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.  

Teaching and the moral authority

I've had several discussions with teachers lately about their beliefs on seniority.  And I would just like to say this: there are many, many teachers who do not think seniority is an effective way to compensate what teachers do.   However, many of these same teachers think its not worth the time or battle to change it.   They are busy enough as it is (with good reason).   Many think the current system is broken, but have a natural fear about the unknown.   Some fear the only other option is a test based system that turns the profession into a factory rather than a place where teachers can exercise autonomy and professional discretion to create mastery level lessons that engage all students.   This is, after all, the very serious danger of relying too heavily on student tests to measure teacher effectiveness. 

Our fear and complacency, however, has and continues to have too many unintended consequences.   Not the least among these is that "reformers" have now taken control of the decision making process.   I read continuous admonitions, such as a recent one by blogger and expert teacher David Cohen, regarding our part in the reform movement:

The millions of us who actually do the teaching and provide the education apparently do not need to be won over.  Our buy-in does not matter in debates about the educational policy and leadership.

When we take no active part, it's no surprise that as a professional community we are not enamored with the new evaluation systems that are passed on to us.   In many parts of the country, this has meant student achievement data in the form of value-added modeling becoming as much as 50% of teacher evaluations.   Some of these new systems have had more teacher support than others.

This post, by John Norton, and published in Teacher Magazine, details the many experienced teachers who now seem "tired" with the profession.   While I don't think the "tired" teacher was born with the advent of Value Added Modeling, it's important to realize that teachers and their unions, have the unique power to dampen the calls for outsider reform.  We have the power to reform on our own- to realize the changing time and tide- and to improve our profession and reclaim what we rightfully understand and know how to do better than any other segment in our society:  teach.  We can complain and become disgruntled, tired, veteran teachers, or we can choose to listen to valid criticisms with an eye toward fixing the problem from within.  This begins, in my opinion, with the acknowledgement that a once necessary and valuable seniority system created to ensure fairness for all employees, in particular women, has in the long-run resulted in unintended consequences for our profession. 

In defending a compensation system based solely on seniority, we relinquish the moral authority which teachers have long enjoyed when it comes to discussions about education and compensation.    Teachers have benefited from a long history of improved compensation in many, if not most regions across the country.   Some may credit unionization, but I do so only with an equal tribute to the moral authority that teachers have long held in the argument for more pay: teachers are important to a well functioning society so we must pay them accordingly.   The result, has been the backing from a willing and able public- willing to raise compensation for a public good any market based system will under-value.  While teacher compensation has improved, I do believe there is some way to go on this front.  But our public backing is only as good as the foundation upon which we build it.   And the long-run viablity of our cause has now taken on a second phase: teachers deserve more not because of the job we do, but because we are highly skilled, motivated professionals.  Not only do we do an important job, but we do it well. 

Increased pay and compensation can only continue if we are recognized as a profession with the ability to continue to change our nation.   This means holding ourselves to the same high expectations that we hold the students that we teach.   Therefore, we must demand a highly effective teacher in every classroom.  And the public, through their children, know all too well that this is currently not the case.   A dichotomous evaluation system where 98% of all teachers are rated satisfactory, and 2% are rated unsatisfactory, cannot improve our schools.  A system that pays the effective teacher the same as an ineffective teacher cannot improve our schools.   A system that will fire a strong and nontenured teacher before a tenured ineffective teacher cannot achieve those ends.  Unfortunately, this is exactly the system that has been created by seniority rules.   

Some teachers say our profession is under attack.   They say it's vital for hard-working, misunderstood teachers to defend ourselves from know-nothing reformers who have little, and sometimes no educational experience.  We are victims.   I say we need to fix what is broken, but to defend senioirty is to lose the very moral authority that has brought us to where we are today.    I prefer to see this as an opportunity.

Let's not waste it.

More on Evaluation

Haven't had much time to read this report from the National Education Policy Center on teacher evaluations and what they might look like.   Looking forward to it.   But it seems based on the premise that evaluations should not be overly dependent on any one data point. 

And this article from Newsweek which takes a bit more firm stance on evaluation:

“If you’re rated unsatisfactory two years in a row, you’re gone,” says union chief Clements. “If your rating is ‘needs improvement,’ your salary freezes, and if your performance doesn’t improve in a few years, you’re gone too. We think most people want to do a good job, and being confronted with data that you are not doing a good job is hard to ignore. People either change or leave.”

I might feel better about a seniority system if I knew not every teacher was being passed along from year to year.

An argument for seniority

A thought provoking critque of the movement away from the seniority system in Teacher Magazine:

My district has had massive teacher layoffs the past two years, with resulting increased class sizes. Layoffs were not based on seniority, degrees or accomplishments, but solely on student test scores and teacher evaluations. Furthermore, the district is proceeding with a pay-for-performance plan, which will go into effect at the latest in 2014. It is not following any kind of best practices research in its structure. Pay would be dependent solely on teacher "effectiveness," which every indication suggests will be based primarily on test scores.

I know that all of this is causing our most experienced, most accomplished, most prepared teachers to rethink their plans for work versus retirement. I also know that absenteeism among teachers is on the rise. At my high-needs schools, most of our teachers are very young, and I am the only nationally certified teacher. We have already had seven teachers resign since school started in August.

I've never before questioned my commitment to teaching the way I am now, and I have never felt so discouraged about the profession in general or the future of my school district or the welfare of and opportunities for our students. I'm not really ready to stop working, but I'm starting to think I've lost heart for teaching. I don't know if I can get it back.

A defense of seniority?

Here is a commentary from Schools Matter that appears to be a defense of seniority.  It's funny, but the defense of seniority is often linked with a defense of experience.   As if the two were somehow the same concept.   Teachers improve with experience.   Research confirms a correlation.   This is therefore the best way to compensate teachers or to make hiring and firing decisions.  It's an akward argument to me.... like a person arguing that because IQ is correlated with better teaching, we are therefore simply going to measure IQ and compensate accordingly.   From the article:

 The Times mentions, in passing, that "seniority is largely unrelated to performance." The research on the impact of seniority that I have seen is based on the use of standardized test score improvements, otherwise known as value-added measures. Nevertheless, the results are interesting. In an interview (The New Advocate, "Teacher seniority under fire "September 12, 2010), researcher Michael Hansen said that improvement between year 3 and 25 was four percent, which he regarded as "trivial." But if valid, it means that more experienced teachers are slightly more effective. The only reason to ignore seniority as a criterion for retention in hard times is financial.

Pensions in Maryland - A request

Looking for some good information on the Maryland State Pension system.   If anyone can direct me to some data- that'd be helpful.

Seems to me there are some common sense solutions that could be put into place that would not substantially effect the standard of living of state employees when they retire.   While I'm not exactly sure how a "defined"contribution pension system turned into such a reprehensible idea, I'm sure we could make some adjustments to the defined benefits pension system to make it more viable in the long-run.   Personally, however, a penny in my own bank account is worth more than two in a state's bank account.   It appears this makes me a minority within my own union once again.

Edit: Found this- about Maryland state pension's underperformance relative to other states.   Funny it took 10 years for the state government to find out they were wasting money.

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?