UPDATE: Letter to Seattle Board Members - Schools Matter: What the Gates MET Study Really Shows

Schools Matter: What the Gates MET Study Really Shows:

Letter to Seattle Board Members and Superintendent

by Jim Horn

Here are the addresses:  superintendent@seattleschools.org, schoolboard@seattleschools.org

Dear Board Members:

You are to be congratulated for your leadership in spawning a group of educators at Garfield High who understand their mission is "to improve learning, rather than to prove it" (Dan Stufflebeam quote from 30 years ago).  Stufflebeam knew then what most reformers still don't about the purpose of evaluation, and he also knew that trying to direct traffic from 20,000 feet can be very dangerous and confusing for those on the ground, even though things look quite orderly from aloft.  Imposing school reform from afar with no respect for those charged with implementing those reforms has never worked and never will--in a democracy.

Those of us who have been fighting for caring, humane, quality public schools that educate all children celebrate the courage and conscience that the teachers of Garfield have shown by voting to not administer another wasteful test that diminishes their professionalism and does nothing to improve learning.  We hope that you and your administration will support them and stand by them at the Board meetings.  

The children of Seattle have important lessons to learn from this episode.  Won't you let them know that their schools and those who lead them stand with eyes toward the side of history where these children will emulate what they are learning today?

Thank you.

Respectfully,

Jim Horn, PhD

Schools Matter

What the Gates MET Study Really Shows

by John Thompson

The final report by the $50 million Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching experiment concludes that their research into value-added models “should give heart to those who have invested considerable effort to develop practices and policies to measure and support effective teaching.” But, it gives no evidence or logic why those policies would work in the real world.

For some reason, Gates researchers claim that studying outcomes of randomly assigned students, from the same school, could determine whether statistical models can distinguish whether some teachers are “truly better” at improving student learning as opposed to being beneficiaries of “better students.”  Had teachers from low-poverty schools been randomly assigned to high-poverty neighborhood schools, that experiment might have produced important findings.  

Why the foundation would bother with an investigation that does not address the issue of effective teachers being 

Sloppy Smart(sic)Brief

by skrashen

Sloppy Smart(sic)Brief
S Krashen

The ASCD Worldwide Edition of Smart(sic)Brief announced the publication of an article in the Telegraph (UK) with this heading: “Educator calls for UK students to be tested on character.” Unlike the author of this heading, I read the article. It did not mention the possibility of testing students on character. In fact, it quoted administrators as being critical of the over-emphasis on test scores.

I am sure the testing-industrial-complex would love to develop and sell tests on character, along complete with video-taping of planned and unplanned behavior, as well as traditional tests.

The title of the article is “Pupils 'should get lessons in manners and punctuality'”. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9804096/Pupils-should-get-lessons-in-manners-and-