Another Study about Bias in Teachers’ Observational Scores
Following-up on two prior posts about potential bias in teachers’ observations (see prior posts here and here), another research study was recently released evidencing, again, that the evaluation ratings derived via observations of teachers in practice are indeed related to (and potentially biased by) teachers’ demographic characteristics. The study also evidenced that teachers representing racial and ethnic minority background might be more likely than others to not only receive lower relatively scores but also be more likely identified for possible dismissal as a result of their relatively lower evaluation scores.
The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) authored and U.S. Department of Education (Institute of Education Sciences) sponsored study titled “Teacher Demographics and Evaluation: A Descriptive Study in a Large Urban District” can be found here, and a condensed version of the study can be found here. Interestingly, the study was commissioned by district leaders who were already concerned about what they believed to be occurring in this regard, but for which they had no hard evidence… until the completion of this study.
Authors’ key finding follows (as based on three consecutive years of data): Black teachers, teachers age 50 and older, and male teachers were rated below proficient relatively more often than the same district teachers to whom they were compared. More specifically,
In all three years the percentage of teachers who were rated below proficient was higher among Black teachers than among White teachers, although the gap was smaller in 2013/14 and 2014/15.
In all three years the percentage of teachers with a summative performance rating who were rated below proficient was higher among teachers age 50 and older than among teachers younger than age 50.
In all three years the difference in the percentage of male and female teachers with a summative performance rating who were rated below proficient was approximately 5 percentage points or less.
The percentage of teachers who improved their rating during all three year-to-year
comparisons did not vary by race/ethnicity, age, or gender.
I don’t necessarily mean this in a bad way, although it does have a few downsides.
As you probably know, public education in general and teachers in particular were thoroughly rebuked in the recent state elections. SQ779 went down in flames after polling rather well only weeks before, largely due to the efforts of mysterious groups who appeared out of nowhere and began panicking on our behalf over the sad, if well-intentioned, error we were all clearly about to make.
They embraced the new, “reality-optional” approach so popular these days with an effective, two-pronged strategy. First, make up a bunch of stuff people could easily refute if they bothered to read the actual question but didn’t. Second, treat this 1% tax as a misguided starting point for growthful discussions rather than a desperate, if flawed, last-ditch effort to overcome a decade of one-party rule and overt hostility towards the idea that every kid deserves committed, effective educators dragging them towards enlightenment.
They promised a “better way,” which apparently involves disbanding and vanishing as soon as the votes were tallied.
Then again, I guess they didn’t say exactly who it was better for.
Smirking legislators quickly joined the chorus of assurances that of course they’d immediately be doing everything they possibly could to give teachers huge raises, first thing! For totes realsies this time! Why would we doubt them? They’re our government – they live to serve!
What few months we’ve been through. No point in rehearsing all the stages I have gone through. But since I am incapable of not being an optimist, even though I know better, I have solved it in this way: I had been thinking that if I made it for five more years I would probably see a great-grandchild or two born. Worth doing. But now I have decided to try to live 12 more years (three electoral presidential cycles) so I can see the pendulum swing and take some healthy breaths before I call it quits. I do envy those much younger for having more time to do this. And, of course, it means that we all, including me, cannot spend too much time grieving and complaining. We do always need smart analyses, thoughtful historical perspectives, etc. (We need, for example, to remember that less than ¼ of all potential voters voted for Trump, and half of the eligible voters did not or could not vote at all.) But we also need motion—action—face-to-face as well as all other ways. We need to bury—or put on the back burner—as many differences on our side that we can tolerate (and which smart strategy suggests doing). We need to build bridges: we need the kind of listening skills that good educator’s work rests on. A good classroom is always building bridges between what different people think—even in a math class. Listening to and taking seriously the absurd, the offensive, and the illogical ideas as I tried to do in kindergarten classes was not a frill. There was always a nugget of truth, an insight that still informs me, and What now? | Deborah Meier on Education:
I wanted to announce my first official academic publication. Woot, woot!
It's a second-authored book review in Teachers College Record with one of the professors at VCU who I work with, Dr. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley. The book is The End of Consensus: Diversity, Neighborhoods, and the Politics of Public School Assignments by Toby L. Parcel and Andrew J. Taylor. Here is the first paragraph:
Changes to student assignment policies that determine who goes to school with whom typically engender political controversies around race, class, opportunity and equity. In 2009, North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), which includes the city of Raleigh, drew national attention as area leaders debated over significant shifts to a student assignment policy long been held up as a model for promoting diversity and equity. In a fast-growing city-suburban district historically committed to comprehensive school desegregation, the tensions between old and new, conservative and progressive and narrowly- and broadly-defined community came to a head. North Carolina State University sociologist Toby L. Parcel and political scientist Andrew J. Taylor take us into the heart of these controversies in their recent book, The End of Consensus. Parcel and Taylor’s principal findings, laid out over seven concise chapters, showcase a tension between those who prioritized heterogeneous schools versus those who prioritized neighborhood schools.
The New York Times contains a column that expresses the fears of many people and asks whether our democracy is sturdy enough to survive the reign of Trump.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, professors of government at Harvard, write:
“Donald J. Trump’s election has raised a question that few Americans ever imagined asking: Is our democracy in danger? With the possible exception of the Civil War, American democracy has never collapsed; indeed, no democracy as rich or as established as America’s ever has. Yet past stability is no guarantee of democracy’s future survival.
“We have spent two decades studying the emergence and breakdown of democracy in Europe and Latin America. Our research points to several warning signs.
“The clearest warning sign is the ascent of anti-democratic politicians into mainstream politics. Drawing on a close study of democracy’s demise in 1930s Europe, the eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz designed a “litmus test” to identify anti-democratic politicians. His indicators include a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments.
“Mr. Trump tests positive. In the campaign, he encouraged violence among supporters; pledged to prosecute Hillary Clinton; threatened legal action against unfriendly media; and suggested that he might not accept the election results….
“Mr. Trump is not the first American politician with authoritarian tendencies. (Other notable authoritarians include Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.) But he is the first in modern American history to be elected president. This is not necessarily because Americans have grown more authoritarian (the United States electorate has always had an authoritarian streak). Rather it’s because the institutional filters that we assumed would protect us from extremists, like the party nomination system and the news media, failed.
“Many Americans are not overly concerned about Mr. Trump’s authoritarian inclinations because they trust our system of constitutional checks and balances to constrain him.
“Yet the institutional safeguards protecting our democracy may be less effective than we think. A well-designed constitution is not enough to ensure a stable democracy — a lesson many Latin American independence leaders learned when they borrowed the American constitutional model in the early 19th century, only to see their countries plunge into chaos. “Democratic institutions must be reinforced by strong informal norms. Like a pickup basketball game without a referee, democracies work best when unwritten rules of the game, known and respected by all players, ensure a minimum of civility and cooperation. Norms serve as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing political competition from spiraling into a chaotic, no-holds-barred conflict.
“Among the unwritten rules that have sustained American democracy are partisan self-restraint and fair play. For much of our history, leaders of both parties resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage, effectively underutilizing the power conferred by those institutions. There existed a shared Can Our Democracy Survive Trump? | Diane Ravitch's blog:
Harvard, write: “Donald J. Trump’s election has raised a question that few Americans ever imagined asking: Is our democracy in danger? With the possible exception of the Civil War
Sheila Resseger is a retired teacher in Rhode Island. She writes in response to an earlier post about the proposed expansion of the Achievement First charter chain in Rhode Island. The state commissioner, Kenneth Wagner, is enthusiastic about the increase in charter enrollment by 2,000, even though it will strip more than $30 million from the Providence public schools, which enrolls far more stud
In this post, which appeared on Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog, Nancy Carlsson-Paige explains that the biggest problem in early childhood education today is the erosion of time for play. Carlsson-Paige is an emeritus professor at Lesley College, where she taught teachers of early childhood. She explains in this post that the changes in the recent past have damaged children and their classr
Steven Singer wants you to know the truth: No matter how much she denies it, Betsy DeVos really really loves Common Core! He has the evidence to prove it. She’s a board member of Jeb Bush’s pro-Common Core think tank, Foundation for Excellence in Education, where she hangs out with prominent Democratic education reformers like Bill Gates and Eli Broad. But she says that somehow doesn’t mean she l
As threatened, the Republican-dominated Geral Assembly of North Carolina passed legislation to diminish the powers of the incoming Democratic Governor. The outgoing Governor, Pat McCrory, who lost the election to Attorney General Roy Cooper, promptly signed the controversial bills, undermining his successor. The Tea Party Republicans who control the legislature are punishing Cooper for winning. T
K12 Inc. is the largest provider of online charter schools. This sector is probably the worst part of the charter industry. CREDO reported last year that for every 180 days of online enrollment, a student will lose 180 days in math, and 72 in reading. At its shareholder meeting on December 15, a group of shareholders proposed that the corporation become transparent as to how much it spends on lob
As the North Carolina General Assembly passes legislation to limit the powers of the newly-elected Governor of the state, who is a Democrat, protestors gather at the State Capitol, speak out and are arrested. The General Assembly has been controlled by Tea Party extremists since 2010, when they had the chance to redistrict and guarantee themselves a super-majority. The federal court has ruled tha
The U.S. Department of Education, in the Trump regime, is starting to look like a Jeb Bush sweep. Betsy DeVos was on the board of Jeb’s Foundation for Education Excellence, which is noted for its advocacy for vouchers, charter schools, digital learning, and high-stakes testing. Hanna Skandera, State Superintendent in New Mexico, worked for Jeb Bush, was a member and chair of Jeb’s Chiefs for Chan
Rebecca Mead, staff writer at The anew Yorker, outlines the advantages that Betsy DeVos offers: She has no ties to Vladimir Putin; she hasn’t spread fake news; she apparently has no plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Of these three “advantages,” I feel confident only about the first one. Her persistent lambasting of public schools is fake news. And it remains to be seen whether
The founder of a small charter chain in Michigan has been sentenced to 41 months in prison. I have written about Ingersoll here and here . Steven Ingersoll founded the Grand Traverse Academy in Michigan. Blogger Anita Senkowski has followed this scandal from its beginnings. She writes about Ingersoll’s sentencing here . In its December 15, 2016 sentencing memorandum, the government stated: In gen
Kenneth Wagner, Commissioner of Education in Rhode Island, has approved a plan to allow the Achievement First “no-excuses” charter chain to more than triple its enrollment over the next decade to more than 3,000 students. (Other stories say that the number of students will grow from the present 720 to 2,000.) The proposal is controversial because the increase in charter enrollment will cut the bu
Peter Greene listened to a podcast produced by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and made a shocking discovery : One of the leading figures of the reform movement–Checker Finn–acknowledged that after 20 years of reform, there was no change!
Politico reports that Hanna Skandera, Commissioner of Education in New Mexico, is being considered for the second most important job in the Education Department. Mercedes Schneider explains that Skandera is a major advocate for the Common Core. She is currently in charge of PARCC, the testing consortium.
Part II: An Analysis of School Performance Related to Family Poverty.
Unintended negative consequences of Louisiana’s school grading system
Does the grading of schools based on student test scores produce higher student performance?
My analysis reveals that the evidence is building each successive year that such pressure produces more negative consequences than positive ones.
I suggest readers spend a few minutes reading the two recent articles by Danielle Dreilinger at nola.com here and here, to examine the rise of rampant cheating on state tests caused by the intense pressure to produce higher test scores. In addition, here is another article about alleged cheating at SciTech Academy. These are exactly the kind of cheating by educators that resulted in educators going to jail in Atlanta Georgia.
Time after time, it has been found that charter schools in the New Orleans Recovery District have used various forms of cheating and test question teaching to artificially raise their school performance scores. Time after time school performance scores in the RSD have dropped like a rock the year after instances of cheating are exposed. The graduation rate of the RSD dropped by almost ten percentage points when the LDOE clamped down on the misreporting of dropouts as transfers.
Here is a study by Stanford University that shows that grading and closing schools in New Orleans neglects and underserves the students that are most at risk.
Yes, it is very clear that one of the major outcomes of grading schools and evaluation of educators using student test scores produces cheating! The articles above show that cheating includes educators changing student test answers and educators making copies of test questions so that the answers can be taught to students before they take the state tests.
The problem of cheating is compounded by the long-standing policy of the Department of Education that allows school districts or charter groups to investigate themselves when allegations of cheating arise. Such a policy probably makes it more hazardous for whistleblowers reporting cheating than for the propagators of cheating.
