Superintendent John White believes he has a solution to the problem of teachers in top rated schools receiving an “ineffective” because of the VAM portion of the new teacher evaluation system. It was discovered recently that some high performing students in exclusive magnet schools sometimes experience a lull or slowdown in their academic gains caused by factors outside the control of the teacher. Even though such students are normally high performers, in some cases a classroom of high performers may perform below its VAM predicted scores on state tests, thereby placing their teacher in the bottom 10% on the VAM ranking statewide. When simulations showed that several teachers at the top rated elementary school in the state may be classified as ineffective by VAM, the whole community and their state representativewere up in arms. When this story broke in the newspapers, Superintendent White immediately adjusted his schedule to travel to Shreveport and met with teachers and administrators at South Highlands Elementary Magnet School.
Within just a few days of the discovery of the flaw in VAM for high performing schools, Superintendent White had a solution. He will be proposing to BESE that in cases where some teachers who teach high performing students get an “ineffective” from the VAM, the state will simply wipe out the VAM portion of the teacher's score and use the qualitative portion of Compass as the only factor in determining the rating of the teacher. This exemption to VAM will be applied as long as a teacher's students score at the top two levels on state assessments, even if her/his students do not show the growth the VAM formulas demand. That's a great victory for the teachers at South Highlands Elementary school and the teachers there certainly deserve to be exempted from this flaw in the evaluation system.
I believe White's recommended change for South Highlands and other similar schools will be approved by BESE, not because of the extenuating circumstances that may cause an unfair evaluation of those teachers, but because the legislator representing that district is a solid supporter of Governor Jindal and his “reform” programs. White, who has no training in teacher evaluation, no training in statistical analysis, and who has never evaluated teachers, came up with an instant solution that will fix the problem for that select group of teachers. But White's solution will still allow thousands of other teachers in the state to be vulnerable to ineffective ratings based only on the VAM even if they have extenuating circumstances in theirclassrooms.
For example let's look at another teaching situation. (The following is a hypothetical example because I don't have access to actual the value added growth that VAM predicts for various socioeconomic groups.) Lets consider a high poverty middle school in the inner city that has had most of its high performing students transfer to magnet schools. A 20 year math teacher (teacher B) is assigned a group of 25 students where the VAM formulas project that those students should show composite growth of .8 years in math for that year. But during that year, two of the girls get pregnant, 3 of the boys are picked up on drug charges and detained in a juvenile institution for three weeks to a month, and three other students' families were evicted from their home because their unemployed parent could not pay the rent. Those students had to live with relatives and friends where they were lucky to find a bed in which to sleep, much less find a quiet place to study. One other student's mother was murdered by her estranged husband causing traumatic shock waves throughout the community. LEAP testing produced a composite growth in math of this class of only .4 years. I guess you could say this teacher's class also experienced a lull or slowdown in academic gains probably caused by factors outside the control of the teacher. Teacher B received a good rating from her principal on the qualitative portion of Compass, but her low rating on VAM placed her in the bottom 10% statewide, so she received an overall ineffective rating. There is no appeal for an ineffective rating on VAM. That teacher immediately loses her tenure, has her salary frozen, and is placed first on the list to be laid off next year, in the event the school system is forced to reduce teaching staff. That teacher is all alone. She did not have a state legislator who was aligned with the Governor to campaign for her and get a special rule change for her extenuating circumstances. There will be no adjustment in her evaluation.
Here's another example deserving consideration. Some teachers have pointed out that there seems to be a difference in average state test scores for students from one grade level to another. That difference could be caused by several factors. It could be that the state tests do not increase smoothly in difficulty from grade to grade. LEAP and ILEAP tests are constructed by contracted testing companies that make a huge profit regardless of variations of their tests. Or it could be that students in one year where state policy requires retention of students who do not make the state cut off score work a little harder to pass the test that year than they do the previous or succeeding years. That can have both adverse and beneficial effects on ratings for teachers in different grades even if teacher performance is generally the same from grade to grade. Would White recommend a change in the teacher evaluation system in such a case? Specifically using real data if we compare the 4th grade LEAP scores of all students statewide in 2011 to the ILEAP 5th grade scores we find that 24% of students scored below basic in ELA in 2011 while 30% of those students scored below basic in 5th grade in 2012. Statistically this means that more 5th grade ELA teachers are expected to fall in the bottom 10% of VAM than 4th grade teachers because their students don't perform as well on state tests. If a disproportionate percentage of 5th grade teachers are rated as ineffective because of the factors I mentioned above, will some legislator go to bat for those teachers and get them an exemption from VAM?
One more point. It turns out that the Governor's supporters in the legislature generally represent the more affluent areas of the state. Opponents of the Governor generally represent impoverished communities. Which teachers do you think have the best chance of getting exemptions from or adjustments to VAM? The ones teaching in high poverty schools or the ones teaching in more affluent schools?
Can VAM be fixed so that it will be fair to all teachers and still produce the mandatory 10% of teachers rated as ineffective? Obviously not, because for every group of teachers granted special exemptions, the system will have to pull more or the rest of the teachers down to the the ineffective level.
I hope all teachers and administrators will stick together in opposing the continued implementation of this fundamentally flawed evaluation system. Right now I believe most teachers are appalled at the lack of accuracy and now also the lack of integrity in the decision making process relative to this evaluation system. It cannot be fixed. It must be junked. Let's not allow some good teachers to be thrown under the bus while others get an exemption.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
The Children Can't Wait!
The children can't wait. That was the refrain used over and over by the Jindal reformers to pass huge revamps of education law privatizing and chartering education and forcing the implementation of a new evaluation system for public school teachers before it was proven. Today the Baton Rouge Advocate carries two stories that demonstrate that Louisiana should have waited before these attacks on public education and teachers were launched. Maybe the public and the business community would have realized that charter schools were not a panacea and that school takeover and mass firing of teachers and administrators only creates chaos.
Please read over both of these articles and the comments below them that show that most people are no longer willing to be fed miracle solutions that cause more damage than good. The Advocate stories are about the teacher evaluation system and about the drop in enrollment of takeover/charter schools in the Baton Rouge area.
I am also including a link to a story about the damage being done by vouchers to one of Louisiana's best large school systems.
The following are the reader comments so far on the evaluation article:
Please read over both of these articles and the comments below them that show that most people are no longer willing to be fed miracle solutions that cause more damage than good. The Advocate stories are about the teacher evaluation system and about the drop in enrollment of takeover/charter schools in the Baton Rouge area.
I am also including a link to a story about the damage being done by vouchers to one of Louisiana's best large school systems.
The following are the reader comments so far on the evaluation article:
1) Comment by Concerned_Parent - 10/16/2012
2) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 10/16/2012
3) Comment by lovemykids - 10/16/2012
4) Comment by mikedeshot - 10/16/2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Letter to the President
To my readers:
The following is a letter I am sending on behalf of myself and many Louisiana teachers to president Obama as part of a campaign sponsored by Diane Ravitch from her blog and Anthony Cody of the blog Living in Dialog. I am urging any educator who would like to write a letter to the President to do so by sending a copy to Anthony Cody at the email address anthony_cody@hotmail.com. Please send it before the deadline of October 17 so it can be included in the package to be sent to President Obama.
Dear President Obama:
I am a retired teacher who writes a blog for educators in Louisiana. I am absolutely appalled by the attacks on public education and the teaching profession that you and your Secretary of Education have helped to promote in Louisiana. The Race to the Top fiasco which doubled down on some of the most destructive elements of No Child Left Behind law has been promoted in Louisiana by Secretary Duncan to force the most destructive polices I have ever seen on our public education system.
Your Secretary of Education actively campaigned for the appointment of John White, an unqualified privatizer of public education to be appointed as our State Superintendent of Education. This individual was also preferred by Governor Bobby Jindal, the greatest enemy of public education and teachers Louisiana has ever seen. As I write this letter, thousands of proven highly competent and dedicated Louisiana teachers are being forced to neglect their teaching duties to prepare for a silly dog-and-pony show John White calls a teacher evaluation program. You and your Secretary have pushed for the implementation of a value added system for measuring the performance of teachers in Louisiana that is so poorly designed and erratic that a disproportionate number of teachers in some of our highest performing schools are being rated as “ineffective”. The new value added system pushed by your administration requires that a certain percentage of our teachers be rated as ineffective each year for an undetermined number of years, basically decimating a huge portion of our teaching force without considering the professional opinion of their school principals. That's because the value-added “ineffective” rating overrules the principal's evaluation. One of our regional newspapers declared in an editorial that such a policy bordered on the immoral!
Your U.S. Department of Education specifically approved this policy as part of the Louisiana application for waiver of ESEA standards. As part of this waiver your Department approved Louisiana keeping the ridiculous unscientific goal of 100% proficiency for all Louisiana students by the year 2014. This is a goal that was left over from the No Child Left Behind standards that has been universally discredited by experts in tests and measurement. It is just one part of making our state a laughing stock in the eyes of the world education community.
Finally, and most destructive of all, your administration has not raised a single objection to the mass privatization of education in Louisiana pushed by Jindal and White which takes funding for this privatization directly from the Minimum Foundation Formula for our public schools. This plan subjects many Title I students to educational abuse at the hands of greedy preacher/administrators who teach creationism instead of science and who place children in primitive, substandard classrooms. So Louisiana, with the full support of your Education Department has kept the most harmful parts of the previous failed reform while adding the most radical destructive changes ever seen to our public education system.
Arne Duncan is still pushing the closing of schools and conversion of public schools to non-accountable charters and virtual schools, many of which are skimming off obscene profits from our tax monies dedicated to public schools. Studies have shown that the closing of schools in Chicago (by Duncan) and in many other cities and the firing of teachers and principals have not benefited the students involved in any way, yet it continues and is promoted and funded by your administration. Many parents in our poor neighborhoods are now realizing that their legitimate concerns for their community schools have been ignored and mocked by the privatizers. Your Education Secretary continues to help push these destructive policies down our throats here in Louisiana and in many other states.
A careful analysis of the testing data comparing American students with students in the countries with the highest performing educational systems shows that when our students are compared with similar demographic groups in other advanced countries our students perform equal to or better than similar students in those countries. We have many public schools in Louisiana that are demonstrating world class performance by students. Our problem is not with our schools or our teachers.
Our problem is simple. The students from our high poverty communities are performing at levels much below what is needed to adequately prepare them for a good life and a career. This is particularly serious in Louisiana because our poverty rates are among the highest in the nation. This fact was no reason to blame and trash the entire public education system and to force punitive counterproductive reforms on our teaching profession! As a lifelong Democrat, I am appalled and disgusted by your abandonment of democratic principles as they relate to public education.
Why doesn't your Department of Education help states provide incentives for the best teachers and most effective principals to take on the revitalization of the schools in our poor communities with emphasis on support of parents and community leaders? This means that you and your Education Department should stop blaming and start helping and supporting the dedicated educators who are willing to tackle these challenging educational communities. It also means funding for extended day, extended year, enrichment activities, music, arts, physical education and career education in addition to the much over-emphasized college prep curriculum. There is abundant evidence to show that not every student can or should aspire to a standard 4 year college education, yet the present reform agenda overvalues 4 year college degrees and stigmatizes the many other educational training options where opportunities abound in our job market.
I implore you to order your Education Secretary to immediately discontinue the destructive policies of his department and instead convene a task force composed of professional educators to design a true reform of our public education system that will support the teaching profession and focus laser-like on the pressing problems facing some of our schools while preserving our successes and building on the historical strengths of American public education.
Sincerely,
The following is a letter I am sending on behalf of myself and many Louisiana teachers to president Obama as part of a campaign sponsored by Diane Ravitch from her blog and Anthony Cody of the blog Living in Dialog. I am urging any educator who would like to write a letter to the President to do so by sending a copy to Anthony Cody at the email address anthony_cody@hotmail.com. Please send it before the deadline of October 17 so it can be included in the package to be sent to President Obama.
Dear President Obama:
I am a retired teacher who writes a blog for educators in Louisiana. I am absolutely appalled by the attacks on public education and the teaching profession that you and your Secretary of Education have helped to promote in Louisiana. The Race to the Top fiasco which doubled down on some of the most destructive elements of No Child Left Behind law has been promoted in Louisiana by Secretary Duncan to force the most destructive polices I have ever seen on our public education system.
Your Secretary of Education actively campaigned for the appointment of John White, an unqualified privatizer of public education to be appointed as our State Superintendent of Education. This individual was also preferred by Governor Bobby Jindal, the greatest enemy of public education and teachers Louisiana has ever seen. As I write this letter, thousands of proven highly competent and dedicated Louisiana teachers are being forced to neglect their teaching duties to prepare for a silly dog-and-pony show John White calls a teacher evaluation program. You and your Secretary have pushed for the implementation of a value added system for measuring the performance of teachers in Louisiana that is so poorly designed and erratic that a disproportionate number of teachers in some of our highest performing schools are being rated as “ineffective”. The new value added system pushed by your administration requires that a certain percentage of our teachers be rated as ineffective each year for an undetermined number of years, basically decimating a huge portion of our teaching force without considering the professional opinion of their school principals. That's because the value-added “ineffective” rating overrules the principal's evaluation. One of our regional newspapers declared in an editorial that such a policy bordered on the immoral!
Your U.S. Department of Education specifically approved this policy as part of the Louisiana application for waiver of ESEA standards. As part of this waiver your Department approved Louisiana keeping the ridiculous unscientific goal of 100% proficiency for all Louisiana students by the year 2014. This is a goal that was left over from the No Child Left Behind standards that has been universally discredited by experts in tests and measurement. It is just one part of making our state a laughing stock in the eyes of the world education community.
Finally, and most destructive of all, your administration has not raised a single objection to the mass privatization of education in Louisiana pushed by Jindal and White which takes funding for this privatization directly from the Minimum Foundation Formula for our public schools. This plan subjects many Title I students to educational abuse at the hands of greedy preacher/administrators who teach creationism instead of science and who place children in primitive, substandard classrooms. So Louisiana, with the full support of your Education Department has kept the most harmful parts of the previous failed reform while adding the most radical destructive changes ever seen to our public education system.
Arne Duncan is still pushing the closing of schools and conversion of public schools to non-accountable charters and virtual schools, many of which are skimming off obscene profits from our tax monies dedicated to public schools. Studies have shown that the closing of schools in Chicago (by Duncan) and in many other cities and the firing of teachers and principals have not benefited the students involved in any way, yet it continues and is promoted and funded by your administration. Many parents in our poor neighborhoods are now realizing that their legitimate concerns for their community schools have been ignored and mocked by the privatizers. Your Education Secretary continues to help push these destructive policies down our throats here in Louisiana and in many other states.
A careful analysis of the testing data comparing American students with students in the countries with the highest performing educational systems shows that when our students are compared with similar demographic groups in other advanced countries our students perform equal to or better than similar students in those countries. We have many public schools in Louisiana that are demonstrating world class performance by students. Our problem is not with our schools or our teachers.
Our problem is simple. The students from our high poverty communities are performing at levels much below what is needed to adequately prepare them for a good life and a career. This is particularly serious in Louisiana because our poverty rates are among the highest in the nation. This fact was no reason to blame and trash the entire public education system and to force punitive counterproductive reforms on our teaching profession! As a lifelong Democrat, I am appalled and disgusted by your abandonment of democratic principles as they relate to public education.
Why doesn't your Department of Education help states provide incentives for the best teachers and most effective principals to take on the revitalization of the schools in our poor communities with emphasis on support of parents and community leaders? This means that you and your Education Department should stop blaming and start helping and supporting the dedicated educators who are willing to tackle these challenging educational communities. It also means funding for extended day, extended year, enrichment activities, music, arts, physical education and career education in addition to the much over-emphasized college prep curriculum. There is abundant evidence to show that not every student can or should aspire to a standard 4 year college education, yet the present reform agenda overvalues 4 year college degrees and stigmatizes the many other educational training options where opportunities abound in our job market.
I implore you to order your Education Secretary to immediately discontinue the destructive policies of his department and instead convene a task force composed of professional educators to design a true reform of our public education system that will support the teaching profession and focus laser-like on the pressing problems facing some of our schools while preserving our successes and building on the historical strengths of American public education.
Sincerely,
Michael Deshotels, blogger at louisianaeducator.blogspot.com
Friday, October 5, 2012
Serious Flaws in VAM
The subject of this post is extremely critical to teachers and principals in our public schools. The new laws connecting teacher evaluation directly to layoff, salary, and tenure should require that any evaluation system be as accurate as possible. But it seems like our education hierarchy at the state level comprised as it is of rank amateurs, is destined to make one blunder after another. I believe the evidence presented below demonstrates that the Value Added Model portion of the teacher evaluation system now being implemented by LDOE contains serious flaws that can unfairly destroy the careers of many good teachers and principals.
I mentioned in one of my recent emails that there was ample evidence coming directly from Dr George Noell (the father of VAM in Louisiana) that the value added model is erratic and unreliable in measuring good and bad teaching. Today I would like to discuss with you the clear evidence for this conclusion.
Wayne Free, Director of Instruction and Professional Development for the Louisiana Association of Educators has just written an extremely good analysis of Louisiana's Value Added Model. From this analysis we can easily conclude that the Louisiana VAM should never be used to evaluate the performance of teachers, should not be used to deternine the order of lay off of teachers, for freezing a teacher's salary, or for removing tenure and placing teachers on a path to be fired. Yet despite all the evidence I am about to present here, all of these actions that are so destructive to the teaching profession and to the education of our children will soon start happening. Please click on this link to the LAE website for Mr Free's analysis. For this post I will just summarize one of the most critical findings in his study.
The most damning evidence that this VAM is far from ready for prime time comes from several answers to direct questions posed by Mr Free to Dr Noel. Here is the most outstanding one:
One of the most unfair requirements of the evaluation system, is that even if a teacher gets a great evaluation on the qualitative (Compass) from her/his principal, but gets an ineffective rating on VAM (quantitative) the final result is required to be an automatic overall ineffective rating. This rule is in direct violation of Act 54 which states that VAM is supposed to make up 50% of the overall result. (not 100%) This is sure to result in numerous lawsuits. I suggest that all teachers vulnerable to VAM join their teacher association/union now so that their lawsuits can be funded if necessary.
A perfect example of how crazy the results can be is the strange outcome reported in an editorial published recently by the Lake Charles American Press. The American Press editors were appalled by the fact that the VAM system is set up to find 10% of all teachers evaluated as ineffective no matter how well or how poorly they actually perform. This is called grading on the curve, and is not allowed in any public classroom. We measure and grade our students by how well they master the material. If 80 or 90 percent of the students master the material, that many will get an A or a B, and if no student fails, then that is something we celebrate. Not so with the teacher evaluation system. It has been predetermined that a minimum of 10% of our teachers must fail. The American Press editors say that such a system borders on being immoral!
But it gets worse. The editors found that for some strange reason, in the pilot program that was run recently by LDOE, one of the best performing school systems in the state (Jeff Davis) had only 3 percent of its teachers rated as highly effective, and a disproportionately high percentage rated as ineffective. In fact several of the highest performing districts in the Lake Charles area had some of the lowest teacher VAM scores. How can that be? This system is both illogical and destructive! See the editorial in the American Press. Not only are teacher evaluations adversely affected by this tendency, but their principal's evaluations could also be damaged because of the number of "ineffective" teachers in their school.
What's worse, as is implied by White in the Shreveport situation, the LDOE managers of VAM can change the complicated formulas that produce the value added results at will without consulting anyone. So they can manipulate the results. They are probably doing just that as this post is being written and you and I have no way of knowing. I wonder what group of teachers will be penalized next time after the formula has been tweaked to take care of Shreveport? And your professional career depends on this foolishness?
For more information on flaws in VAM in general as it is used in several other states you may want to read an analysis by Gary Rubinstein. Thanks to Cathy, one of our readers for suggesting this link.
If you as as outraged by this as I am, would you please send an email to your legislator, who can easily change this in the next legislative session before it affects anyone. In my last post I gave you a link to the legislative ID system that gives you email addresses of your legislators. I know many of you meant to send emails at my last request but you may have been too busy. I know how busy you are but this is critical!
Here is a sample email: Dear (insert your legislator name), The most recent information available about the new Act 54 evaluation system clearly shows that it is an unreliable system for rating teacher performance. I hope you agree with me that the stakes are too high and that professional educators should not be rated by a system that is flawed. Please take whatever steps necessary to stop this evaluation system immediatelyand not implement it or any other evaluation system until it is proven reliable. Thank you for supporting your professional educators in this critical matter.
Signed: ____.
There is one more thing I am asking you to do right now. If you have not already done so, submit your contact data to me so you can become a part of my Defenders of Public Education data base. The educators, school board members and parents in this data base will receive timely notices of upcoming actions at BESE and the legislature so you can contact your representatives before they vote. Believe me all of us together can make a difference! Just send me an email at louisianaeducator@gmail.comwith your home address or if you prefer send me the district numbers for your representative and senator (it will save me the trouble of looking them up). Include your preferred email address so that my emails can reach you anytime your help is needed.
Believe me we can change this is we just stick together and speak as one!
Thanks again for all you do as an educator or parent or school board member. We can never thank you too much for your valuable contribution to public education.
Michael Deshotels
I mentioned in one of my recent emails that there was ample evidence coming directly from Dr George Noell (the father of VAM in Louisiana) that the value added model is erratic and unreliable in measuring good and bad teaching. Today I would like to discuss with you the clear evidence for this conclusion.
Wayne Free, Director of Instruction and Professional Development for the Louisiana Association of Educators has just written an extremely good analysis of Louisiana's Value Added Model. From this analysis we can easily conclude that the Louisiana VAM should never be used to evaluate the performance of teachers, should not be used to deternine the order of lay off of teachers, for freezing a teacher's salary, or for removing tenure and placing teachers on a path to be fired. Yet despite all the evidence I am about to present here, all of these actions that are so destructive to the teaching profession and to the education of our children will soon start happening. Please click on this link to the LAE website for Mr Free's analysis. For this post I will just summarize one of the most critical findings in his study.
The most damning evidence that this VAM is far from ready for prime time comes from several answers to direct questions posed by Mr Free to Dr Noel. Here is the most outstanding one:
Free asked: "What percentage of the teachers rated in the bottom 10% by the VAM in one year would be expected to be rated again as ineffective the following year if they did nothing to change their teaching from one year to the next?"( The following is my comment) I believe that if this system is accurate in identifying ineffective teachers, the answer would be somewhat close to 100%, especially if the system is considered reliable enough to destroy a teacher's career. Right? ... Wrong!)
The percentage possibility of a repeat of an ineffective rating in the succeeding year according to Noell is only 26.8%. And that is assuming the teacher does not change his/her teaching. This was shocking to me. The fact that there is only a one in four chance of the same result the following year means that the system is erratic and may have incorrectly identifiedlarge numbers of teachers as being ineffective in the first place. It means that contrary to the assumption in the legislation, that the process will be deliberative and free of gross errors, such teachers will immediately be placed first in line for layoff, have their salaries frozen, and those rated ineffective next year will permanently lose their tenure and be placed on a path to dismissal. But the most damaging result of such an incorrect determination I fear, is that the local newspapers will somehow get the list of the teachers rated as ineffective and publish it in the home town paper where a teacher's reputation will be permanently destroyed and parents will be demanding that their children not be assigned to that teacher's class. This could easily happen this year to a teacher with 20+ years experience and a previously perfect evaluation record!
One of the most unfair requirements of the evaluation system, is that even if a teacher gets a great evaluation on the qualitative (Compass) from her/his principal, but gets an ineffective rating on VAM (quantitative) the final result is required to be an automatic overall ineffective rating. This rule is in direct violation of Act 54 which states that VAM is supposed to make up 50% of the overall result. (not 100%) This is sure to result in numerous lawsuits. I suggest that all teachers vulnerable to VAM join their teacher association/union now so that their lawsuits can be funded if necessary.
A perfect example of how crazy the results can be is the strange outcome reported in an editorial published recently by the Lake Charles American Press. The American Press editors were appalled by the fact that the VAM system is set up to find 10% of all teachers evaluated as ineffective no matter how well or how poorly they actually perform. This is called grading on the curve, and is not allowed in any public classroom. We measure and grade our students by how well they master the material. If 80 or 90 percent of the students master the material, that many will get an A or a B, and if no student fails, then that is something we celebrate. Not so with the teacher evaluation system. It has been predetermined that a minimum of 10% of our teachers must fail. The American Press editors say that such a system borders on being immoral!
But it gets worse. The editors found that for some strange reason, in the pilot program that was run recently by LDOE, one of the best performing school systems in the state (Jeff Davis) had only 3 percent of its teachers rated as highly effective, and a disproportionately high percentage rated as ineffective. In fact several of the highest performing districts in the Lake Charles area had some of the lowest teacher VAM scores. How can that be? This system is both illogical and destructive! See the editorial in the American Press. Not only are teacher evaluations adversely affected by this tendency, but their principal's evaluations could also be damaged because of the number of "ineffective" teachers in their school.
The Baton Rouge Advocate carried a story recently about the teachers of a high performing school in Shreveport also getting disproportionately low VAM scores in the pilot program. Our amateur Superintendent White is quoted as characterizing this as an isolated glitch which can easily be corrected. Maybe his 12,000 per month (part time) PR person can somehow spin this fiasco as a positive.
What's worse, as is implied by White in the Shreveport situation, the LDOE managers of VAM can change the complicated formulas that produce the value added results at will without consulting anyone. So they can manipulate the results. They are probably doing just that as this post is being written and you and I have no way of knowing. I wonder what group of teachers will be penalized next time after the formula has been tweaked to take care of Shreveport? And your professional career depends on this foolishness?
For more information on flaws in VAM in general as it is used in several other states you may want to read an analysis by Gary Rubinstein. Thanks to Cathy, one of our readers for suggesting this link.
If you as as outraged by this as I am, would you please send an email to your legislator, who can easily change this in the next legislative session before it affects anyone. In my last post I gave you a link to the legislative ID system that gives you email addresses of your legislators. I know many of you meant to send emails at my last request but you may have been too busy. I know how busy you are but this is critical!
Here is a sample email: Dear (insert your legislator name), The most recent information available about the new Act 54 evaluation system clearly shows that it is an unreliable system for rating teacher performance. I hope you agree with me that the stakes are too high and that professional educators should not be rated by a system that is flawed. Please take whatever steps necessary to stop this evaluation system immediatelyand not implement it or any other evaluation system until it is proven reliable. Thank you for supporting your professional educators in this critical matter.
Signed: ____.
There is one more thing I am asking you to do right now. If you have not already done so, submit your contact data to me so you can become a part of my Defenders of Public Education data base. The educators, school board members and parents in this data base will receive timely notices of upcoming actions at BESE and the legislature so you can contact your representatives before they vote. Believe me all of us together can make a difference! Just send me an email at louisianaeducator@gmail.comwith your home address or if you prefer send me the district numbers for your representative and senator (it will save me the trouble of looking them up). Include your preferred email address so that my emails can reach you anytime your help is needed.
Believe me we can change this is we just stick together and speak as one!
Thanks again for all you do as an educator or parent or school board member. We can never thank you too much for your valuable contribution to public education.
Michael Deshotels
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Outrage!
Our state Department of Education keeps finding new ways of insulting the teaching profession in Louisiana. First our Superintendent and Governor claimed that education credentials mean nothing and changed the law so that persons without education certification will be allowed to teach in Louisiana charter schools. Then while public school teachers are being laid off because of loss of state and local funding to voucher schools, the State Superintendent started spending 12 thousand dollars per month to hire an additional public relations specialist.
But the action that demonstrates the most contempt for professional educators is the recent appointment of a TFA Corps member to manage the evaluation of 60,000 public school teachers and administrators. It turns out this person has never served as a principal, or evaluator. In fact she has no real teacher credentials, and taught for 2 years in a school that was considered by the Department to be a failing school. As far as we know, she has never demonstrated the ability to improve the education of students. Yet she will rule over a system that will evaluate persons with Masters and PhD's in Education and decades of teaching experience. She will have the power to order the firing and destruction of the careers (even terminate the certification) of thousands of qualified teachers. The person who held the position over the Act 54 evaluation system before her also had no teacher credentials, and never taught a day in the classroom yet was allowed to train principals in the new VAM and COMPASS systems. Educators who have put up with numerous attacks on the profession by Jindal and White are now expressing outrage over these latest humiliations of the teaching profession.
Please click on this link to The Advocate story about the credentials (or lack thereof) of the state director of the teacher evaluation system. Take the time to read some of the many comments at the end of the article by present and former teachers and by members of the public. One of the commenters pointed out that this is like letting an intern rule on the employment of experienced physicians. Would Doctors stand for this? There is not one positive comment on this issue and no defenders of this action. Educators have a right to be outraged!
Superintendent White keeps saying in his speeches that he wants to “empower” teachers and school administrators, but his actions are only “empowering” amateurs to make decisions that affect the careers of the real educators. I just heard a description of one of the evaluator training sessions last week where this amateur teacher (state director of COMPASS) took it upon herself to fuss at highly experienced and qualified administrators. What an insult!
1. Sponsor a petition at your school. The following is a sample petition to BESE:
The undersigned professional educators are acutely aware that the new educator evaluation system mandated by Act 54 of 2010 and Act 1 or 2012 could have a great impact on the careers and welfare of many public school educators. We believe that proper credentials and educational experience are important requirements for any managers at the Louisiana Department of Education level who are charged with the implementation of this program. We therefore respectfully request that BESE require that all managers of the evaluation program have proper education credentials. In addition, only persons with extensive classroom and supervision experience should be allowed to administer the teacher and principal evaluation programs. Any lesser requirements will amount to disrespect for the education profession in Louisiana and will discredit the entire evaluation program.
Mail the petition to Ms Penny Dastugue, President, BESE, P. O. Box 94064, Baton Rouge, LA 70804.
2. The following is a sample email to BESE and to our legislators:
Dear BESE or ( Legislative member): Teachers and principals in our school are outraged that the new educator evaluation system mandated by Act 54 of 2010 and Act 1 of 2012 is being managed by persons with no valid education credentials. We refuse to be humiliated by having our careers put in jeopardy by persons who are not qualified to judge our work. Please take all necessary actions to correct this unfair situation. Get the BESE email addresses by clicking on this link. Get your legislator email by looking him/her up by clicking on this link.
But the action that demonstrates the most contempt for professional educators is the recent appointment of a TFA Corps member to manage the evaluation of 60,000 public school teachers and administrators. It turns out this person has never served as a principal, or evaluator. In fact she has no real teacher credentials, and taught for 2 years in a school that was considered by the Department to be a failing school. As far as we know, she has never demonstrated the ability to improve the education of students. Yet she will rule over a system that will evaluate persons with Masters and PhD's in Education and decades of teaching experience. She will have the power to order the firing and destruction of the careers (even terminate the certification) of thousands of qualified teachers. The person who held the position over the Act 54 evaluation system before her also had no teacher credentials, and never taught a day in the classroom yet was allowed to train principals in the new VAM and COMPASS systems. Educators who have put up with numerous attacks on the profession by Jindal and White are now expressing outrage over these latest humiliations of the teaching profession.
Please click on this link to The Advocate story about the credentials (or lack thereof) of the state director of the teacher evaluation system. Take the time to read some of the many comments at the end of the article by present and former teachers and by members of the public. One of the commenters pointed out that this is like letting an intern rule on the employment of experienced physicians. Would Doctors stand for this? There is not one positive comment on this issue and no defenders of this action. Educators have a right to be outraged!
Superintendent White keeps saying in his speeches that he wants to “empower” teachers and school administrators, but his actions are only “empowering” amateurs to make decisions that affect the careers of the real educators. I just heard a description of one of the evaluator training sessions last week where this amateur teacher (state director of COMPASS) took it upon herself to fuss at highly experienced and qualified administrators. What an insult!
But what is the point of the outrage if we don't channel it into productive action? Why not communicate our outrage to BESE and to the Legislature who created this mess? Our elected representatives could stop this insanity. But it will not happen until they hear from their constituents! There are 60,000 teachers in the state that are subject to humiliation and possible career destruction by this ill conceived evaluation system that is being run by amateurs receiving obscene salaries. Principals who have demonstrated many years of effective management of employees are being subjected to the humiliation of being “trained” and lectured to by neophytes with no education credentials. Please consider taking one or all of the following actions now.
1. Sponsor a petition at your school. The following is a sample petition to BESE:
The undersigned professional educators are acutely aware that the new educator evaluation system mandated by Act 54 of 2010 and Act 1 or 2012 could have a great impact on the careers and welfare of many public school educators. We believe that proper credentials and educational experience are important requirements for any managers at the Louisiana Department of Education level who are charged with the implementation of this program. We therefore respectfully request that BESE require that all managers of the evaluation program have proper education credentials. In addition, only persons with extensive classroom and supervision experience should be allowed to administer the teacher and principal evaluation programs. Any lesser requirements will amount to disrespect for the education profession in Louisiana and will discredit the entire evaluation program.
Mail the petition to Ms Penny Dastugue, President, BESE, P. O. Box 94064, Baton Rouge, LA 70804.
2. The following is a sample email to BESE and to our legislators:
Dear BESE or ( Legislative member): Teachers and principals in our school are outraged that the new educator evaluation system mandated by Act 54 of 2010 and Act 1 of 2012 is being managed by persons with no valid education credentials. We refuse to be humiliated by having our careers put in jeopardy by persons who are not qualified to judge our work. Please take all necessary actions to correct this unfair situation. Get the BESE email addresses by clicking on this link. Get your legislator email by looking him/her up by clicking on this link.
3. Email to Governor Jindal: (same as above) Send to; www.gov.la.us or go to the following web site: http://www.gov.la.gov/index.cfm?md=form&tmp=email_governor
I appeal to all educators. Please do something to show your pride and support for your profession.Don't let the enemies of public education beat you down or push you into early retirement. The children of Louisiana need real educators.
Thanks for all you do as an educator,
Michael Deshotels
Thanks for all you do as an educator,
Michael Deshotels
Friday, September 28, 2012
Harmful Salary Schedule Mandate
Just as teachers and principals begin grappling with the new Value Added Model of teacher evaluation, school boards will be forced by law to develop possibly radical new salary schedules for teachers in all our public school systems. This is another classic case of an effort by those outside the education business to force the practitioners to adopt a solution to a problem that does not exist! School boards according to a provision in Jindal's ALEC inspired Act 1 must revise their local teacher salary schedules to add a performance or merit pay component. According to the new law, the revised salary schedules should consider (1) effectiveness as measured by the new evaluation system, (2) job demand/area of certification, and (3) experience, yet no one factor of the three may account for more than 50% of the final formula. This means that results of the new teacher evaluations using VAM data may affect teacher's salaries as a form of merit pay. At the same time some teachers (10% of those evaluated using VAM) will find their salaries frozen based on the new evaluation.
Act I also requires that a new teacher layoff priority list be created for 2013-14 with the teachers that were rated as ineffective by the new evaluation system being first to be laid off without considering their previous evaluations or experience. Seniority of teachers is absolutely banned by Act 1 in the making of employment decisions. Effectiveness as measured by the new VAM system is “king” in the employment and layoff of teachers. As we saw in the editorial by the American Press this week, some schools that are top performers in the state may have disproportionate numbers of teachers classified as ineffective using this new flawed system. Those same evaluations may also cause major changes in the salary schedule for teachers.
So we have a brand new teacher evaluation system whose validity is being seriously questioned by numerous education professionals and now a major Louisiana newspaper, that also may soon have a major impact on teacher salaries. Teachers and school boards will now be forced into possibly adversarial positions just to comply with a law they never needed nor asked for. This is another example of non-educator ideologues dictating new problems for our public school systems. Will such new rules apply to the voucher schools or to the new course choice course providers? Of course not! These unproven competitors with public education as usual are exempted from the heavy handed approach of our ALEC influenced legislature.
According to the new law, a teacher's present salary may not be reduced by the new salary mandate, but a teacher who had looked forward to regular step raises based on experience may no longer receive those incentives to stay in the profession here in Louisiana. Also, some educators who have spent precious dollars and time pursuing higher degrees in expectation of a higher salary rewarding this additional education may now find their plans quashed by the new rules.
One of the perverse incentives to school boards to drop or reduce step increases for experience or advanced degrees are the projected deficits to many school board budgets caused by freezes in the MFP, unfunded mandates by the legislature, and the new drain on the MFP caused by vouchers and Course Choices. School boards may be forced to choose between teacher salaries that were used in the past to attract and retain experienced and educated teachers or increasing class size. Many Charter schools in Louisiana have already chosen cheap TFA corps members over experienced teachers partly so they could pay their administrators obscene salaries. You see TFA recruits only expect to do this “public service” for just a couple of years, get their college loans paid and then move on to their real careers. Or they may get high paying jobs in our State Department of Education. The Advocate points out today that the Director of the new teacher evaluation program is a two year TFA teacher with no training in education other than the 5 week crash course. You see in our Brave New World of Louisiana education, the advantage goes to persons with no professional training in education but who buy into all the latest reform fads.
If you want to get a good idea about the destructive effects of these mandates take a look at the recent blog by Diane Ravitch about the chaos that has resulted from a similar program implemented in the Washington DC public school system by Michelle Rhea. The main difference is that the DC system had much more funding with which to implement this monstrosity! Louisiana will be attempting to do it at the same time that most school systems are faced with crippling budget shortfalls. Many of my teacher readers have sent me emails confiding that they believe these programs may finally drive them out of the profession or at least cause them to look for employment in another state. Louisiana may soon be faced with a shortage of experienced competent teachers.
Will educators and school boards along with innocent students continue to be helpless victims of our misguided corporate styled reforms?
Act I also requires that a new teacher layoff priority list be created for 2013-14 with the teachers that were rated as ineffective by the new evaluation system being first to be laid off without considering their previous evaluations or experience. Seniority of teachers is absolutely banned by Act 1 in the making of employment decisions. Effectiveness as measured by the new VAM system is “king” in the employment and layoff of teachers. As we saw in the editorial by the American Press this week, some schools that are top performers in the state may have disproportionate numbers of teachers classified as ineffective using this new flawed system. Those same evaluations may also cause major changes in the salary schedule for teachers.
So we have a brand new teacher evaluation system whose validity is being seriously questioned by numerous education professionals and now a major Louisiana newspaper, that also may soon have a major impact on teacher salaries. Teachers and school boards will now be forced into possibly adversarial positions just to comply with a law they never needed nor asked for. This is another example of non-educator ideologues dictating new problems for our public school systems. Will such new rules apply to the voucher schools or to the new course choice course providers? Of course not! These unproven competitors with public education as usual are exempted from the heavy handed approach of our ALEC influenced legislature.
According to the new law, a teacher's present salary may not be reduced by the new salary mandate, but a teacher who had looked forward to regular step raises based on experience may no longer receive those incentives to stay in the profession here in Louisiana. Also, some educators who have spent precious dollars and time pursuing higher degrees in expectation of a higher salary rewarding this additional education may now find their plans quashed by the new rules.
One of the perverse incentives to school boards to drop or reduce step increases for experience or advanced degrees are the projected deficits to many school board budgets caused by freezes in the MFP, unfunded mandates by the legislature, and the new drain on the MFP caused by vouchers and Course Choices. School boards may be forced to choose between teacher salaries that were used in the past to attract and retain experienced and educated teachers or increasing class size. Many Charter schools in Louisiana have already chosen cheap TFA corps members over experienced teachers partly so they could pay their administrators obscene salaries. You see TFA recruits only expect to do this “public service” for just a couple of years, get their college loans paid and then move on to their real careers. Or they may get high paying jobs in our State Department of Education. The Advocate points out today that the Director of the new teacher evaluation program is a two year TFA teacher with no training in education other than the 5 week crash course. You see in our Brave New World of Louisiana education, the advantage goes to persons with no professional training in education but who buy into all the latest reform fads.
If you want to get a good idea about the destructive effects of these mandates take a look at the recent blog by Diane Ravitch about the chaos that has resulted from a similar program implemented in the Washington DC public school system by Michelle Rhea. The main difference is that the DC system had much more funding with which to implement this monstrosity! Louisiana will be attempting to do it at the same time that most school systems are faced with crippling budget shortfalls. Many of my teacher readers have sent me emails confiding that they believe these programs may finally drive them out of the profession or at least cause them to look for employment in another state. Louisiana may soon be faced with a shortage of experienced competent teachers.
Will educators and school boards along with innocent students continue to be helpless victims of our misguided corporate styled reforms?
Why not fight back? Why not have teachers and school boards present a united front to our common enemy; the privatizers of public education? I am suggesting that school boards and teachers propose amendments to these unneeded laws before they are mandated to take effect in the next school year. Teachers and school boards are on the same side in opposing these unprecedented attacks on public education. I hope we can find new hope in cooperation as a united front.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Editorial Blasts VAM
Thank you to the Lake Charles American Press for an excellent editorial and for being willing to take an independent stand on this critical issue!
___________________________________
State superintendent of Education John White. (Donna Price / American Press)
Editorial: Value-added model rating system unfair to teachers
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 8:59 PM
Contemplate this scenario: The CEO of the company you work for decides to implement an employee evaluation system in which only about 10 percent of the total employees will receive annually the highest level of evaluation possible. Job security and some employee compensation is based on that rating system.
Do you think that’s fair? Neither do we.
Yet that is the prospect that public school teachers in Louisiana face with the fledgling value-added model rating system.
Amazingly, state Superintendent of Education John White defends the system.
The rating system for teachers provides four levels: highly effective, effective proficient, effective emerging and ineffective.
For value-added teachers, the system uses a bell curve that projects that about 10 percent of the teachers in the state will earn the highly effective status in a given year; 80 percent will earn the effective proficient and effective emerging ratings; and 10 percent will be labeled as ineffective.
Teachers in grades 3-8 who teach core subjects, as well as high school Algebra I and geometry teachers, will be evaluated under the value-added model.
This bell curve will make up 50 percent of their total evaluation score.
A rating system that has either predictable results or outcomes has not 1 ounce of credibility. How can an evaluation system that projects the end numbers be taken seriously?
Additional statistics expose other flaws in the evaluation system.
Less than 6 percent of the fourth- through ninth-grade teachers in Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron and Jeff Davis parishes evaluated by the VAM system received a highly effective rating last year.
Traditionally, those four school districts have been ranked in the top 25 percent of all districts in the state. In fact, Jeff Davis Parish, where only 3.06 percent of the evaluated teachers were rated highly effective, has routinely ranked in the top eight districts in the state.
Low-performing school districts have, on average, a higher percentage of highly effective-rated teachers than high-performing school districts.
The numbers don’t jibe with reality.
‘‘It isn’t like if you achieve this, then you will get this rating. It’s where you stand in the overall state rank,’’ said Jeff Davis Parish Superintendent David Clayton. ‘‘What is the concrete standard for teachers?’’
Under the VAM system, those standards are nebulous at best.
Additionally, to earn tenure, a nontenured teacher must receive a highly effective rating for five out of six years. Based on trials, that appears to be simply unattainable for most teachers.
In 2009-2010, 715 teachers in the trial received a highly effective rating. In 2010-2011, only 277 of those teachers maintained the highly effective rating. And last year, that number fell to 149.
Under this new system, the rating system factors into teachers’ compensation.
White is correct when he says the former tenure status was too easily attained. But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.
If White and Gov. Bobby Jindal wanted to abolish tenure, they should have had the political courage to accomplish it through legislation, not through this sham of an evaluation.
We submit that any evaluation system that has per-conceived or intended results is not only unprofessional, it borders on immoral.
Such evaluations challenge the very issue of fairness and the motives of White, Jindal and the state Department of Education.
•••
This editorial was written by a member of the American Press Editorial Board. Its content reflects the collaborative opinion of the Board, whose members include Bobby Dower, Ken Stickney, Jim Beam, Crystal Stevenson and Donna Price.
___________________________________________
Posted By: Zach On: 9/26/2012
Title: Most teachers don't use this grading scale
What may work in the business world doesn't always work for everything else. I don't see how it's fair that even if all the teachers in the state work at a high level that 10% will still fail no matter what. This doesn't work in classes with grades. I never had this type of grading scale in K-12 and in my college years I never had a professor use this type of grading scale. In fact I had more than one professor say how much they do not like this scale.
In today's world it is very difficult just to become a teacher. College students in education go through a lot and have to deal with a lot of crap just to graduate. The process to be certified to be a teacher helps weed out most bad teachers. They don't do it for the money or incentives like that like they do in the business world, they do it because they have a passion for teaching otherwise they would not take the time and effort to become a certified teacher. And then the stress involved with teaching usually weeds out any bad ones that make it through being certified because once you start teaching if you don't have a passion for it you won't stay in it long. If the state wants to revise things fine but don't let a dictator strong arm everyone and ruin public education. Let the teachers be involved in the process as well. I'm willing to bet that in the next several years there will be a shortage of teachers in the state or even if not the quality of education will be less because a lot of good teachers will not want to teach here.
Posted By: Glenn Gordon On: 9/26/2012
Title: School is not the real world Kyle
Kyle (above) said that this how he is rated in the "real world"....Well, I too was rated this way in the corporate world before becoming a teacher. Here is why he is wrong. When I was rated this way, I was 100% responsible for all inputs into my product line. There was no part of my evaluation that was not in my hands. In education this is not true. We have these students less than 1/3 of their day. We have no control over any aspect of their lives other than the 1 hour a day we see them. Holding someone 100% responsible for a child's education ignores the reality of real life. Or, as Kyle said..."the Real world"...Absent parents, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and homelessness are all problems that my "products" (my students) have had in the time I have been teaching these young people. I invite Kyle to try teaching for a few years or better yet....let me have access to his inputs and after I screw them up really well....he can see how his evaluations look.
Posted By: Kyle On: 9/26/2012
Title: Welcome To The Real World
There are no new concepts here. This sort of system is how major corporations manage thier employee evaluations. The objective is to reward high performers and weed out under performers. I have worked under this sort of system for 20 years, evaluating staff and being evaluated by my management. My salary and bonus calculations are closely tied to this system. It drives performance! The key to the process is setting clear goals in the beginning of each year and meeting or exceeding (the 10%) those goals. It's usualy those who do not set or strive to meet thier goals that are the complainers about the system.
Posted By: Anne Farrar On: 9/26/2012
Title: Thank you!
As a teacher, I'm so relieved to see that someone other than teachers gets the unfairness of the system. John White doesn't even understand that the scores the teachers worry about are not the levels students achieve on the iLEAP/LEAP tests. It's about the scaled scores. I so appreciate the support for teachers who stood against this system in Baton Rouge last spring. Thank you SO much!
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