“Making Middle Grades Work” Doesn’t Work

Brace yourself.  This is a long one.

I wanted, actually, to say in my title that Making Middle Grades Work is “stupid,” but I thought that went a bit too far.  And I’m sure you can Google it right now and find countless reports of how great MMGW is, but I’m here to tell you that they are wrong.   Are there elements of MMGW that are great?  Sure.  But as a whole, it’s a problematic model and I’m writing this to talk about why.

In my last post, I mentioned my frustrations with the tendency for blanket policies within the education world.  While this is true for nearly everything (“all-call” emails reminding an entire faculty about appropriate seasonal dress, hoping to reach one particular offender, come to mind as one egregious example – and yes, this has happened more than once at more than one school where I taught, believe it or not), it is particularly true when someone in a position of authority happens upon a technique a teacher has used successfully.

Call out the troops!  Mrs. Dayplanner teaches quadratics this way!  We must all now use her method! Mr. Havenport is doing this really great tool for discipline!  We must now all use his technique!

It’s awful, and it defeats the purpose.  And there is no mention of the fact that neither of those methods might have worked with any of Mrs. Dayplanner's previous classes, and Mr. Havenport uses that technique with only half of his classes, and it's usually not his first choice. 

If there is anything true in education (well, there’s a lot true in education, but this in particular), it’s that we are constantly reminded to teach the individual students. We all have individual people in our rooms, who all come from different home experiences, with different stories and different environments making them into exactly who they are as they sit in our classrooms.  Differentiate, differentiate, differentiate, is the battle cry.  And then we’re given blanket mandates that we must teach these lessons in these ways, marching in lock-step, disregarding the specific and particular needs of the individual people in our rooms.

Making Middle Grades Work is a giant example of this.

If you’re not familiar with MMGW, its essential tenet is that you can not, and will not, allow students to fail.  They can not, and will not, be allowed to make choices to fail.  They can’t “not turn in” assignments; they can’t turn in poorly-done assignments.  Or rather, they can, and the teacher will give repeated opportunities to fix whatever is wrong and to complete whatever is missing.  Envision a teacher telling a student who’s choosing to give up, “I won’t let you make this choice,” and pushing them to succeed.  This is a great teacher, right?  Now, turn the tables just a bit.  The teacher no longer has to pull that student aside to say that or offer that assistance; it’s mandated.  There is no choice to be made. 

Trouble is, students have a right to make a choice.  More importantly, we have a duty as teachers to let them exercise that right.

You read that right.  We have a duty as teachers to let our students choose to fail.

Now I know there are people who are thinking, with so many kids already in so much trouble, can she really be sitting here telling me it’s a teacher’s duty to let these kids choose to be unsuccessful?

Yes.  I can, and I am.

Because here’s the problem:  Any good teacher already does these things for his or her students.  Any good teacher already notices who is giving up and who needs another shot, and who needs an exception made to allow them to re-do poor assignments or turn in missing ones.  Any good teacher already uses his or her discretion and professional judgment based on infinitely many factors to do all of these things, and more, for his or her students.  I can’t tell you how many times I did it, or how many times I saw it done.  And it’s not just for the students on the brink of failure:  it’s also for students who need a nudge from a B+ to an A-, or a C to a C+, or anything else.   The key difference is that students used to have to engage with that teacher or otherwise earn the opportunity. 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are certainly bad teachers in the world.  But let’s talk about the majority of teachers, who are good, who entered teaching for all the right reasons, and who, day in and day out, bust their tails to do the best they can.  And yes, that’s most teachers. 

Well, those good teachers already do what MMGW mandates.  They do it on their own scales, in ways that fit their classrooms, their schools, their students, their courses, their rubrics, and so forth.  Moreover, there are mechanisms in place to work around the teachers who are not already doing this.  For students slipping by, there are guidance counselors and administrators who theoretically pull grade reports; there are interventionists, and if it’s the student who wants an opportunity but is up against an unreasonable teacher, there are certainly appeals to the administration and higher.   So in that sense, MMGW is not only unnecessary, but it’s also redundant.  A good teacher already does it; a bad teacher can be overridden.

But we have MMGW, and so what happens?  Students are not dumb; they understand how to game this system within a few seconds of hearing it.  “I can turn it in however late I want?  And do it over ‘til I pass?”  “You can’t fail me?” 

And so, what used to be a teacher working individually with students to help them succeed is now a blanket policy robbed of its effectiveness.  (“You will help your students succeed” is not what I mean.  Of course that should be policy.)  The teacher isn’t working with any student, or making any special accommodation to help the student along to success.   There is no discretion to make different accommodations for different students based on their unique circumstances.  (And as an aside, I am adamantly opposed to the “if I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone” nonsense.  No, you don’t.  You have to do it for everyone with this exact set of circumstances in this exact situation.  What is wrong with exercising discretion these days, and making distinctions?  Again, a phenomenon of blanket-policy-thinking failing us.)  The student feels no small victories along the way, no reward for an unexpected opportunity to re-do the assignment.  There is no personal sense of satisfaction or accomplishment in bringing up a grade – because MMGW removes the ability for it to feel in any way special.   Now it’s mundane.  Didn’t get a C?  Do over.  And do over.  And do over again. 

Think of being this struggling student.  Wouldn’t it mean more to you if your teacher noticed you, sought you ought, and made a gesture to help you?  Isn’t it necessarily less meaningful when the teacher does all of those same things as a matter of course and has no choice but to do it?

That sounds terrible.  I sound as though I advocate telling teachers they don’t have to care.  That’s not the case at all.  What I am trying to say is that by making all of these accommodations entitlements, they lose their effectiveness because students don’t feel any ownership of them, or any sense of having earned them. 

There is a lesson to be learned in failing, just as there is a lesson to be learned in losing a game.  It’s a matter of learning how it feels and deciding if you want to be in that position again, and then figuring out what to do to avoid it.  These are important life lessons and important life skills, and MMGW takes away the opportunity for students to authentically learn them.  There are consequences for one’s actions (or inactions), and sometimes the consequences include failing an assignment or a class, or losing a game.  And where better to suffer these consequences than a middle school, sheltered from the real world and long before high school and all that “matters” academically for post-high-school plans?

So yes, it is our duty as teachers to let students learn these lessons, in order to grow as people and to understand what it means to take responsibility for oneself. By disallowing an opportunity to fail, we fail our students – and society -- in a greater, more damaging way:  we fail to teach the next generation that there are consequences to one’s actions, and how to be responsible for one’s choices.

Years ago, when I first started teaching, I had a colleague who wanted to make every assignment he gave “extra credit.”  He was frustrated by the phenomenon wherein students will do more of, and a better job at, what they perceive to be a reward compared to what they perceive to be the expectation.  I can’t say it enough:  MMGW takes this away; there are no opportunities for teachers to say, “I know you can do better.  I’m giving you an opportunity to do better.  Let’s fix this.”  There is no extra credit.  And thus, there is no reward.  Worse, there is no opportunity for teachers to take a moment to know a student and interact on a personal level: “ I want you to succeed, and we are going to get you through this class because you are going to redo this assignment.”  Nope. It’s mandated.  Sure, a teacher can still nurture and nudge, but the student had the same ability to turn in the assignment repeatedly without that.  It’s not special, and that personal touch, and the significance of it, is forever lost.  Go a step further, and there’s not even motivation to do the work to begin with.  The good kids will do it because “it’s what you do,” but there is a very quick slippery slope until even the best kids will take advantage of the “no deadline, no bad grades” policy. 

MMGW is, quite simply, a mess.

If you give a kid $5 every time they come to your window, and all they have to do is come to the window to get it, eventually they’ll stop coming.  It’s not special.  It’s too easy.  It is, in effect, rendered meaningless to get that $5.  And yet if one day you’re not at the window to give out the $5, you’ve robbed the kid of what has become an entitlement. 

MMGW robs our kids of the opportunities to feel special.  To feel as though someone has taken special note of them to give them an opportunity to succeed.  It robs our teachers of autonomy.  It takes the very students we’re most worried about, who perhaps don’t have support at home or a sense of self-worth, students who already think no one cares or thinks they’re special, and takes away one last opportunity for teachers to help provide it.  Don’t do well?  A good teacher would likely let you try again.  And again.  And again.  But more than likely, these extra chances would be under pre-estsablished conditions, and with the teacher’s guidance, and the knowledge that you were working as a team.  MMGW makes it a mandate, and conveys the message that there’s nothing special about you or anyone else.

It’s not how the world works.  Okay, who cares how the world works, right?  We’re here to teach our kids, but also to coddle when they need coddling. 

Good.  Well, MMGW took away the opportunity to coddle.

It teaches our kids that there’s no need to have a work ethic, because you can do it over and over again whenever you finally feel like doing it to begin with.

I can’t stand MMGW, because it takes what good teachers already do, strips the acts of feeling personal or special, strips the teacher of the authority to fix consequences, and steals from our students the opportunity to learn about responsibility and life.

Are there modified versions of MMGW?  Sure there are.  Are there books out there that tout it as the next greatest thing?  Well of course there are, silly.  It “worked” somewhere, so it must now be done everywhere! 

I don’t believe in it.  I believe in giving autonomy to our teachers.

Because once again, what works for one won’t always work for the many, and by forcing it on the many, we are forcing some classrooms to go from effective to ineffective – not because they were struggling before, but because someone decided we must all, once again, march in lockstep.

Here’s an idea for a blanket policy:  get rid of MMGW.  That just might work.

Common Core ... and more

I stumbled upon an education quote today (on Pinterest, of all places).  It was about the new Common Core curriculum, and embracing all the change and how educators have fire in their hearts and oh, if only we’d see the potential, it’s truly an amazing time to be an educator!

Here is the quote in its entirety, typos and all:

As we move to the Common Core standards, we will continue to see changes in what and how we monitor and asses student learning. The use of technology in the classroom as an means of delivering content and also as a means for formative and summative assessment will continue to develop over time., It is indeed a magical time to be an educator, if only we embrace the possibilities before us.*

And I about threw up in my mouth, to be a little crass.

Thing was, it wasn’t because I necessarily disagreed with the gist of her saying:  I happen to think that on many levels, the Common Core is fine (not all levels, but we’ll talk about that later), but I don’t drink the “rah rah all is well” Kool Aid.  And I don’t mean to attack the author personally, because I really do believe her heart is in the right place and she fights for what she believes in.  (And I believe that even more now that I've been to her blog and read more of what she has to say.)

But it’s not a great time to be a teacher.  And let’s get something straight, we’re "teachers;" we don’t need some fifty-cent ego-boosting word of “educators,” and quite frankly, I find it off-putting and pretentious. 

Pick up any newspaper or major new magazine, and you’ll see just how bad it is, actually, to be a teacher.  There are relentless pressures from all sorts of sources about test scores.  There are helicopter parents who rule the schools through bullying and intimidation, and spineless administrators who refuse to stand up to them.  There is a complete lack of discipline.  There are frozen – and cut, if you count furlough days – salaries, and paying for your classroom supplies from your own pocket.  There are increased class sizes and ridiculous pushing-down of content to grade levels where kids are not physiologically developed to do it, but we need to say we “teach Algebra” in grade six or what-have-you.  There are countless “Experts” passing legislation and top-down mandates that make no sense and cause unnecessary and burdensome paperwork for teachers and in many cases, create so much “procedure” that teachers can’t even timely help the kids who need it most.  There is a whole culture of blaming the teachers for everything and saying we need better teachers … but demonizing our current teachers at the same time. 

So, really?  It’s a great time to be a teacher?  I can’t even begin to count how many former teachers I know who say over an over again how glad they are they got out, or got out when they did.  It is most definitely not a good time to be a teacher. 

Now, I am of two minds on the Common Core.  On the one hand, I think it is good for us to have some sort of common curriculum so that a kid who moves from Alabama to Alaska can say what class he or she was in, and that translates.  But that’s only in theory.  We’re (I’m going to use “we’re,” even though I am not teaching anymore) all using different books and have different students in our classrooms; we all necessarily move at different paces and make different accommodations.  That’s kind-of the point, right?  Meeting your audience?  And the Common Core creates a slippery slope to a national curriculum that takes a state power and brings it over to the federal government.  I don’t like that, and I don’t trust it, and I do not believe we need educrats who’ve studied theory or public policy telling us what to do and how and when to do it. 

(The same, by the way, holds true for content-area experts.  I understand that you’re a math major, or an English major, or a chemist; that means you are, and have typically been, good at it. You don’t know what it’s like in a classroom with 30 kids of different abilities, or where they will make their mistakes, or how to teach factoring a seventeenth way because the first sixteen didn't click for two kids. You have a false sense of what school is like, because you only ever went to school and sat in class – for the most part, forgive me my generalizations – with the good kids.  You don’t know why or where this stuff is hard, and – dare I say much like many first-year teachers, you have a very naïve perspective on what can be accomplished and how “easy” it will be to accomplish it.  That's okay.  We still love you. But we don't need you making education policy or having final say on curricula.)

And on the other hand, I don’t think too many people would argue that as a nation, and from state to state, we already had a somewhat de facto national curriculum.  So in that sense, I think the Common Core is a bit redundant, if you will.  It purports to eliminate the nuanced differences between what constitutes Algebra 1 in Miami, Florida and Miami, Ohio, but as I said earlier, it just doesn’t account for the countless other factors that led to the differences to begin with.

Which brings me to my next point:  the tendency of the government – all the way down to local school systems – to rule by blanket policy, taking what might have been good and rendering it worse:  either broken completely, or not as efficient or effective, or almost to feel like punishment. 

But that’s my next post.  Stay tuned. I’ve got a lot to say.

--Jen

P.S.  By the way, the full post from which I found the quote actually talked about student assessment and the need to change what we’re currently doing.  I agree completely, and I’ll write more about that, too.

*Janie Andrich, from pinterest, which linked to http://janieandrich.com/2012/05/24/what-parents-want-from-student-assessment/

Oh, Massachusetts

Bless your heart, always trying to fix all that ails us, you liberal bastion.

You just went ahead and legislated that effective for the 2012-2013 school year, there shall be no more "unhealthful foods" in school cafeterias, vending machines, and so forth.  Admirable, to be sure, but no more white bread for sandwiches?  No more flavored milk (and I am sure, though I didn't yet read it, it's not unreasonable to suspect there will also be no more whole milk).  I understand the obesity concerns, and agree that we don't need to be serving fried slop or sodas.  I disagree that we need to eliminate white bread, flavored milks, etc.  Which is better:  to have a child drink whole milk, or no milk?

Here's a thought:  instead of legislating what we can eat, why not just legislate that schools must bring back recess and physical education?

Just sayin'.

I Stole...

... this image from Facebook posts of friends.

I think the bottom ought to read, "And those who've never taught, pass laws about teaching."

Even so, you get the point.

Glenn Beck ...

... is hosting a forum about education right now on his show.  Unfortunately, the two children whose education I most value are making it difficult for me to watch right now, but we're "dvr'ing" it.  Still, some quick points:

1.  A lot of people ask me what I want to do, and why.  Here's a longer version of my elevator speech answer to this.

I went to law school because I want to get involved with education policy.  I taught in public schools, and regardless of what you think of public schools, the fact is that teachers do not make the rules, do not control the purse strings, and almost without question they do not have a voice as to curriculum, or policy.  (I am not talking about unions or the NEA claiming to represent teachers.  Those "voices" are a different issue altogether.) 

No Child Left Behind is a perfect example of good intentions gone terribly wrong.  People wanted accountability in the schools, and the best way to measure something quantitatively is to test it.  Thus we entered the world of large-scale high-stakes testing.  Any teacher could have told you in two seconds how the system would be gamed, the standards lowered, the passing scores manipulated, and ultimately the curriculum modified to reflect this dumbing down -- all to show that we "mastered" a test and we're all on the same playing field.  Any teacher could have predicted that schools would follow a (sorry have to say it here) race to the bottom until classes became little more than a series of practice tests for the big test, with testing -- not teaching and learning -- the focus and the only concern of administrators. 

The problem is that no one asks the teachers for their input.  The people who make the rules and push down legislation and mandates have never been in a classroom as a teacher, and by and large they've only ever been in classroom as, and with other, good students.  On the other hand, teachers neither get meaningful input nor care to leave the classroom, so they never have an opportunity to make the rules or policies -- or even, in a meaningful way, to influence them.  (Seriously, had anyone in any role of influence asked teachers to predict the end result of NCLB, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now!  And when I was "just" a teacher, sure, we were asked for our opinions, but they were either not presented to the powers-that-be, or they were repainted with rosier glasses.  Our concerns were never heard, our input never valued other than for show.)  The result is that we end up with a group of professionals being told how to do their jobs by people who have no earthly idea how to do those jobs.  The logic seems to be, "I was a student; I know how to be a teacher."  Huh?  I was a patient, so I know how to be a surgeon? The fallacy is so obvious, and yet it is not just ignored; it's as if no one has ever even considered it.  As far as I can tell, this is the only profession where everyone thinks they know how to do it better than the professionals. 

I went to law school to get involved in education policy because I want to be the bridge between teachers and their concerns, and legislators and other policy-makers.  I want to be a voice of reason for teachers' interests and concerns without being bullied, pushed and pulled by union and other political interests that really have nothing to do with teaching and learning.  I went to law school because I have something to say, by golly, and I need the "credit and cache" a law degree gives me to be able to say it to people who are in power to effect a change.  Maybe one day I will even hold one of those positions!

2.  A teacher on the show was just speaking (among other things) about how she is mandated to have a certain amount of class time each day dedicated to small-group work and large-group work.  She expressed  frustration with the idea of small group work as it is presently mandated, because it small group work is not always appropriate or the best fit for the students' needs.  Glenn Beck seemed to balk at this at first, offering, "But isn't that where we are all going?" 
Here is the problem:  Yes, in work situations it is important that we know how to work in groups.  But there is no value in working in groups if you first don't know how to think.  Knowing how to work in a group is an important life skill; knowing how to think so you have something to bring to that group and value to add is infinitely more important.

That's it for now.  I'm eager to watch this forum from the start, and hopefully I'll be able to do that this weekend.

A Clarification on Tenure

Back in October, I posted a little bit about tenure.  I was (and remain) pretty adamant that "tenure" does not grant with it a status of "unable to be fired."  That being said, I do want to let you all know that I absolutely realize that it does have a de facto sense of that.  I tried make that clear in the original post and realize that Iwas not as clear as I could have been. 

So, here's the summary:

"Tenure" means that you have a right to due process and an appeal if you're fired.  It does not entitle you to your job in perpetuity; merely to a right to know why you're being fired, and to be heard if you're forced out.  And of course, you can't be fired arbitrarily.  With tenure, you can only be fired for cause.

That being said, historically administrators do such a poor job of documenting cause, that by the time it is clear that a teacher really really really needs to go, administrators are way, way, waaaaay behind in having a justification for firing that tenured teacher. Generally speaking, unless the offense is egregious, the paper trail to show cause for the firing can't be created overnight.  (You can't show a history of bad behavior if your history only started recently and therefore can be explained away...)  So, if you have a lousy teacher who's getting worse, but no single "big thing" to point to, you can't fire this teacher unless you've documented the issues, however small, all along.  Most of the time this doesn't happen.  (Do I have data?  No, but I have anecdotal evidence and heck, I watch the news and read education blogs!)

Moreover, once you've got this teacher you want to fire, very often the union steps in to represent the teacher.  Now, whether you like it or not, those union reps and attorneys are doing their jobs to represent their client teacher.  (Think, if you will, of the defense attorneys who represent the worst of the worst.  Those criminals still have rights, and the attorneys don't defend the criminals, per se, but rather protect the rights of those criminals.)  Same is true for the attorneys and union reps who step in to "save" the teacher's job.

I was speaking with an education law attorney recently who said she doesn't believe in tenure precisely because of this part of the process.  Teachers who need to leave teaching (by any standards but their own) will fight, and put the administrators through such efforts and misery that the administrators almost universally say "never again." Quite frankly, it takes such time and effort (and therefore, money), and the process is made so miserable, that it is easier for school districts to let bad teachers languish until retirement, than to be repeatedly dragged through the mud.

I am not convinced I don't believe in tenure, though, because I have seen arbitrary decisions by petty administrators, and tenure generally works to balance that.  It allows teachers to stand up for themselves without fear of retribution.  (Before you go saying that there are other protections in place, I will say that there are infinite ways for an administrator to make a teacher miserable, any of which standing alone is perfectly "justifiable given the circumstances and needs of the school." To document and show a pattern of retaliation is difficult, if not impossible, and yet we all know it happens.) 

What we do need is for administrators to start the evaluation process and paper trail immediately -- and we need an appeals process that isn't so miserable that it makes administrators want to forget it and keep terrible teachers around.  This is where more robust teacher evaluations are very important, and I think we're starting to see a swing towards such evaluations nationally. Of course, there are still many issues to work out with teacher evaluations in general, but that's another post.  My point is that richer, more detailed evaluations would help avoid this lack-of-documentation issue.

I'm going to try to sit in on some hearings in the future, to see how the tenure/firing process works in person.  I don't know if I'll be allowed to do this, but if I can find a public hearing, I'll write more about what I see.

I had a glimpse into a Value-Added Classroom, and all I can say is "Go Back"

Do you remember the movie Say Anything, and the joke in Diane Court's valedictory speech, "I saw our future, and all I can say is, 'go back'"?  Well, if value-added is our future, I'm with Diane.  Maybe not as staunchly, but after what I read today, I am leaning that way.

An article in today's AJC starts out:

HOUSTON — Andres Balp’s Texas classroom provides a glimpse of the data-driven future facing Georgia teachers and students.

In his fourth-grade room at Houston’s Lyons Elementary, the focus is clear: measuring exactly how well students are progressing. Children are grouped by how they have done on standardized tests, making it easier for Balp to work with the lower-performing kids. A poster charts daily test scores — black ink for high marks, red for low — to show who’s on track to hit state exam goals. Students follow their own progress too: Taped to each desk is a small square of colored paper with the student’s goal score for a daily 12-question assessment.

Balp, a 17-year classroom veteran, holds the master key to all this data: a three-ring binder filled with graphs showing test scores for every student — and forecasts of how they’re expected to do going forward. It informs the interactions he has with his students.
His income hinges on this data. So does his job. 

As for me, I am still reading everything about Value-Added data and evaluations that I can find.  I tend to think it's okay, with some qualifiers (namely, that it is used, as the article goes on to say, for the teachers to help the students and not as a means to penalize teachers).  But, when I read this article I was struck by the classroom that's described in the lead.  In particular, I have to say that I would not want my children in this room, or any like it.  Nor would I want to teach like this.

I don't want anyone tracking every minute grade like a fantasy baseball stat, and neither do I want every action in any classroom dictated by some metric, as the article would have us believe all good teaching must be.  I am all for the extrinsic motivation of the old-fashioned "gold star" charts, but the red-and-black comments letting students know who's on track to meet state testing requirements?  Doesn't anyone fear that goes a bit too far, perhaps losing the too-much-red-not-enough-black-grades kids to the phenomenon of a self-fulfilling prophecy?  I absolutely believe (or really, know) that we need some data to evaluate where we stand, but this goes too far.

What really put me over the top, though, was the charts on the desk to tell us the daily assessment goals.  Doesn't anyone see anything wrong with these "forecasts" of what is expected of each student, like abstract stock figures, with growth and plateau assessments calculated -- well heck, somewhere I am sure there are actuaries involved, at this rate -- to let us know what to buy and what to sell, and when, perhaps, to exercise our options?  And what, pray tell, are those options?  Do we really want our kids learning, as this would seem to be, by checklist?  Today, you will get a 90% and then you've met your goal.  All learning can cease.  Check, check, check, list is done!  No.  These constant checklists and benchmarks send the WRONG message about learning.  Not all that is worth doing in a day can be quantitatively measured, and I don't want my childrens' days determined by only that which can be quantitatively measured.  Setting daily goals is important, but we need qualitative ones as well, and we don't need checklists on the desks to press home the point that we're all working towards a goal.  What I fear these checklists convey is that we're working towards passing some test, as opposed to learning and growing and becoming better readers, or better at math, or better at writing.  Do tests measure that?  Sure.  But we don't need to frame every single day's goals in terms of tests and cutoff scores.  We need to learn (no, I am not so trite as to say, "for the sake of learning," though I'm close to it) and learn and learn, and the test scores will follow.  "Goal" test scores should not dictate or determine our learning plan. 

I know we're data-driven right now, and I know that in many ways value-added methods provide a much-needed antidote to teachers who don't belong in a classroom.  Yes, it can help us show "cause" to get rid of the obvious bad apples.

I'm just not sure that the good outweighs the bad.  I don't like this classroom of the future one bit.  Not one. Little. Bit.

Here are another few excerpts for you to gnaw on while I head to bed.  We come back to the law of diminishing returns, which I think I've mentioned before on this blog (and if not, which I will certainly discuss in the coming days), what to do when your kids are already at the top, and what to do when the evaluation method fails.  Enjoy. 

Because the data predicts a student’s future performance based on past results, teachers have better insight into how their students should be scoring in class. If a student isn’t on track, the teacher can offer remediation. It also allows teachers to work with their colleagues to address weaknesses revealed by the data. For example, if one fourth-grade teacher isn’t “adding enough value” in math, and another fourth-grade teacher’s students aren’t scoring well in language arts, the two might swap classes for one subject.

...

But in some areas — including classes of highly advanced students and students moving from Spanish to English — a teacher’s true impact isn’t showing up in the test data, she said.

“We do have some principals who say, ‘My best teachers in these certain areas are not being identified as good teachers, but we know they are,’” Stevens said. “We’re trying to run the numbers, investigate and see where this is a problem, and where it is a perceived issue but not a real issue.”

Darilyn Krieger, a physics teacher at Carnegie Vanguard High, a Houston school for gifted and talented students considered one of the best in the nation, said she is proof value-added data can be misleading.

Krieger said last year she earned almost $6,000 because of her student-growth scores. But this year, the data showed her students didn’t learn a year’s worth of information, even though 100 percent are passing and doing college-level coursework.

That’s because the district uses a test that doesn’t measure what her students learned in the current year. Instead, it’s an exit exam designed to measure what they have learned in science over 11 years. Her chief concern is the value-added data’s lack of transparency — it isn’t specific enough to show where her students did not meet expectations.

“I am being measured and told I didn’t do my job, but they can’t tell me what I did wrong,” Krieger said. “I don’t care what my scores were. I don’t care if I get a dollar on this stupid award. I want my kids to do well because they know the material.”

...

Supporters of using student test data to rate and pay teachers almost universally agree that it can’t be the only factor used in decision-making. In Georgia, 50 percent of the evaluation of teachers in “core” subjects — those covered by standardized tests — will be based on the growth scores; the other half will come from classroom observations, lesson plans and student surveys. Core teachers, such as those in math and writing, make up about 30 percent of the educator workforce.

Note:  this article is entitled In a Texas Classroom, Big Lessons for Georgia.  It was written by Jaime Sarrio and appeared as the front-page story on April 3, 2011.  Here's a link, though I am not sure it is a permalink:  http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/in-a-texas-classroom-895675.html