, it could be released and might inspire parents to demand better schools."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0817-teachers-react-20100817,0,4846188.story?page=2&track=rss


Now, what you cited is an opinion about value-added tests. Since statistics is a science, do you have any scientific studies on the validity of value added tests? Because they might be a useful tool.

[ipaint]

205. LOL.

You'll have to email these folks for the science behind their statements:

National Academy of Science, U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences and the National Research Council

[Hannah Bell]

165. bullshit. right-wing talking points type bullshit.

[yurbud]

166. how do they plan to recruit and retain teachers if he busts unions and publicly humiliates teachers?

Who's going to volunteer for a job with no creativity or control over the work you do, low pay and no job security, and public humiliation?

[ipaint]

169. The right wing founder of teach for america and her husband - founder of the largest charter

school chain in the country are waiting in the wings with the perfect corporate solution.

[yurbud]

170. I didn't realize that was a right wing put up job. is there plan to just turn and burn a lot of

recent grads?

[ipaint]

172. Excellent indepth investigative piece on TFA.

http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2010/03/barbara-miners-article-on-teach-for.html

A snip:

"...Leader­ship for Education Equity (LEE) was founded in 2008 to provide a vehicle for political work and campaigning.
LEE appears to be crucial to an­other aspect of Teach for America’s strategy: TFA’s ambitions in shaping the country’s education policy agenda and encouraging alumni to run for of­fice. My surprise at the media silence around LEE was outdone only by my amazement at LEE’s lack of public transparency.

The Mysterious LEE
Twenty years ago, before TFA had placed a single teacher in a single school, there were glowing articles in the New York Times, Newsweek, and Time, and a segment on Good Morn­ing America. The media love-fest with TFA has never stopped, extending to soft publications always eager for a feel-good story, such as Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping. When TFA founder Kopp calls Thomas Friedman at the New York Times, he not only answers her call, but also quotes her extensively (see Friedman’s April 22, 2009, column).

At the same time, Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University, a vocal critic of TFA, has been tar­nished as a pro-union anti-reformer in influential media outlets such as Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the New Repub­lic. Darling-Hammond’s 2005 study found “no instance where uncerti­fied Teach for America teachers per­formed as well as standard certified teachers of comparable experience levels teaching in similar settings.” (see sidebar, p. 31.) Following Obama’s election, when Darling-Hammond was head of the education sector of Obama’s transition team and men­tioned as a possible secretary of edu­cation, media attacks increased, with her critique of TFA one of the con­cerns cited. The attacks became so relentless that the late Gerald Bracey wrote an article for the Huffington Post titled “The Hatchet Job on Linda Darling-Hammond.”



These people and their billionaire backers are not to trusted, ever.

[defendandprotect]

177. Obama + team are destroying public education... thought this was over when W left White House?

[msanthrope]

182. Why doesn't the OP include links to the study and its findings?

Rather than commentary on the study, where is the study and its findings?

[Marnie]

183. Personnel records

are protected under federal and state privacy laws.

Unless the state decided that it can somehow publish test evaluations mandated under state law, I don't see how this can be done legally. And of course the state would bear the burden of any "colatteral" harm if records are made public.

It is of course stupid because they will loose good teachers who refuse to have their privacy abused.

Many if not most teachers are in unions who will fight this. I heartily recommend any teachers not unionized to get there quick. The union can give a lot of support.

[msanthrope]

184. Personnel records aren't being released. That's just hysteria

generated to mask the study and its findings....

Here's what the OP failed to do--give the link to the original article that caused all the hoopla....


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story?page=1

[Whisp]

188. can you provide a link for that?

What I have seen so far does not include anythig other than general performance, no medical records no nothing like that that is bandied about here. Please inform me otherwise with a reliable source that this threat to the privacy of teachers has any merit. Otherwise it's just nonsense.

[Whisp]

201. where is the info to support your claim of personnel records

being published?

I have also heard that some think even teacher's MEDICAL records will be published in the LA Times. Where do you get this information?

[ibegurpard]

199. K&R...they've already fucked up "reform" on several fronts

I suggest we not give them another chance to do in public education

[Dinger]

233. arne and obama crossed the line long ago, yet they still keep going, . . .

kinda like the energizer bunny. arne+ margaret spellings in drag. If obama goes along with this shit, he's no different.

[Dinger]

234. Kicked (nt)