When experts talk about accountability under NCLB, they agree on one thing: The future lies in growth models. Discussions usually end there, never delving into the complexities of what makes a good growth model, how to design one, or whether they accomplish what NCLB sets out to do.
Charlie Barone jumps into the morass and reports on some of the technical problems and design flaws with Tennessee's growth model. In a report for Education Sector, he writes that the Tennessee model doesn't measure whether the state's students are going to meet NCLB's ultimate goal: universal proficiency by the 2013-14 school year. Instead, under the statistical methods in the Tennessee model, a student is considered proficient if he or she is on track to being proficient in three years, based on the trajectory of past test scores.
In short, proficiency is a 'moving target,' always three or more years away, in perpetuity. There is nothing to ensure that, over the long run, [a student] moves ahead toward a cumulatively higher level of performance over successive years.
The end result is that a school may make AYP in the 2014 even if "a large proportion" of students aren't proficient, Barone writes.
LINKS:
On his blog, Barone reinforces another point made in the Ed Sector report. "More statistical sophistication means less transparency," he writes there. He also calls out the statisticians who created the Tennessee model for failing to fully explain the mathematics behind it.
Ed Sector's Chad Aldeman explains Zeno's Paradox— the mathematical theory that describes why a student could be considered proficient without ever getting there under a model that uses a three-year trajectory.
Oklahoma City teacher/blogger John Thompson says that the discussion of the paradox "can offer no insight into what should be expected of a teacher in a high poverty neighborhood school."
Former teacher Sam Rosaldo cheers Tennessee's growth model for favoring accuracy over simplicity.
For academic research on growth models, go to this page.
FINAL NOTE:
In a comment on my latest post on the Title I setaside, Barone light-heartedly complains that I reported that he wrote the administration "is" giving in to public school lobbyists. He actually wrote the administration "may" be doing so. As someone who has fought over whether a law says grant recipients "shall" or "may" do something, Barone understands the importance of word choice. I apologize for the error, and I thank him for being good-natured about it.
As long as I'm giving away links to Charlie's blog, check out the exchanges between him and Thompson on the Title I setasides. By the end, I was nodding my head, thinking "Yeah, that was surreal."
I have been watching Barone and Thompson go at each other, and I do find it puzzling, particularly as they have both been so kind to me. But, I think that Thompson brings in a key point, and one that must be paid attention to, and that is that solutions like "tutoring" (which is what SES generally amounts to in one form or another), is really a limited solution--even when fully supported by districts. It is a good solution for a small number of students who are in trouble--or to provide a quick fix for those students who will have moved on before the school/district can put something more meaningful in place. When the majority of children qualify for "tutoring," we are really looking at a longer school day or year.
Where I would quibble with John, is that I haven't seen any schools/districts using (or even thinking of using) their set-aside (or its equivalent) in this way. I can quote chapter and verse of my own experience of the district setting up unnecessary barriers to both SES and choice. I might also throw in that the "choice" of available schools may be limited to schools no better, but having not had sufficient years of low proficiency to qualify as SI, or schools with lower scores who escaped
SI through "Safe Harbor" provisions. I am a very persistent parent and I was able to secure only a short period of tutoring and no improved access to better schools through the existing provisions as they are carried out by our district.
In short, I would rather see the debate move onto ways in which schools might more effectively USE their Title dollars in creative ways more targetted to meeting the needs of the majority of students (including extended school day and year) in low-performing schools/districts, than in fighting over the SES and choice options. This does require rethinking the ways in which teachers work. It might mean an early day staff and a later day staff with overlap in the middle. It might mean longer, or variable, class periods. It may mean that every school in a district is not the same as every other, particularly when there are differences in the success rate of the student body.
The value added measures may provide some insight into which schools would be best served by catch-up tutoring (for instance, those schools in which students are currently making a year's progress, despite low performance), and schools (low performing schools where students are typically making less than a year's progress) where reform is needed across the board. As Thompson points out, the measures should be helping us to ensure that those schools where students really have the greatest needs are receiving the greatest amount of assistance.
Margo/mom
Usually the tone in our exchanges is different ( maybe I shouldn't have tried to joke with Charlie) but there is an area where I often disagree with both of you two. I see the culture of compliance in our schools as virtually inevitable given human nature, the magnitude of the challenges, and the mixed messages that are provided.
I came across this by accident while surfing gothamnews, where I'd read about an honor student who tried 25 times to transfer out of a dangerous school where students had had a broken jaw and other injuries. She was then injured in an assault. "Reformers" send the message that schools must raise academic standards, but they are not allowed to raise behavorial standards.
In that case cited on gotham problems apparently grew out of students on IEPs who were committing assaults. "Reformers" are rightfully committed to protected special ed students, but they also veto efforts by schools to protect students from assaults, and often (usually) the victims are on IEPs. Being an old liberal, I was amused but not really annoyed by political correctness. My attitude changed when I saw the realities in schools, the violence and disorder inflicted on students, and the way that ideology (an ideology that I mostly share within reason) prevents adults from protecting children.
When it comes to data-driven, as opposed to data-informed accountability, we'll just have to disagree. I won't ease off of criticizing Charlie's approach because I need to protect my students and I can't visualize a situation where his policies aren't damaging. When it comes to behavioral standards,
I could easily see myself in the opposite camp, however. If institutional pressures were the opposite, pressuring schools to kick students out for minor infractions, I'd be fighting for students rights on that issue. I want a common sense balance, not a victory for my worldview.
Perhaps I'm more charitable in regard to decisions made made overworked administrators, however, because of personal experiences. In my experience, the worst decisions have been made by overworked and overstressed administrators. I see you and Charlie as unfairly seeking to add even more stress to both those administrators, and to teachers who have little power over those policies.
Margo/mom
Usually the tone in our exchanges is different ( maybe I shouldn't have tried to joke with Charlie) but there is an area where I often disagree with both of you two. I see the culture of compliance in our schools as virtually inevitable given human nature, the magnitude of the challenges, and the mixed messages that are provided.
I came across this by accident while surfing gothamnews, where I'd read about an honor student who tried 25 times to transfer out of a dangerous school where students had had a broken jaw and other injuries. She was then injured in an assault. "Reformers" send the message that schools must raise academic standards, but they are not allowed to raise behavorial standards.
In that case cited on gotham problems apparently grew out of students on IEPs who were committing assaults. "Reformers" are rightfully committed to protected special ed students, but they also veto efforts by schools to protect students from assaults, and often (usually) the victims are on IEPs. Being an old liberal, I was amused but not really annoyed by political correctness. My attitude changed when I saw the realities in schools, the violence and disorder inflicted on students, and the way that ideology (an ideology that I mostly share within reason) prevents adults from protecting children.
When it comes to data-driven, as opposed to data-informed accountability, we'll just have to disagree. I won't ease off of criticizing Charlie's approach because I need to protect my students and I can't visualize a situation where his policies aren't damaging. When it comes to behavioral standards,
I could easily see myself in the opposite camp, however. If institutional pressures were the opposite, pressuring schools to kick students out for minor infractions, I'd be fighting for students rights on that issue. I want a common sense balance, not a victory for my worldview.
Perhaps I'm more charitable in regard to decisions made made overworked administrators, however, because of personal experiences. In my experience, the worst decisions have been made by overworked and overstressed administrators. I see you and Charlie as unfairly seeking to add even more stress to both those administrators, and to teachers who have little power over those policies.
John:
One of the worst examples of a "culture of compliance," in my memory was my own local school board, with a one member white majority, that split every vote on racial lines. This board fought desegregation "all the way to the Supreme Court," and on losing declared that they would "follow the law." Sadly, they could "desegregate" the schools, but they had no intention of (or ability to) integrating them. Inequity has continue to dog the various schools in the district (particularly since the release from court order). Even though the demographics of the board have changed dramatically--and we now have a black superintendent, black president and majority minority board--and they all get along famously, I don't know how many years the district and surrounding suburbs will suffer from the "compliance" of that earlier board.
Their "compliance" spoke volumes. It said: "we're only doing this because we have to, not because we see any value in it." Just as there is no school problem today that cannot be blamed on NCLB, at that time there was no school problem that could not be blamed on the court order.
I have to recall that NCLB sought responses to "persistently dangerous" schools, just as to those that are in need of academic improvement. Somehow the states discovered that there were no "persistently dangerous" schools. Apparently we are more inclined to deny physical danger than we are to deny academic deficiency.
Personally, as a "reformer" on a small scale, I have spent as much time beating the school behavior drum as I have the academic achievement drum. I don't see them as separate issues. I find schools to be far less receptive to the behavior drum-beat than the academic one (although they don't want to hear either one from a parent)--unless it is to commiserate with them regarding how miserable their lives are with all of the problems (from the outside community) that they have to put up with and ways in which to get those kids out and away.
John--I know that you are among those likely to stand up against the forces of banishment of students. But I don't see the academic and behavioral bars as being fundamentally separate issues--nor do I see a lack of legislation aimed at improving the behavioral (included in IDEA, anti-bullying legislation--even implicit in goals of increased high school graduation--which short-circuits the kindergarten to jailhouse pipeline).
But--what reform would you look for in "raising the behavioral bar?"
I sure wouldn't trust NCLB regs any more than I did six years ago.
I want to use stimulus money to go around the problem. I want to hire enough people to expand in-house suspension so we don't have as many out of school suspensions. I want to hire enough mentors/counselors so that every suspension results in one or more interventions. I want to turn the current model on its head. Typically, teachers are expected to "deal with it" until disruptions are out of control. I want community schools so that there are enough adults so that we nip the misbehavior in the bud. Early in the year, and early in the class, as soon as the student shows he's off track I want the student handed off to another adult who helps him break down the situation, self-assess, and plan a strategy for success. When that plan fails, I want the student to go quickly back to the mentor to re-practice their plan. In short, I want early and intensive efforts to teach the student how to be a student.
At the same time, I want to efficiently fire the teachers who aren't making an effort. Then immediately afterwards, as we get reinforcements for teaching proper classroom behavior, we need to hold teachers accountable for more engaging and personalized instruction.
In short, I want a system where disciplinary actions are efficient and RESPECTFUL.
finally, as I implied, I'm shocked that I am an advocate for discipline. If I use grades as leverage I believe I have failed. But as you said, schools are even less responsive in regard to the raise behavior drumbeat. I take my approach because I lived in the middle of the crack and gang epidemic and I still live in an area where I have close contact with many former students and I know how many were driven out of school by fear and disorder. My FIRST job is protecting the kids under my supervision.
This might be illustrative. We fluctate between progressivism and accountability. teens don't do well with mixed messages. But then we simplify the academic message turning it into rote learn. We need to face the fact that it not what adults say that matter, but its what kids HEAR. But our goal must be empowered adults who learn how to learn and learn how to control themselves.
John:
I have lived in a district with several decades of institutionalized in-school suspension. The ISS room in every school became a reality one year when a parent raised a ruckus after finding out that her child had been kept in a box every day (some referred to the cardboard jerry-rigged structure as a "study carrell," however, it was a mandatory placment and the opening of the "carrell" was placed against the wall). This was not too many years after teachers in the district were banned from "swats." Incensed at the unreasonableness of the administration (they couldn't hit kids OR keep them in boxes), the union won the new position of ISS class for every school in the district. Outside of the few odd ducks who have a preference for working with the really interesting kids, they were mostly staffed by newbies who hoped to get a real classroom some day. They also won the concession of an ISS school for longer-term infractions. These remained in place until just a couple of years ago when cuts resulted in the removal of the ISS rooms at the secondary level. Meanwhile, the district has in place three schools (elementary, middle and high) for students whose emotional disabilities require their seclusion from non-emotionally disabled students (for reasons I have never fully understood)--and the union finally won the concession of an additional school for "chronic disrupters" in the lower grades. Every (regular)school has some social work and counselor time (less than they used to, I concede). This would seem to go a long way towards what you are describing (OK--we don't have any better ways of eliminating teachers who coast than anyone else). The problem with this approach is that it assumes that problem behavior resides within the student--and can be "dealt with" by removing the student for "intervention" and putting them back when they are fixed.
What I have seen in all of these disconnected pieces is that some of the removals are to places or people who have a clue (some are not)--but none of them are able to respond to systemic lack of what I would consider to be "discipline" or support for appropriate student behavior. There is an incredible propensity for power plays (focused on things like cell phones, belts, hats, etc) designed to somehow come down hard on non-sensical things in order to take a stand of some kind before things get really tough. I don't see much in the way of student governments chewing on formulating responses to things like appropriate dress or comportment. There are "policies" against things like bullying or harassment--but the actual "practice" is that these things are overlooked until someone takes a swing--then they can be removed.
A couple of years ago some school took kids on a field trip and some kids were injured because they raced ahead of the chaperones to an escalator and some kid tripped at the top and got run over. The chaperone made noises about calling them back, but they wouldn't come. I remember thinking about my own experiences with kids, busses and trips. You just don't ever get off the bus without stopping for a few words about expected behavior--including something as explicit as staying behind the leader and in front of the rear. If you just jump off the bus and move along, you end up risking a stampede. That's somewhat more than common sense--it's the kind of thing that most of us learn through experience, doing it right and doing it wrong. If the prevailing modus operandi of the school is to never pay attention to getting it right, you end up with a bunch of folks who think that kids are just helpless hellions (in need of intervention)--and the rest of us don't have any idea.
Margo/mom,
Take a look at our methods of dealing with discipline and say they aren't absurd. But now we have money with the Stimulus and we should invest along these lines and not wasting it on blame and shame and computer models.
I think two patterns help explain our system of expecting teachers regardless of their temparment to teach and be cops.
Firstly, we all had a "feed the chickens" approach to schooling. Either the kids eat and prosper or they fail. I give credit to reformers for redining the goal of education. But the idea that schools can't replace the family for all who need a surgogate family is wildly out of proportion.
But now we have stimulus money if we have the faith to address the real problems.
Second we see teachers as a Madonna or a Whore. We're either a karate kicking, hero or a slug.
I don't deny I enjoy the adrenaline trip of doing both, teaching and being a missionary. But i can't do both at the same time as well as my kids need.