The best defense of seniority (so far)

I found this reprint of a Matthew DiCarlo piece from the Answer Sheet.   It's the best attempt to "defend" seniority based decision making that I've seen.   Needless to say- I take issue with several points made by DiCarlo- which I hope address in the near future.   Here's a snippet:

Third, all of the outrage against seniority seems way overblown. It has for decades been considered a fair and impartial way of proceeding, in both the public as well as private sectors (though it is far more common in the former, and among unionized employees in both sectors). In education, this policy also has some research backing: Even by the narrow measure of student test score growth, experience is among the few proven signals of teaching quality (see here, here, here, here, or our summary here), to say nothing of the possibility that experience matters more when it comes to other student learning outcomes (including, by the way, reducing attrition; experienced teachers are less likely to leave the profession).


In short, seniority is definitely imperfect, but it is hardly outrageous to use it as a proxy for quality

Is MCEA any different?

The Montgomery County teacher's union, MCEA, recently reprinted this post by Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post.   But as I read it over, I couldn't help but think that my union, MCEA, was no different than the political machine that created the problems Strauss blogs about:

[If we cared about children] we would never tolerate a poverty rate among children of 21 percent.

That’s one in five kids who live in poverty, or nearly 15 million children in the United States who live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, currently pegged at $22,050 a year for a family of four.

And that, of course, doesn’t include the kids who live in families of four who make $22,051 a year. Or $22,052. In fact, research shows that families need an income of about twice the poverty level to cover basic costs, so at that rate, 42 percent of American children live at or close enough to the poverty level so that basics aren’t being covered.

Which groups in the U.S. are least likely to be in poverty?   The old.   Those on social security.   It is the same group of people who are politically active.   Those unable to vote?   Most likely to be in poverty.

Now let's talk about the haves and have nots in our union.    A 1st year teacher makes half as much as a teacher who has taught for twenty years.     A 1st year teacher is involuntarily transferred before a more senior teacher.   A 1st year teacher must be fired before a more senior teacher.   If our children are the second class citizens of society, then our new teachers are the second class citizens of the union.

I went to an MCEA Representative Assembly meeting in December.  My first.   The median age in that room must have been 50 years old.   Retired teachers have more of a say in our union than new teachers.  This is not hyperbole.   I could count on one hand the number of teachers under 30 at the meeting.  This despite the fact that 60% of our teachers have less than 10 years of experience.   Of course, this is just democracy in action.

We can say we're a democracy, but that doesn't mean we represent the interests of our constituents.  It is much more likely that we represent the interests of those who are politically active.   And that's why we continue to have arcane seniority rules.   And it's why we'll continue to have reform dictated to us from above.

Pleasant testing, kids.

The Sky is Falling- Until we do Something about it.

Here is the classic "we're all under attack" post from Anthony Cody on the Answer Sheet.   He laments the testing craze and the reformers who serve as its advocates.   He moves on to explain that teachers are too busy teaching to fight back:

 In our classrooms we depend on the authority of the school as we exert our own authority to maintain order. Accustomed to our place in the hierarchy, we serve "under" the supervision of our principals, as our students work under our supervision.  This deference to authority is perhaps one reason teachers have been so slow to understand the systematic attacks we face as a profession. But make no mistake, our profession, our retirement funds, our schools, even the classrooms in which we teach -- all are under a systemic and coordinated attack.

This is the wrong fight.   The fight should be a parallel one putting forth alternative evaluation systems that answer the oh so very valid criticisms on the state of our education system.   Yes there are other issues, as Valerie Strauss eloquently argues, that impact what goes on in schools.   Not the least of which is poverty.   However, until we tackle the fact we spend too much time removing extremely ineffective teachers, and not enough time removing mostly ineffective teachers, we will be forced to swallow the reforms of outsiders willing to address the failures we are not.  

I do agree on one thing- most teachers are not politically motivated enough "to get involved."   But I'm not sure they'd all line up behind Cody and company if forced to choose- if only those teachers weren't so busy!!!!

Here is a partial vision, however incomplete, as I see it.   I left the following comment at StoriesfromSchool.org several days ago.   No matter what however, we must move forward with our own reform rather than spend time claiming the new reforms don't do enough.

In my system in Maryland we have what I would call a "partial" peer evaluative system. Admins still complete the evaluation, but master teachers serve 3 year stints outside the classroom providing feedback to both novice (1st year teachers) and tenured teachers rated unsatisfactory. I'd say they these master teachers make it into classrooms as little as once a month and as much as once every 8 school days depending on need of the teacher. The master teacher makes a recommendation but is completely independent from the admin. They are on the development side. The ultimate decision is made by a PAR (peer assisted and review) panel of teachers and principals. Good, but part of the problem is that tenured teachers rarely if ever make it into the system. Principals find documentation needed to place in the PAR system a pain. Teachers in PAR cannot make lateral transfers to other schools. And so it is under-utlized. I'd make some changes:


One, I'd make the teachers above a kind of evaluation team to be in charge of all evaluations- including firing. I like the 3 year rule- so that they'd have to return to the classroom. Admins would no longer handle evals- they would simply be in charge of the building- handling discipline and money and scheduling decisions. If they had issues with teachers they'd report to the teacher evaluators. In large schools, this would mean less administrators.

Inside the building, I'd like there to be a career path to become a different kind of master teacher- one focused not on administrative duties, but on instruction. I'd like this master teacher to be in the classroom maybe 60% of the time, but also have observation and staff development duties. THey would observe, support, and give feedback. Developing teachers would watch this teacher teach... in large schools, there would be several master teachers in a building. Like administrators they could report ineffective teachers to the evaluation team. The goal for every teacher would be to become a master teacher.

The first part, a roaming evaluation team would be expensive. THe 2nd part, placing master teachers in school building would just require a reshuffling of duties. Fewer admins, fewer team leaders or resource teachers. I was in a middle school once that must have spent 100 teacher hours planning for a 3 day outdoor edcuation event. A great event, but at a tremendous cost. Instruction takes a back seat.

Anyway- my big picture idea- is that we need people who are focused ONLY on instruction. If you're pulled away from admin duties those admin duties tend to take priority. Admins HAVE to order supplies, or plan meetings, or make sure there is sub coverage. Instruction often takes a back seat. I'm willing to embrace any system that makes quality instruction the priority- that makes it a culture.

Digging holes

Funny analogy here, on Valerie Strauss' blog by guest writer Kevin Weiner from the University of Colorado at Boulder,  about the standardized testing movement.   I'd add this to the anology:

If you're standing next to someone digging a hole, do you just yell at them to stop digging until you can no longer get out?   Or do you take a step to the side?   I don't think the teaching profession need be burried by the testing movement.  

Progress needed

So here we have another example of the central flaw in our educational debate. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek sits down with Bill Gates to talk about education and the reform movement he has embraced. Alter writes this article entitled A Case of Senioritis. Clearly, Gates' beef is one of seniority, right?   Alter writes:

 After exhaustive study, the Gates Foundation and other experts have learned that the only in-school factor that fully correlates is quality teaching, which seniority hardly guarantees. It’s a moral issue. Who can defend a system where top teachers are laid off in a budget crunch for no other reason than that they’re young?

In most states, pay and promotion of teachers are connected 100 percent to seniority. This is contrary to everything the world’s second-richest man believes about business: “Is there any other part of the economy where someone says, ‘Hey, how long have you been mowing lawns? … I want to pay you more for that reason alone.’

It's a piece about creating change through the end of the seniority system.   It is a moral issue.   And it's why that if I had to take sides- I take sides with Gates.   Not that I fully embrace his ideas for education reform- but he does understand and attempt to solve a central problem.   The education profession is indifferent to quality.
Dianne Ravitch, who has made a second and very profitable career of  "defending"  educators from the so called attacks of Gates, responds directly to some of the rhetorical questions posed by Gates on Valerie Strauss' blog, The Answer Sheet.   Ravitch pokes some pretty serious holes in the seemingly logical solutions proffered by Gates and other reformers.   But how many times do you think Ravitch uses the word seniority in her response?

Not once.

Why not?  It seems to me it's a losing issue.   Ravitch thus focuses her attack on Gates' main solution, testing:

I don't hear any of the corporate reformers expressing concern about the way standardized testing narrows the curriculum, the way it rewards convergent thinking and punishes divergent thinking, the way it stamps out creativity and originality. I don't hear any of them worried that a generation will grow up ignorant of history and the workings of government. I don't hear any of them putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is not going to improve education."

Ravitch may be right about testing.   Testing students too many times, in too many subjects could have serious ramifications.   And value-added modeling in its current form, likely poses more questions than answers. I suppose that's why she spends so much time talking about testing rather than seniority rules; the battle over testing is, as Gates would say, a moral one.  And it's grounds where Ravitch may have the moral authority.   So I would like to take this argument backward- to what I believe is its foundation.  Is there agreement between Ravitch and Gates on seniority?  If we can agree, perhaps we can find new ways to pay and evaluate teachers.   A system that is more effective than the one used now, and one that will not turn the measure of teacher effectiveness into a test taken by students.   Or maybe the two don't agree, and seniority is the best way to go after all.  Either way, I think we could all benefit by an explicit answer.   So here is a new rhetorical question for Ravitch to answer:

Is the seniority system the best way to compensate teachers for their hard work?

Why Teaching Experience Really Matters

Enjoyed this comment about teacher evaluations in Valerie Strauss' blog, the Answer Sheet.

It is frustrating to see this issue argued in black and white terms. It is silly for Mr. Gates to say that advanced degrees and experience does not matter. Obviously, experience and advanced degrees can make a great deal of difference in the effectiveness of a teacher.


BUT NOT ALWAYS. That is the crux of the problem and I think what Mr. Gates is getting at (albeit in black and white terms). I would become infuriated watching veteran teachers relying only on worksheets to teach first graders or screaming at children as a 'behavior management system'; some even had masters degrees. And they were paid more than I was, even though I was taking the same population of students with lower test scores and surpassing their students scores within a month.

It is exceedingly difficult to measure teacher effectiveness, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. As a teacher, I want some way to show that I am being effective (and I teach a very difficult low-income population). Watching ineffective but experienced teachers should make us all angry. We all want the best and the brightest in the classroom; we shouldn't settle for ineffective teachers. We should be rewarded for experience and advanced degrees, we should ALSO have some way to be rewarded for effectiveness. Its not easy to measure, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Posted by: acasey3

November 23, 2010 4:04 PM

Does seniority matter?

Well.   Kind of.   I'm not exactly sure what Valerie Strauss attempts to argue here except to say that as teachers teach more their effectiveness increases.   That's not news, although there seems to be an insinuation that Arne Duncan and Bill Gates don't believe this.     I'm pretty confident they understand this.  However, the question is not whether teachers get better as they teach more.   They do.   The question is whether or not the current system in place encourages teacher responsibility, leadership, and quality.   Or, do we have a system that is indifferent to these things.   And if it is indifferent to those qualities, is it 1) more or less likely to attract people with those characteristics or 2) more or less likely to help those already in the field develop them?

Randi Weingarten - The Hero of Reform

Valerie Struass recently printed this defense of Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and newly cast villain of   'Waiting for Superman.'     But as Joe Williams points out in Strauss' column, this could not be further from the truth.  From Denver to Pittsburgh to New York City to Baltimore, the American Federation of Teachers has been at the forefront of public school system reform.   This is hardly the face of an obstructionist.   As Williams notes:

Randi Weingarten is the last person you could possibly describe as hiding in a cave, plotting to destroy America. She has appeared on so many panels and television programs as part of the WFS roll-out – and she’s taken quite a public beating in many of them – that ‘cowardly terrorist’ is the last phrase you’d use to describe her. (You’ll notice that the NEA, which unlike the AFT has been totally absent from just about any real reform discussion in the last few years, hardly even appears in WFS. Surely because Randi granted access and the NEA didn’t.)

It is a shame that Weingarten has not gotten more credit for the role she has played in advancing these reforms.   Jay Mathews takes time to celebrate her role for the recently negotiated  (but as of yet unapproved) contract in Baltimore City.   And celebrate we should, for if the current reforms prove successful in anyway, Weingarten will not be the villain, but the hero of this story.

A call for leadership

I read and I read and I read.   And then I wonder "how can something so pure as the education of our children be so political?"   Can we not stop what we're doing and finally solve some problems?

I simply find much of what I read, especially from those who oppose performance pay, alarmist.   Diane Ravitch has made a second career of ringing the anti-merit pay bell across the United States.   Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post frequently republishes Ravitch's blog as part of this gospel.

In a recent post, Ravitch goes so far as to speak for all teachers:

Although teachers need and want higher pay, they are strongly opposed to individual merit pay.

A generalization that brings me to an article I recently read in the Christian Science Monitor.  Melanie Stetson Freeman wrote a piece more than a year ago about the evolution of performance pay in Denver, CO.   I was struck by this snippet:

Back in 2004, when the Denver teachers union voted on ProComp, many teachers had a deeply ingrained opposition to "merit pay." One poll about a month before the vote showed that just 19 percent of them were in favor. The district undertook a public-relations blitz and massive information campaign, and it ended up winning the support of 59 percent of teachers.

Teachers, once they understand that they can have due process side by side with merit pay, are willing to support an opportunity to earn more money in a less traditional manner.   However it requires leadership and stake holder input.  Off hand claims made by Ravitch are harmful to the dialogue.  She continues to say of merit pay that it,

destroys the collaboration and teamwork that are essential to the culture of the school.

However, the very same study that Ravitch notes as proof pudding that merit pay won't work actually concludes those who received merit pay were more likely to collaborate:

...what can we say about the way treatment teachers responded? Treatment teachers...were more likely to report thatthey collaborated with other teachers (planning, reviewing student test results, coaching and being  coached or observed) 

And I suppose this is my biggest beef with how merit pay is treated by its opponents.  Merit pay is not perfect.  Value added modeling has limitations.  And charter schools will not fix all our educational ills.  But neither will the status quo.  We need to spend less time yelling and making sweeping generalizations and more time figuring out how school reform can go forward recognizing the strengths and weaknesses put forward by both sides of the argument.

We can't afford to continue forcing people to line up on one side of this issue or the other.   Movies like Waiting for Superman, shows like those recently seen on Oprah, and polarizing figures like Michelle Rhee only exacerbate the problem.

But reform should not be held hostage by politics.  It must move forward with all stake holders contributing to a dialogue.  The question is when will we work together to decide what real and honest educational reform will look like?   It's happening in some places.   I just wish we had leaders here in Montgomery County willing to make it happen.

VAM (Value Added Modeling)

I have alot of respect for the work that David Cohen does over at InterACT, a policy oriented group named the "Accomplished Teachers of California."   He recently made the virtual journey to the Answer Sheet- a blog by Valerie Struass at the Post, in which he argues against the use of Value Added measurement tools in California.   And while I respect him, if it has not already become clear, I could not disagree with him more on the use of VAM.    I recently came across a policy report from NYC that I found both interesting and readable.   I'm not sure it has been peer reviewed but it has a lengthy but readable discussion on the pitfalls and potential uses of VAM.   It's a good starting place for those who want to learn more.

A plea to slowdown

Valerie Strauss is laying on her criticism of Race to the Top even thicker on her Washington Post blog.



And while I admit to being a proponent of reform, I can't help but begin to think that Strauss is right about one thing; this all seems too rushed. She writes:

To make today’s deadline, many of the participating states rushed major education bills through their legislatures to meet the contest’s requirements and engaged in furious negotiations with unions against artificially set deadlines.

Unfortunately, this statement is too true. Despite MSDE claims to the contrary, its clear to me that stakeholders have been brushed aside in efforts to create quick change. I'm sure there's enough blame to go around, but my own school district and union have yet to say "boo" when it comes to where they stand on the issue of reform. I'm sure that statement is on the way though.

Struass goes even further:

[Legislatures] passed laws allowing more charter schools to open -- even though studies show that charter schools on average are no better than regular public schools -- and tying teacher compensation to standardized test scores, even though the tests aren't designed to assess teachers.

Academics call this a part of the construct validity of a test. And it has always been a kind of stumbling block when it comes to the use of high stakes tests. For instance, it might be said of a national algebra test that the test can effectively measure the knowledge skills and abilities of an algebra student. But that same test cannot and should not be used to measure whether a student should graduate from high school. Why not? Because that was not the design of the test when it was created. In other words, this test may be a valid measure of a student's math knowledge, but we cannot make generalizations about this test's ability to determine whether someone should graduate.

Likewise, that same Algebra test cannot and should not be used to measure whether a teacher is necessarily an effective teacher. This is not what this particular test was designed to capture.

This does not mean that student work, or student performance on tests cannot be used to help us evaluate teachers. However, it does mean we need to be congnizant of identifying teacher effectiveness solely or primarly based on student performance data that relies on these tests. And I'm not sure whether these conversations are going on as we speed on with the RttT process.

What we really need first is a comprehensive evaluation system for teachers. And I believe Race to the Top has the cornerstones of a reform system that most hard working teachers are dying to get behind. RttT demands that we need to more carefully identify which teachers (and principals) are strongest, and which teachers are weakest, and which teachers are somewhere in between. RttT also demands that teachers and principals be rewarded when they show they are capable. And RttT demands that we dismiss those teachers that are unable to show improvement, rather than those teachers who have been teachers the shortest length of time. These are real reforms for education; and reforms that will benefit our students around the country if we take the time to get it right.

My blogging friends over in California have put some real time and effort into this question of evaluation. And I applaud their efforts, despite the fact I believe evaluation systems can and should include input from students, parents, and colleagues (both master and non-master teachers).

But with that said, I'll leave you with InterAct's basic tenents for comprehensive teacher evaluation:

Here are the principles on which improved evaluations should be constructed:
-Teacher evaluation should be based on professional standards.
-Teacher evaluation should include performance assessments to guide a path of professional learning throughout a teacher’s career.
-The design of a new evaluation system should build on successful, innovative practices in current use.
-Evaluations should consider teacher practice and performance, as well as an array of student outcomes for teams of teachers as well as individual teachers.
-Evaluation should be frequent and conducted by expert evaluators, including teachers who have demonstrated expertise in working with their peers.
-Evaluation leading to permanent status (“tenure”) must be more intensive and must include more extensive evidence of quality teaching.
-Evaluation should be accompanied by useful feedback, connected to professional development opportunities, and reviewed by evaluation teams or an oversight body to ensure fairness, consistency, and reliability.

Teachers' Unions' Last Stand

Great article in the New York Times magazine entitled The Teachers' Unions' Last Stand. A must but lengthy read on Teachers' Unions and Race to the Top. Read it critically, and then read this blog by Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post. I'm definitely skeptical of any claim that charter schools, by the mere act of being charter schools, are any better or worse than public schools.