NC "Strategic Staffing Initiative": Dramatic test score gains at a Charlotte elementary school.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

As NBC Nightly News explained it, a North Carolina schoool reform initiative brings a in new principal empowered to fire five current teachers and replace them with five highly effective teachers. who get $20,000 in extra compensation apiece over three years.

This initiative apparently achieved startling success at one elementary school, profiled on NBC tonight and also written up in a local newspaper.

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?

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From http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/09/15/1695086/education-chief-put-the-best-where.html :

"Education chief: Put the best where they�re needed most
Arne Duncan visits improving school, lauds CMS�s strategic staffing initiative
By David Perlmutt, [e-mail]. Posted: Wednesday, Sep. 15, 2010

Dignitaries rarely come to Sterling Elementary School. It�s at the end of the Lynx light rail off South Boulevard, a 7-year-old building near Pineville sprawled among a smattering of small houses. All but five students are African American or Latino … 91 percent receive free or reduced lunches. Yet it is the transformation inside that brought U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Gov. Bev Perdue to Sterling on Wednesday.

Three years ago, only 34.6 percent of Sterling�s students passed end-of-grade reading tests. A year later, after a new plan to improve ill-performing schools took effect, 58.9 passed. Math scores were more dramatic: 52.4 percent passed three years ago; 83.7 percent a year later.

... Sterling, Duncan said, shows what�s possible when troubled schools are bolstered by the best principals and teachers. ... � ƒ When we see perpetual, chronically under-performing schools, we have to step in and do something to change the status quo.Ž

One way is the �strategic staffingŽ initiative Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman started in 2008. Duncan says the initiative puts CMS in the �national conversationŽ on school reforms. The idea is to recruit good principals and help them build a top-notch team … then give them three years to work miracles.

For their commitment, principals get a 10-percent pay hike, and teachers a $20,000 bonus package over the three years. �Charlotte is on the cutting edge of what is going on nationally,Ž Duncan said. �We�ve seen around the country that if you put great teachers into high-risk, low-performing schools, you will see great results.Ž

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Highlights of the NC "Strategic Staffing Initiative" and a link to a full report on it are at http://www.guide2digitallearning.com/professional_development/turnaround_schools .

[dsc]

1. without the context of what happened to the general test average over that time

the data is worthless.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

2. On grade-level tests, isn't there always an implied median of 50 percent every year?

[dsc]

3. no

Tests are not renormed every year and unless they do get rewritten or renormed kids tend to get better scores over time as teachers get a better idea of what the tests are like. I have no idea what has happened with those tests in recent years but I do know that our high school tests have gone up in the last few years (I live in NC). I will admit it sounds like an impressive gain but until I see a baseline to compare it to, I can't make a comment one way or the other.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

4. 'I will admit it sounds like an impressive gain'. So you agree you ARE splitting hairs here--

Or are you seriously suggesting that the rest of the state's elementary schools improved MORE than 70 percent in reading and MORE than 60 percent in math?

[dsc]

21. they may have

but here is an example of why we really don't know

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/education/29scores.html

Applying new, tougher standards, state education officials said Wednesday that more than half of public school students in New York City failed their English exams this year, and 54 percent of them passed in math.

The results were in stark contrast to successes that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had heralded in recent years. When he ran for re-election in 2009, he boasted of state test scores that showed two-thirds of city students were passing English and 82 percent were passing math.

But state education officials said that performance was misleading because those scores were inflated by tests that had become easier to pass. The scores released on Wednesday were the first attempt to establish what the officials considered a more trustworthy measure of students’ abilities.

Here are the figures from the OP

Three years ago, only 34.6 percent of Sterling�s students passed end-of-grade reading tests. A year later, after a new plan to improve ill-performing schools took effect, 58.9 passed. Math scores were more dramatic: 52.4 percent passed three years ago; 83.7 percent a year later.

One year decrease in NYC English at least 17%, math 28%. One year increase in this school 23.3% in reading, 31.3% in math. No one argues, that I have seen, that the change in NY was anything other than the renorming of that test. If the NC tests were as off kilter as NY's then over two thirds of the increase in reading and seven eigths of the increase in math could be explained by the tests needing to be renormed. Now I am not saying I know this is true but I am saying we have no idea if it is or it isn't without the statewide figures. It isn't nitpicking to say this.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

22. You seem to be mixing percentages and percentage points. I read the reading increase

as 70 percent, not 23 percentage points, and in math 60 percent, not 31 percentage points.

Since you didn't provide figures for the NYC re-norming, I can't be sure you're not comparing oranges with apples.

[dsc]

24. percentage points is what is relevent

it doesn't matter what base you started with. It is simply numbers of extra people you are getting to pass the test that is relevant here. And now who is nitpicking. So when you provide numbers with no context whatsoever they should be taken as gospel truth but if I provide a directly on point example it is now not to be accepted since it comes from a different state. Now, to repeat, I am not saying I know the results aren't as good as stated, but I am saying you don't know they are as good as stated. Unless, and until we see what, if any, increase was experienced by students in schools where this didn't happen we have no idea what this change did or didn't affect. Heck, if the scores went down in other places it could be even more impressive. I don't know and neither do you, and that is my point. It isn't nitpicking. It is asking for context.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

25. Self-delete

[dsc]

26. the percentages in your post is percent of kids who passed

so that would translate to numbers passing. So if, say the numbers in the school next to them changed by the very same amount, and we have no idea if they did or they didn't, then we have no idea if that school did better, the same as, or worse than schools where this change didn't occur.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

27. Say that again ten times, quickly

[dsc]

28. lol

[ProgressiveEconomist]

5. Seems to me this NC initiative is a high profile test for the 'Teachers are NOT the problem' doctrin...

Principals can not do much about poverty, near-homelessness for some children, crowded conditions at home, lack of space at home for children to do homework, poor parenting, lack of parental involvement in their childrens' education, and all the other things we're told make it "impossible" for some children to do well in school.

However, principals CAN be given the pwer to evaluate teachers, fire some, and hire others, and this power is what apparently is being tested in the NC :Strategic Staffing Initiative".

[Lyric]

6. In other words--dramatically raising teacher pay ($20k) produces results.

Makes sense to me.

:shrug:

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. No--raising the pay of ineffective teachers is not what was done here.

Rather, a new principal was brought in at premium pay and given five "peremptory" firings of teachers she judged to be ineffective. Then five highly effective teachers were prought in at a premium to replace them.

Big difference.

[Fumesucker]

8. Why did the "highly effective" teachers require more money?

Would they have just slacked off and done a crappy job without the extra bonus?

[Lyric]

9. Yep, my thoughts exactly. When you're getting a bonus of $20k

you've got one hell of an incentive to make sure your kids score well on tests--by any means necessary. $20k is FAR beyond anyone's reasonable notions of "merit pay". It's not a bonus--it's a bribe.

[msanthrope]

13. 20k over three years---that's a reasonable bonus. n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Any means necessary

Man, I could tell some stories.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

15. Whether bribes or bonused, they appeared to have worked at Sterling Elementary

The NBC story showed one of the new teachers "working" his classroom--he was a dynamo, moving rapidly from one group of intensely busy kids to the next.

In part, this NC initiative seems to be a milder form of the GE HCR model. General Electric evaluate everybody every year, and EVERYYEAR the bottom 15 percent get fired.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

10. IMO most likely they would have stayed where they were without strong incentive

to move to a more challenging "turnaround" school.

[Fumesucker]

11. Was the bonus money contingent upon improving test scores?

Or were the teachers going to get the money just for moving to another school?

ETA: It would also be interesting to know what happened to the test scores at the schools these teachers left to come to the lower scoring schools, indeed I think that might be even more revealing than the scores at the schools they came to.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

18. That's an excellent point. When careful evaluations of the NC initiattive take place,

IMO they ought to take a look at the classes these "Superteachers" left behind at their former schools. If their former students' achievements fell below what had been expected, AND new students' achievements soared, there must be something very special about these particular teachers.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

19. To answer your 1st question, it seems to me they got the extra money just for moving

but after three years they might not be kept on if they did not deliver. But I don't know for sure. See the link at the bottom of the OP, and click through to the full report on the "Strategic Staffing Initiative", Or see the successful NC RTTT application, if you want to be sure.

[hayu_lol]

12. Most of us already know that 'teaching to the test' is not...

a very good idea. Matter of fact, it has failed in every state in which it has been touted.

Time for Duncan to be fired(despite his basketball skills)and returned to Chicago to continue to foul up that city's educational system.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

20. 'Teaching to the test ... has failed in every state'. How would one know?

True, standardized tests are by no means the only way to measure effective education. Portfolios of students' work presumably are being kept also, as I would imagine NC promised in their successful RTTT application..

But would you say a 70 percent improvement in reading and a 60 percent improvement in math scores over three years was a BAD thing?

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Not enough information

[ProgressiveEconomist]

23. This is a high profile initiative. Try googling, or email NBC. What do you want to know?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

29. Kick!

[msanthrope]

17. This is a very interesting OP. Thank you n/t

[ProgressiveEconomist]

32. I thought it would stimulate real discussion rather than just kneejerk reactions from

the dominant faction on DU

[dsc]

33. I don't think mine was a knee jerk reaction

and I still don't see any baseline to compare to. Incidently that isn't your fault but the reporters who could have easily asked for that information but chose not to, probably because the reporter had no clue it was necessary to evaluate the claims being made.

[Hannah Bell]

30. another bullshit "miracle" that will, like all the rest, eventually be revealed as fraud.

mark my words.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

31. That's a very serious charge. Have there been fraud allegations by people in a

position to judge? The "Strategic Staffing Initiative appears to be at the heart of NC's successful RTTT application, and is very high-profile.

Or are you just declaring a corollary of the "Teachers Are Not The Problem" doctrine apparently enforced religiously on DU.?

[dsc]

34. It is hard to say that is at the heart of NC's application when it is only

being done in one district. Durham certainly isn't doing it, nor is Greensboro both of which also have several schools among NC's worst.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

35. Thanks. Do you have links?