Teachers, Learning Styles, and Using Data to Drive Instruction | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teachers, Learning Styles, and Using Data to Drive Instruction | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teachers, Learning Styles, and Using Data to Drive Instruction

Everyone likes data that back their prejudices. Academics call it “confirmation bias.” It runs rife among U.S. Presidents, state governors, legislators, school district policymakers, and Moms and Dads. I include myself in the crowd. People with beliefs on one or the other side of an issue lean heavily on examples and evidence that supports their view of, say, gun control, dieting, the worth of alternative medicine or the two-shooter theory in the Kennedy assassination. Resisting confirmation bias and being open-minded, a process that is closer to sandpaper rather than a soft pillow, requires awareness of one’s beliefs, values and positions on issues. It is hard work and requires attention in what one chooses to read, listen to, and think because it is far easier to screen out or avoid contrary information. Convenience often trumps thinking. All of this is also true for teachers. Consider the issue of  data-driven instruction and learning styles.

Gurus, vendors, and policymakers urge teachers to use test data such as research results and experts’ lists of “best practices” in their daily lessons (see here andhere). The record of actual teacher use of data in classrooms however, is, at best,spotty. What happens, then, when research evidence overwhelmingly goes against deeply-held teacher beliefs in “learning styles?”

The most recent and detailed reviews of the literature on learning styles reveals Teachers, Learning Styles, and Using Data to Drive Instruction | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Common Core Standards: It’s all about the money | Seattle Education

Common Core Standards: It’s all about the money | Seattle Education:

Common Core Standards: It’s all about the money

A popular “single” from the 70’s:

From Truth in American Education:

Textbook Publishers Being “In It For The Money” Isn’t a Real Surprise

James O’Keefe, a conservative activist who runs an organization called Project Veritas, is well known for undercover video work he has done in the past. He has turned his attention to the Common Core State Standards.  The subject of his first video is Dianne Barrow who is a former accounts manager for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

“I’m in it to sell books. Don’t even kid yourself for a heartbeat,” Barrow told an undercover representative of Project Veritas.

“It’s all about the money. What are you, crazy? It’s all about the money,” Barrow added. “You don’t think that the educational publishing companies are in it for Common Core Standards: It’s all about the money | Seattle Education:

ALERT - Malloy/Wyman attack on parents, students, teachers, public schools (and the “out-out” movement) is a national disgrace - Wait What?

ALERT - Malloy/Wyman attack on parents, students, teachers, public schools (and the “out-out” movement) is a national disgrace - Wait What?:

ALERT – Malloy/Wyman attack on parents, students, teachers, public schools (and the “out-out” movement) is a national disgrace

Yesterday, lawyers for Governor Dannel Malloy, Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman and Attorney General George Jepsen spent the day in a Connecticut courtroom arguing to a judge in the CCJEF v. Rell School Funding Lawsuit why the state should not be held accountable for failing to provide Connecticut’s children with their constitutionally guaranteed right to a quality education.

We can be sure of one thing.  If a Republican governor was engaged in such an unethical and immoral approach to Connecticut’s school funding system, Democratic officials would be leading the demonstrations demanding that the state of Connecticut settle the lawsuit and fulfill their obligation to our state’s children.

But Malloy, Wyman and Jepsen claim the “Democratic Party” label and thus there was nothing but silence yesterday from Democratic Party officials.

Meanwhile, Malloy’s Commissioner of Education is not only preparing to take the stand against Connecticut’s children in the critically important CCJEF School Funding Lawsuit, but she is leading the Malloy/Wyman administration’s inappropriate attack on students, parents and the public school administrators who were honest and truthful, last spring, about a parent’s right to opt their child out of the disastrous Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing scheme.

Although there is no federal or state law, regulation or legal policy that prevents a Connecticut parent from refusing to have their child participate in the unfair and ALERT - Malloy/Wyman attack on parents, students, teachers, public schools (and the “out-out” movement) is a national disgrace - Wait What?:

Netflix chief announces $100 million fund for education - The Washington Post

Netflix chief announces $100 million fund for education - The Washington Post:
Netflix chief announces $100 million fund for education

Netflix founder and chief executive Reed Hastings, a longtime supporter of charter schools, is creating a $100 million foundation for education, he announced on his Facebook page Tuesday.

The Hastings Fund launched with grants totaling $1.5 million to the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley and UNCF scholarship funds, donations meant to help minority students access college.

“Currently, too many children do not have access to amazing schools. Our aim is to partner with communities to significantly increase the number of students who have access to rich and holistic educational experiences,” the new fund says on its website.

[Reed Hastings has a big idea: Kill elected school boards]

The fund’s chief executive is Neerav Kingsland, a charter-school proponent who previously led New Schools for New Orleans. The nonprofit played a key role in shaping the city’s post-Hurricane Katrina educational system, in which more than 90 percent of children attend charter schools.

Kingsland had most recently been a senior fellow at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. That foundation has given nearly $150 million over the past four years to education groups, including Teach for America, many charter schools and charter-school support organizations.

Hastings joins the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, tech billionaires interested in using their money to improve education. Critics have accused them of using their money to reshape education according to their own ideas, circumventing the democratic process.

Hastings told the publication Education Next in 2015 that he wasn’t bothered by the critics and believes they have good motives. “A public advocate needs a thick skin and a respect for opposing arguments,” he said.

He has a long history in the field:  He supported a successful effort to loosen California’s charter law in 1998 and then went on to serve for four years on Netflix chief announces $100 million fund for education - The Washington Post:

We Are Listening, and We Know You Have Something to Say - Lily's Blackboard

We Are Listening, and We Know You Have Something to Say - Lily's Blackboard:

We Are Listening, and We Know You Have Something to Say

Are you fed up with policies that don’t put students at the center of education? And with “experts” who don’t know the names of the students they keep talking about?

Here is your chance to share your experience. What you see happening with your students, in your school community.

Join our Ask an Educator 2016 National Listening Tour. The listening tour will allow us to hear directly from our members and elevate the voices of the men and women working in our schools and classrooms.

We know you have a unique voice!

Share your testing story

How has standardized testing affected your students’ learning?

Share your Degrees Not Debt story

How has student debt affected your quality of life or career choices?

Share your story about union participation

How has participation in your union benefitted you professionally?

Share your story about legislative issues

What are the legislative issues that affect your students the most?

Share your story about an education issue you are passionate about

What other education issue affects your students that you want to change?

We Are Listening, and We Know You Have Something to Say - Lily's Blackboard:

King Would Have Stood with Striking Teachers - LA Progressive

King Would Have Stood with Striking Teachers - LA Progressive:

King Would Have Stood with Striking Teachers

A the nation prepares to mark what would have been the 87th birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, we should remember Dr. King as a staunch supporter of both public education andorganized labor. This is especially important as teachers in cities across the nation including Chicago and Detroit, weigh the necessity of civil disobedience and work stoppages to raise awareness and encourage a fair resolution to their concerns.

While teachers unions have been vilified for taking these steps, the actions of labor leaders such as Chicago Teachers Union head Karen Lewis are more in line with those taken by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King in his quest to vanquish what he once described as the triple evils of poverty, racism and militarism. These are problems that residents of inner cities like Chicago and Detroit know all too well. The Chicago Teachers Union, for example, linked its opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the mayor’s handling of the police shooting of 17 year-old Laquan McDonald in which city officials have been accused of withholding information including video of the killing to ensure that their release did not negatively impact Emanuel’s reelection bid. Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke was recently charged with first-degree murder in the killing of McDonald, an unarmed 17 year-old who was shot 16 times by the officer as he walked down the middle of the street. McDonald’s case is not the only time educators weighed in on controversial police killings either.

In recent years, educators have had to resort to acts of civil disobedience in order to make the public aware of a variety of issues from over testing of students, cuts to special education instruction, and unfair labor contracts. Union members often face significant consequences for their actions including harassment and termination. These problems are not new. In September of 1978, for instance, teachers in a number of cities including Philadelphia, New Orleans, Seattle, and Indianapolis, took to picket lines in protest of similar injustices. In many cases, teachers faced jail for their actions. The small city of Bridgeport, Connecticut took center stage after public school King Would Have Stood with Striking Teachers - LA Progressive:

With new superintendent in place, L.A. school board gears for battle on charter plan - LA Times

With new superintendent in place, L.A. school board gears for battle on charter plan - LA Times:

With new superintendent in place, L.A. school board gears for battle on charter plan

A Day after unanimously selecting a new leader, the Los Angeles Board of Education once again found common ground by offering its first public opposition to a controversial $490-million proposal to increase the number of charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Board members have traditionally been divided on charter school growth, but on Tuesday they voted 7 to 0 in support of a resolution opposing initiatives that "view our communities as a public education marketplace and our children as commodities."

The board then directed new Supt. Michelle King to analyze how the outside plan, which was developed by the Broad Foundation, will "affect the district's enrollment, fiscal viability and ability to provide an outstanding public education."

A draft of the plan proposes 260 new charters in L.A. The schools, combined with existing charters, would enroll half of the district's 650,000 students.

Supporters of the proposal say they seek to improve options for parents unsatisfied with traditional public schools. But L.A. Unified leaders say the plan threatens the sustainability of the district and could hurt its ability to serve students.

"I think it is important to point out that this plan was not created to strengthen L.A. Unified and we want that to be on the record," board member Monica Ratliff said. "In the long run, we have to get something on the table about the impact that it has on the district and the impact that it has on our ability to meet our promises to our employees."

Charter schools are publicly funded, independently operated and not tethered to some of the regulations that apply to traditional schools. Most charter schools are nonunion.

The board's resolution is effectively a symbolic gesture, but it highlights a key challenge for the district's new superintendent.

Declining enrollment and the cost of providing employee benefits are among the drivers of a projected long-term deficit at the district. Because districts are funded based on student enrollment, L.A. Unified stands to lose millions of dollars if the charter plan is successful.

After being named superintendent on Monday, King said she was neither for nor against the charter expansion proposal: "I am about L.A. Unified's plan."

King, who signed a $350,000 annual contract Tuesday, also said little about the expansion plan, simply asking board members for precise guidance on their directive.

"When you're clear and you define what specifically we are looking at, then staff can go in and analyze that and look for the fiscal concerns, the enrollment impact and all the other With new superintendent in place, L.A. school board gears for battle on charter plan - LA Times:

Our State of the Union: Unarmed Truth. Unconditional Love. - Lily's Blackboard

Our State of the Union: Unarmed Truth. Unconditional Love. - Lily's Blackboard:

Our State of the Union: Unarmed Truth. Unconditional Love.

I am writing this having just watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech. I’m an educator. A teacher. A union activist. And so I was listening for his messages on education and students and schools and the men and women who work in them. And he had words for us. He talked about the good intentions of No Child Left Untested and the new work to do under a new law. He talked about preschool for all children; science and technology opportunities; recruiting great teachers; and affordable college that should include free access to community colleges.

It was all good. It was good to hear him talk about strengthening Social Security and Medicare as the foundation of a dignified retirement. It was good to hear him remind us that millions and millions of people who had no hope of health insurance now have coverage. It was good for him to state so clearly that it wasn’t a middle-class worker’s right to collectively bargain their salary and benefits that caused the economic crisis – it was the under-regulated greed of Wall Street.

Success, boundless opportunities & the American Dream are within reach of our kids. #SOTU https://t.co/A8zFGeZQrJ pic.twitter.com/LvM0eHSGi4

— Lily Eskelsen García (@Lily_NEA) January 13, 2016

Martin Luther King, Jr. His Legacy in Our Classrooms

There were tears in the vice president’s eyes and tears in my eyes and maybe tears in your eyes when the president called for a new moonshot: Curing Cancer. Tears come when you have watched your loved one suffer and die of cancer as I watched my father die. It is a worthy goal to walk on a planet free of that plague.

It was good. And then the president ended in a place I had not expected. Because he didn’t focus on his last year or the next election cycle as is the natural focus of most politicians. He didn’t call on Congress to act. He called on us. All of us. Tea Partiers and Green Partiers and Democrats and Republicans and all of us to be the citizens that demand a democracy that encourages healthy debate without demonizing the opposition. He called on us to use the power of our voices to speak up for those who struggle to be accepted; those who are vulnerable because they are not the majority. He asked us to push back against those who would suppress a person’s right to vote and to change the system that allows voting districts to be gerrymandered to the extent that politicians choose their voters instead of the voters choosing them.

This was the unarmed truth of the president. But he ended with unconditional love. He ended by naming us. The teacher who comes to school early and buys extra supplies so her students won’t go without. The person in trouble who gets a second chance. The passionate protestor. The police officer who decides that to protect 

In 1983, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the law honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. with a federal holiday. That’s a historical fact. But that single fact doesn’t acknowledge the complex, multi-level, multi-year strategy and activism that achieved that victory.

As the 30th national holiday approaches, it’s a good time to remember what it took for us to get here and to consider – in light of the ongoing challenges to equal opportunity – our continuing obligation to “stand up for the best in the American dream.”

The campaign for the holiday began only days after Dr. King’s assassination. Legislation was introduced in Congress on April 8, 1968 by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, but that bill and several others were consistently derailed by lawmakers who resented both Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement. After a long campaign that included the largest petition drive in history, the law passed. The holiday was observed for the first time on Jan. 20, 1986.

Back then, my suburban Salt Lake City school district did not close for the holiday. That first year, I Martin Luther King, Jr. His Legacy in Our Classrooms

Schools Matter: Teachers in High Poverty Schools Get Lower Evaluation Scores

Schools Matter: Teachers in High Poverty Schools Get Lower Evaluation Scores:

Teachers in High Poverty Schools Get Lower Evaluation Scores

Did you ever believe that using test scores to evaluate and reward teachers could be a disincentive to teaching in high poverty schools?  You were right.

From Chicago:

Teachers who score the lowest under the district’s relatively new evaluation system are overrepresented in schools with the highest concentration of poor students, according to a new report that looks for the first time at how teachers’ scores correlate with characteristics such as student poverty, teacher race and school climate.

Issued Tuesday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, the report shows that 30 percent of teachers with the lowest observation scores teach in the district's highest-poverty schools, while just 9 percent teach in lower-poverty schools. Conversely, more than a third of the best-scoring teachers work in lower-poverty schools, and just 6 percent are in the district's poorest schools.

That means students who attend the poorest schools are not only “more likely to be taught by teachers with the bottom scores on observations, they are also the least likely to be taught by teachers who have the top scores.”

Teachers at higher-poverty schools who scored in the top 20 percent on their observations also Schools Matter: Teachers in High Poverty Schools Get Lower Evaluation Scores:

Blackmon: Testing robs students of real learning opportunities | Online Athens

Blackmon: Testing robs students of real learning opportunities | Online Athens:

Blackmon: Testing robs students of real learning opportunities

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

When it comes to college and career readiness, that old saying should be, “You can’t keep all your tests and still produce thinking graduates.” I get so sick of this determination to measure everything by tests, then complain that the rote learning necessary to do well on the tests doesn’t translate into working knowledge in the real world.

For young people to be truly college- or career-ready, they have to be able to analyze information, integrate it with prior knowledge and apply it in different ways. For example, I took two years of Latin and two years of German in high school. The combination of those two languages helps me figure out what words mean, and how different usages take different forms. I can often decipher words in other languages just because of my high school experience.

Exposure to literature and reading can have a similar impact. Working through “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Invisible Man” with a teacher can help students understand a great deal about culture and economics, to ask and answer “what if?” questions and be able to apply those skills to real people and real situations.

“Close reading,” one of the very worst concepts of the Common Core standards and related standardized tests, is the antithesis of reading for a deeper understanding of human nature or how people relate to one another in different circumstances. In close reading, students, beginning in elementary schools, are supposed to be able to take a couple of paragraphs, offered with no context or background, and interpret what they mean. They can read and understand the words themselves, but have no idea what to draw from them beyond that. What good is that?

Because they lose so many days to test preparation and test-taking, there is even less time available for teachers to try to help their students develop their own questions and answers, to discuss how a story might have ended differently if one character had made a different choice. Those are the applicable skills that make students ready to take on jobs and higher education, not just being able to regurgitate information.

I am sick to death of these demands for college and career readiness, including terrible policies of grading schools based on test scores, insisting a principal’s Blackmon: Testing robs students of real learning opportunities | Online Athens:

The Slippery Slope of School Discipline

The Slippery Slope of School Discipline:

The Slippery Slope of School Discipline

Teacher administering a flogging to one of his pupils. (Photo: Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Mayor de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, are experimenting with a new approach to school discipline. Instead of suspending unruly students, misbehaving kids receive “warning cards” with a suggestion: that they “Please bring this card home to your parent(s)/guardian so that you can discuss the matter with them.”

As a result, suspensions by principals and superintendents dropped 17 percent citywide to 44,626 in 2014-15, from 53,504 in 2013-14 .

Principals must now get permission from the Department of Education’s Office of Safety and Youth Development before suspending a student for defying a teacher or other authority; for “minor physical altercations”; for inappropriate clothes, profanity and insubordination. These offenses no longer trigger an automatic boot from the classroom.

Research clearly shows that successful learning overwhelmingly takes place in classrooms that are well managed. Disruptive students make that impossible.

The warning cards go to students who engage in disorderly conduct such as yelling, cursing, fighting and assaults, or unlawful possession of marijuana.

Compare this to the brouhaha triggered by the revelation that charter school head Eva Moskowitz’s principals had put together a “got to go” list of students who disrupted classes.

There are two dimensions to this admittedly difficult problem: what to do with the 5 percent of students who are disruptive, and how to preserve a productive learning environment for the 95 percent of kids who abide by the rules and want to learn.

Let us be clear: we are not advocating a no-tolerance, one-strike-and-you’re-out environment for all schools and all kids. Even parents and children who seek out the strictest school settings recognize that many kids occasionally go over the line. And we are big believers in repentance and second chances. But research clearly shows that successful learning overwhelmingly takes place in classrooms that are well managed. Disruptive students make that impossible.

There is a second body of research that is also undisputed. It shows that the most The Slippery Slope of School Discipline:

Houghton-Mifflin exec: Common Core is all about the money - New York Business Journal

Houghton-Mifflin exec: Common Core is all about the money - New York Business Journal:

Houghton-Mifflin exec: Common Core is all about the money

An undercover video posted by New York City-based Project Veritas, the same organization that investigated the now defunct ACORN, shows an executive at one of the nation's largest school booksellers describing how common core education standards are a scheme for publishers to make bank.

"It's all about the money. What are you, crazy? It's all about the money," says Dianne Barrow, an executive at Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She goes on to say she 'hates kids' and that she's "in it to sell books."

According to the video posted below, Project Veritas recorded possibly damaging footage claiming that 'common core' — the tougher, national curriculum standards designed to prepare students for college — is a scam.



"'You don't think that the educational publishing companies are in it for education, do you? No, they're in it for the money," Barrow says in the hidden video. Bianca Olson with the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt confirmed that Barrow 'has been terminated' following the video's release.

One New York City teacher let out her frustration on the group's hidden camera.

'It's bulls**t and the thing is, what they do is they create some new f***ing system, that f***ing sucks to sell more books and then we have to learn something new with the students.'

The video debuts roughly a month after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled plans of a task force to review the curriculum and oversee a total overhaul, saying that there were big mistakes in its implementation and that some of the early childhood standards are inappropriate.Houghton-Mifflin exec: Common Core is all about the money - New York Business Journal:

Acting Secretary of Education Dr. John King Jr. is unfazed by politics - CBS News

Acting Secretary of Education Dr. John King Jr. is unfazed by politics - CBS News:
Acting secretary of education is unfazed by politics

View More: Politics News|Live News|More News Videos

The new acting secretary of education, Dr. John King Jr., steps into a role his predecessor, Arne Duncan, left deep in controversy. With support for Common Core waning and student debt skyrocketing, King faces a series of challenges.

King can already speak softly, but in his new role, he may also need to carry a big stick, reports "CBS This Morning" co-host Norah O'Donnell.

In 2010, King scored New York state a $700 million federal grant. Controversy followed when, as New York's education commissioner, he rolled out Common Core standards.

Parents and teachers shouted him off the stage at a PTA meeting in 2013.

"You ended up cancelling further meetings like that?" O'Donnell asked.

"Well, we restructured them. So that meeting got to a place where it just wasn't productive. Folks were screaming and yelling, it was hard to have a real conversation," King said in an exclusive interview with "CBS This Morning."

"Why were people screaming and yelling?" O'Donnell asked.

"Some of it was the politics of the moment... Some of it was misunderstandings that folks have," King said.

Critics have said they do not need the federal government delivering standards in their states.

"It's important that folks realize that the standards are a matter of state policymaking," King said. "And what we've said...is that states need to have standards that push towards college and career readiness."

At first, 46 states adopted Common Core standards. Three states have since dropped them, and 19 more have put them under review. King will have to continue the fight for uniform standards without overstepping the bounds of his federal role.

"You went from this school to becoming the first African-American education commissioner, the first Puerto Rican education commissioner of New York. What does that mean to you?" O'Donnell asked.

"I think it's a testament to what's possible if students have the right opportunities," King said. "Teachers could've looked at me and said, 'You know, here's a African-American/Latino student, difficult family situation. What chance does he have?' And they could've given up on me. But they didn't."

The teachers King called "life-saving" taught at P.S. 276 in Brooklyn, which CBS News visited with King.

"My mom also worked here and was a guidance counselor here. And so it felt like home," King said. "And then my mom passed away when I was in fourth grade, and school took on a different role in my life."

He was just eight years old when he lost his mother and 12 when he lost his father, who was once the highest-ranking African-American educator in the country, and who later suffered from undiagnosed Alzheimer's disease.

"I can recall one night -- he woke me up at, like, two in the morning, said it was time to go to school," King said. "And I can remember holding onto the banister of the staircase at my house saying, 'Daddy, daddy, it's not time to go to school. It's not time to go to school. It's the middle of the night.' And he didn't understand, I didn't know what was wrong. So that was a very, very difficult period. And, you Acting Secretary of Education Dr. John King Jr. is unfazed by politics - CBS News:

Bernie Sanders has a bold, simple idea for improving public education - Vox

Bernie Sanders has a bold, simple idea for improving public education - Vox:

Bernie Sanders has a bold, simple idea for improving public education

At Monday night's Brown & Black Democratic Presidential Forum in Iowa, Bernie Sanders came out in favor of a massive change in the way the US funds schools:

"One of the things that I have always believed is that, in terms of education, we have to break our dependency on the property tax, because what happens is the wealthiest suburbs can in fact have great schools but poor, inner-city schools cannot. So I think we need equality in terms of how we fund education, and to make sure the federal government plays an active role to make sure that those schools we need it the most get the funds that they deserve."

Bernie's right: The property tax system of funding schools is inherently regressive, granting fewer resources to poorer towns with lower property values and more to rich towns with high property values. Federalizing funding of public schools — or at least moving further in that direction — would be a huge boon for both economic and racial equality. It would make our tax system much more progressive and protect schools from cuts during recessions. And done right, it can improve school quality while maintaining a degree of local autonomy.

Rich districts spend more per student than poor districts

(The Hechinger Report)

Nationwide, state and local governments spend 15 percent less per pupil on poor school districts, which get $9,270 per student, than on rich districts, which get $10,721. This isn't true in every state. Twenty-three states, including major ones like California and Florida, provide more spending to poor districts. That's as it should be. Quality education in high-poverty areas costs more money than quality education in affluent areas, not least because of greater numbers of special education students and students for whom English isn't a first language.

But in 23 other states, poorer districts are shafted, and in three states funding is Bernie Sanders has a bold, simple idea for improving public education - Vox:

Teach Your Teachers Well - The New York Times

Teach Your Teachers Well - The New York Times:

Teach Your Teachers Well

Trisha Matthews teaching fourth graders in Brooklyn. CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times

LAST month, at the urging of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s Board of Regents suspended the use of state tests to evaluate teachers. This is a wise first step, but it won’t improve our schools unless we go further and build a professionalized system of support that views teachers as learners and challenges them to improve their classroom practices.

The national push over the last decade to strengthen how we evaluate teachers was rooted in studies that suggested that consecutive years with an ineffective teacher did lasting damage to a child’s life chances. In response, many teachers’ evaluations have been tied to how their students perform on state tests.

In 2010, New York began to develop a new teacher evaluation system, new tests and curriculums aligned with the Common Core standards. Most teachers agree that the standards are a step forward, because they ask students to think critically, write persuasively and solve real-world problems creatively. But New York’s tests are still dominated by multiple-choice questions that don’t measure this deeper learning. In many parts of the state, teachers did not have time to adapt their curriculums before new tests were used to evaluate them.

This created a crisis of confidence for parents, teachers and principals. Last year, an astonishing 20 percent of families opted out of the state exams. Parents worry that pressure to raise test scores makes school boring and stressful for their children. In many schools, there is still too much time spent on test prep, too much focus on students’ weaknesses and not enough time for the in-depth learning the Common Core standards were meant to inspire.

Teachers don’t trust the data being used to evaluate them. The evaluation system relies on tests designed for one task (measuring student learning) and uses them for another (measuring each teacher’s impact). Good data is important but we have to use it for what it can actually tell us, not for what we wish it could tell us. Teachers regularly see margins of error of 25 points in the scores they receive based on their students’ test results.

Even more troubling, the evaluation system has sent the message to principals that we don’t trust their judgment. Principals are now required to follow a complex formula embedded in state law to arrive at teachers’ ratings. If neither principals nor teachers trust the data in front of them, the process becomes a joke. In a system that was supposed to be more rigorous, fewer than 1 percent of teachers were rated ineffective last year.

In schools, the way adults learn always defines the way the students learn. Evaluations should have teeth, but that’s not the mechanism that will put a strong teacher in every classroom. Schools need to nurture our students and our teachers.

How do we do this? We need to invest in teacher preparation and development. We hire thousands of new teachers every year, but many spend less than six weeks practicing as a student teacher and are never mentored by a strong educator before they start teaching.

High quality training for aspiring teachers would combine mastery of content and child development with a one-year residency alongside a master teacher. High-performing countries provide public funding to address this need. We need to make the same investment here.Teach Your Teachers Well - The New York Times:

State School Board Member Dismantles Federal “Reminder” On Standardized Testing

State School Board Member Dismantles Federal “Reminder” On Standardized Testing:
State School Board Member Dismantles Federal “Reminder” On Standardized Testing

In December, the United States Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education sent a letter out to all “Chief State School Officers” (i.e., state superintendents) in order to “take this opportunity to remind you of key assessment requirements that exist under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (ESEA). These requirements will remain in place for the 2015-2016 school year, and similar requirements are included in the recently signed reauthorization of the ESEA, known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).“

One of Ohio’s State School Board Members, A. J. Wagner, decided to respond to the letter (as an individual, not in his official capacity) and posted his outstanding reply on Facebook.  We’ve decided to share both the letter from the USDoE and Retired Judge Wagner’s response here for a well-deserved wider audience.

The letter from the USDoE is posted first (click on the images to enlarge), followed by Wagner’s return letter.

Ms. Ann Whalen
Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Education,
Delegated the Duties of the Assistant Secretary,
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
United States Department of Education
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
400 Maryland Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20202

Dear Ms. Whelan,

As a member of the State of Ohio Board of Education I seek your comment and advice. This letter is not written on behalf of the Ohio Department of Education or the State Board of Education, but individually as a person with an important interest in the laws and State School Board Member Dismantles Federal “Reminder” On Standardized Testing: