Grading Teachers, Measuring Success
When databases and disenchantment collide, the results can be explosive – as the debate over "value-added" grading of teachers showed this week.
The Los Angeles Times provoked a furious reaction from teachers this week when it launched a database of 6,000 elementary school teachers analyzing how they've done measured by standardized tests. The stories prompted debate around the nation on the methods used and at least one piece wondering "When Does Holding Teachers Accountable Go Too Far?"
We'd argue that you can't understand the debate over the database without understanding the disenchantment so many teachers feel over their jobs.
Public Agenda's research, conducted with Learning Point Associates, shows a stunning number of K-12 teachers, some 40 percent, appear to be disheartened and disappointed in their jobs. Only 14 percent rate their principals as "excellent" at supporting them as teachers. Nearly three-quarters cite "discipline and behavior issues" in the classroom as a drawback to teaching, and 7 in 10 say that testing is a major drawbacks as well. More than half of these "Disenchanted" teachers (54 percent) work in low-income schools.
By contrast, the 23 percent of teachers who shaped up as "Idealists" and the 37 percent we termed "Contented" were more likely to say their principal was supportive, more likely to say their school was orderly, and more likely to say good teachers can make a difference in student learning. Only 34 percent of the Contented and 45 percent of the Idealists work in low-income schools.
The Teaching for a Living survey can't tell us whether the Disenchanted are bad teachers, or good teachers trapped in bad schools, or whether the Idealists are effective in the classroom or just more cheerful. But the survey does tell us something about what teachers believe their problems are. Regardless of how we try to measure success in the classroom, a better understanding of how teachers feel about their jobs can help explain why some things work and others don't.
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Add me to the list of demoralized teachers. I am a Chicago Public Schools teacher. We are now only into our third week of school and already we have lost instructional and teacher prep time for the following:
ca. 2 hours of teacher "professional development" discussing testing outcomes, and statistics
35 minutes of instructional time so freshmen, sophomore and junior students could bubble in their test forms with personal info
45 minutes of teacher prep time to be "instructed" on how to administer a new "pilot Scantron" test to freshmen
90 minutes of freshmen instructional time to take the "Scantron" tests (2 class periods)
Next week the 4th week of classes all students at my school will lose:
354 minutes of instructional time to testing.
... and there are at least 12 more testing days to come this year.
Last year, my conservative estimate of student instructional time lost to testing was over 4,000 minutes. At my school that totals about 89 class periods.
The bottom line is that a significant portion of our teacher preparation time and student instructional time is lost to testing.
Who wins and who loses in this "testing gone wild" environment? We know that the testing companies are making billions of dollars. According to the Bowker Annual about $400-$700 milion annually (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies....)
From my perspective students are losing and losing big time. Thus, this discouraged teacher lives in hope that soon this testing insanity will implode upon itself and some "hero" like Superman will stop it. The opinion of teachers doesn't matter. The media, legislators, and education bureaucrats have convinced the public we are incompetent, self-interested whiners who are afraid of "accountability". I suggest they read Diane Ravitch "The Death and Life of the Great American School System"and contemplate what this system of "accountability and choice" has wrought for our students.
M. Brandt, Chicago
"Trusting trust funds
This week, trustees of Social Security System and Medicare released their projections on the future fiscal status of the funds. Social Security trustees said the trust fund would be exhausted in 2042 (the same as last year), but Medicare trustees projected that their insurance trust fund would be depleted by 2019 - seven years earlier than last year.
This lead to the usual horrified gasps of the right-wing doomsayers and renewed calls for privatizing the whole shebang. However, their wide-eyed, finger-jabbing, ashen-faced expressions of phony dismay don't add up. Social Security first:
Fist and most important is that despite what the headlines say, Social Security is in no danger of going ""bankrupt"" in 2042. Social Security right now has a surplus. In a few years, the system is going to have to start dipping into that surplus to pay full benefits. By 2042, by current predictions, the surplus will be gone and the system will go into the red. I repeat - into the red. It will have to borrow to meet commitments. It will not bankrupt. (Sidebar: For accuracy, I should say that in a technical sense it would be ""bankrupt,"" or, more accurately, in default, because its obligations would exceed its assets - but you know damn well that's not what most of us think of when we hear ""bankrupt"" and it's not what the wingnuts want us to think, either.)
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