I was just talking to a friend who teaches ESL to retired senior citizens in a free class offered at a YMCA here in NYC.  She talked to me about her students and what it's like working with her students, some whom are in their 90's!  

For them taking the class is not a matter of career advancement; they are already retired.  Nor is it a matter of gaining survival English skills--they have some already, and have found ways to get by for years with what they've got.  In fact, most of them are not interested in "studying" English in any way that resembles their own schooling decades ago.  Many are not literate in their native languages, and more than a few have had tramatizing experiences in their former schooling.  

Instead, her students mostly come to the class for the chance to practice speaking in English, since they report that they don't speak English with their friends and family members. They relish the enriching opportunity to communicate in English about topics of interest with people with whom they wouldn't normally be able to talk.  The class is a mix of seniors from various countries and language backgrounds. She recounted a heated debate they got into--in English--about the legalization of marijuana, for example. Imagine the insight seniors can bring to any issue, having lived through so much, and bringing perspectives from around the world.  

Attendance is inconsistent, my friend says, because the class is free and these are adult students with free will (unlike my 13 year olds...) The organization has no policy mandating attendence, so the seniors can show up when they want. 

Here's the kicker, though. By law, my friend must make her students take a standardized test of their English skills. Really?!   In fact, there is pressure for her to show progress in these test scores over time in order for the organization to maintain the program. (I'm not sure whether the pressure is originating from within the organization or from outside.)  Apparently this federal law was enacted in 1988, so I guess it's nothing new, but it still seems ridiculously inappropriate in this situation.  

I can imagine places where a standardized test could be an appropriate tool for an ESL school to use to assess student learning and demonstrate growth, and some groups of seniors would be totally up for this kind of challenge.  But does it need to be mandated?  What do you think? Must our grandparents and great-grandparents be subjected to standardized testing?  Should teachers be able to use their discretion and find other ways to demonstrate the progress of their adult students? 

Let me know if I'm missing something, because I know relatively little about this field.  At the moment, though, I'm definitely shaking my head. 

[image credit: articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com]

I recently had the opportunity to provide feedback for a large educational software company on two prototypes for an App designed for English teachers. It was an interesting way to spend an hour and I got a nice gift certificate to Amazon out of the deal. 

Without saying much about the idea, since it is not mine to share, I'll say that the app was geared towards helping teachers plan curriculum with attention to each standard.  Inherent in the design was that teachers would select lesson plans from a menu of pre-created materials.  This struck me, because most teachers I know do not use many pre-created materials.  

I found myself explaining that I occasionally use materials out of a text book or off the internet. More often, I might borrow something from another teacher.  In all of those cases, I usually adapt such materials for my particular group of students, my own delivery style, and other factors such as the amount of time I want to allot to the lesson or activity.  

The feedback I ended up giving was that teachers need anything that can help us organize ourselves and our students' learning better.  When it comes to curriculum, we want access to good resources that respond to our students' needs and fit into our overall curriculum focus, but we need flexibility.  

User-friendly ways of tracking and sharing information, materials, lessons taught, observations and assessment data could be very helpful and desirable for teachers.  The best apps generally increase the user's autonomy and efficency--like the App that tells you when the next train is coming, allowing you to make a more informed decision about where to be, possibly freeing you up for 20 minutes while you would otherwise have been waiting for a train.  Online gradebooks can act like this too.  I have a few App ideas of my own I may pursue at some point. 

Needless to say I was a little disappointed when I realized that the designers assumed teachers would want to build their curricula with ready-made materials... am I off-base?  Is that appealing to anyone?

[image credit: thacherschool.org]

After laying into the NY Times, NY Daily News and NY Post for publishing teacher ratings based on sketchy data reports and causing a host of negative effects for teachers, parents, principals, and students, on Friday, I am glad to be able to recognize the thoughtful stance taken by other important NYC education media outlets.  

Gotham Schools, an online news source about NYC public schools with an active community of commenters, originally joined the other journalists in requesting to see the Teacher Data Reports in 2010. But they have chosen not to publish those reports with individual teachers' names attached. 

Here is some of their reasoning behind the choice (full post here): 

"The fact is that we feel a strong responsibility to report on the quality of the work the 80,000 New York City public school teachers do every day. This is a core part of our job and our mission.

But before we publish any piece of information, we always have to ask a question. Does the information we have do a fair job of describing the subject we want to write about? If it doesn’t, is there any additional information — context, anecdotes, quantitative data — that we can provide to paint a fuller picture?

In the case of the Teacher Data Reports, “value-added” assessments of teachers’ effectiveness that were produced in 2009 and 2010 for reading and math teachers in grades 3 to 8, the answer to both those questions was no.

We determined that the data were flawed, that the public might easily be misled by the ratings, and that no amount of context could justify attaching teachers’ names to the statistics. When the city released the reports, we decided, we would write about them, and maybe even release Excel files with names wiped out. But we would not enable our readers to generate lists of the city’s “best” and “worst” teachers or to search for individual teachers at all.

It’s true that the ratings the city is releasing might turn out to be powerful measures of a teacher’s success at helping students learn. The problem lies in that word: might."

Inside Schools, an online site providing information and ratings on NYC public schools for parents, has also elected not to include ratings on teachers from the data reports, because, they state, these ratings are not helpful to parents in finding the best schools for their children.  They published a very thoughtful and straightforward explanation for parents of why these ratings "don't tell much."

I found their explanation, by Meredith Kolodner, so helpful even to me, that I am copying it here:

"1. The ratings are based on exams that state officials have said are invalid.

The reports being released are from 2007, 2008 and 2009, before state officials altered exams that they said were not a reliable indication of whether or not students were learning. The exams were only testing a small part of what students were supposed to know, and it was easy to predict what would be on the exam each year. So students who were drilled in a narrow set of skills might do well and their teacher might be rated highly. Teachers who were teaching the whole curriculum and not focused on test prep could be rated lower, even if their children had in fact learned more.

2. Test scores alone don't tell you how effective a teacher is.

The exams don't measure a student's critical thinking skills, creativity or if she works well with others, three things that many of the best teachers emphasize. Although the DOE tried to account for differences in student populations (such as poverty, disability, English language learner), it is not at all clear that they were able to measure all of the differences between classrooms that could affect scores.

3. The margin of error on the ratings is huge.

The DOE admits that a teacher whose rating is 50% (or about average) could actually have a rating as low as 25% or as high as 75%. Even though a teacher is assigned a score, the report includes a range of possible scores because the DOE acknowledges that the reports are imprecise.

4. Teachers of children performing well on the exams could be rated poorly.

The ratings are based partially on student "progress" on the exams. So if students score 3.8 out of 4 one year and then drop to 3.6 the next year, a teacher could be rated ineffective. This is true even though a 3.6 is considered above grade level, and the difference in the score could be a matter of getting one or two questions wrong.

5. The ratings are not stable from year to year.

If the measure was accurate, you would think that a good teacher wouldn't get a 20% one year and an 80% the next. But an Annenberg study found that a third of the English teachers who got the top rating in 2007 sank to the bottom of the pile in 2008. The same was true for 23% of math teachers."

While the NY Times has published many pieces on the various reasons why the data reports are misleading, inaccurate, unhelpful,etc., they still chose to publish them.  They chose to engage teachers in a process of publicly defending themselves against a flawed metric, the effects of which no number of Op-Ed's can undo.  

Thank you to Gotham Schools for your ethical stance on use of this information, and thank you to Inside Schools for focusing on what's actually helpful to students and their families, and for breaking it down so well.

[image credit: infosecisland.com]

Ieww and Boooo to NYC DOE, NY Times, and all of the other media outlets that will publish value added data reports for NYC teachers, and I don't usually talk like that.    

Bill Gates, who suddenly decided to speak up on the issue, even though he's been a huge part of the development and use of value added data systems across the country, explains the problems with this plan pretty well in his NY Times Op Ed, Shame Is Not the Solution. (Wait, who is this guy, and why should people listen to him now?  Oh yeah, a super rich business man. I guess he has all the cred...)  

Gates' main point is that "we are just beginning to understand what makes a teacher effective." (Who is the "we" here, and effective to what end?)  He argues, "Value-added ratings are one important piece of a complete personnel system. But student test scores alone aren’t a sensitive enough measure to gauge effective teaching, nor are they diagnostic enough to identify areas of improvement. Teaching is multifaceted, complex work," he says. 

The NY Times also explains that there are many issues with the validity and reliability of the data including a huge margin of error, also explained by Jose Vilson here.  Basically VAM's are in an experimental stage. There is nothing tried and true about them, and the standardized tests that VAM's are actually attempting to report on are an extremely narrow and equally flawed measure of student learning. 

Finally, I just don't know what anyone is hoping to accomplish by publishing value added data reports on teachers.  In 2010, when the plan was first introduced and fought, I posted about this, comparing the practice with that of a teacher who fears her students haven't paid enough attention to the lessons, and so she gives the whole class a "Gotcha"-style pop quiz. Though this tactic might ccasionally work to catch some students' attention, it is more about punishment than teaching--more to prove a point than to improve the situation. (Imagine the push-back from students if said teacher then published the pop-quiz scores for the entire school community as definitive measures of students' intelligence).

Is it appropriate to compare the NYCDOE's relationship with NYC teachers and a teacher's relationship with his or her students?  I think so, in the sense that both are in leadership positions. Both the DOE and teachers have a mandate to make leadership decisions that will increase student success rates.

But instead, here's what we will see as a result of the publishing of these reports:

• the creation of unsafe working conditions for teachers (Remember the star teacher in LAUSD, highly valued by his students and community, who committed suicide after his poor VAM's were published).  
• increased incentive to "teach to the test"
• increased risk in doing anything other than teaching to the test
• sadly, as we've seen time and again, increased incentive for cheating on the test
• incentive to leave high need schools, especially those that serve ELL's who have the most unfair burden of taking the same tests in English after just ONE year in the country (this is for shame), creating even less stable conditions where they are most needed
• strong incentive for teachers to teach untested subjects
• possibly increased competition among teachers, since the VAMs rate us in relation to our peers and use a kind of bell curve
• confusion for parents and an awkward range of emotions--while I'd love to see parents across the city advocate for the public education their children need, I'm not sure how this empowers them.  Most parents I talk to want to see far less testing and more extracurricular activities for their children.  Parents are aware that their children's teachers vary in their skill levels.  In some cases the reported VAM's might match their own impressions of teachers, and in other cases they won't.  So what does a parent do with that information?  Even I can't see how it's helpful.

These are not positive outcomes for students, the teaching profession, or for parents, at a time where there is plenty of forward motion in NYC public schools.  Enough people have spoken up to make that clear.  For shame, NYC DOE.  For shame, NY Times, NY Daily News, and others who will jump at the chance to do something bad just to watch the big splash. 

I just got back from a weekend at EduCon. The conference created a great space to think and collaborate about how to push progressive ideas and practices further.  One of the sessions I went to gave me something entirely new to think about: my introverted students.  Tony Baldasaro (@baldy7) gave a lot of food for thought on the subject.  Here's what I learned.

• There is such thing as an introvert.  We are all somewhere on the spectru, between extrovert and introvert, but introverts tend to me people who are shy, and don't like to talk much, especially in large groups. 

• Extroverts are almost always up for talking about something. They talk to think. They come up with many of their best ideas in conversation.  When stressed, tired, upset, they tend to want to hang out with friends, talk about the problem, etc.

• Introverts' thought processing is actually neurologically distinct, according to new research (I don't have a source to cite, but Baldasaro recommended Quiet by Susan Cain).  Their problem solving process takes a longer pathway, involving recal of long term memory.  They need time to formulate their thoughts carefully this way and tend not to want to speak until they have worked through the process. 

• When stressed, tired, upset, etc, introverts tend to want to be alone.  However, being alone doesn't mean something is wrong. They might just be thinking.

• Introverts are energized by solitude. Extroverts are energized by interactions with others.

How does this play out in school? At the conference we discussed whether school favors the introvert or the extrovert. 

I think traditional school doesn't particularly work for either type.  Extroverts are forced to be quiet and work independently most of the time.  Introverts are forced to formulate thoughts and answer questions on the spot without the time they need to process their responses.

Progressive education can often favor the extrovert because of the emphasis on cooperative learning and class participation. Do we have a responsibility to help introverts be a part of this kind of work?  Probably.  Do we also have a responsibility to make adaptations so that it is more comfortable for all students? Id' say so.

I came away with a few good suggestions from Tony and members of my discussion group.

1. Let introverts know in advance if you want to talk to them about something, or if you will expect them to speak about something in class. This is to give them time to work through their ideas.

2. Many introverts will speak up when asked to, but not always take the initiative.  Invite introverted students to share their thoughts--especially if there's advanced notice of the discussion and topic, find ways to equalize the airtime time, so that the extroverts don't dominate the conversation.

3. When given an in class writing task, many introverts might take a while to get started. Don't rush them, or assume they are being lazy or defiant.  They are probably thinking.  Fine to check in about it, though. And when possible, be generous about allowing extra time.

4. Many introverts in the session suggested allowing students to opt out of working in a group and complete a group project on their own.  I don't think this would always be possible, but certainly something to consider when assigning group work.  It is absolutely necessary that my studets work in groups on this?  Do I have any reason not to allow some students to work alone?

5. Finally, research has shown that introverts tend to be much more comfortable participating in discussions online.  This is probably because online is not time-based and takes away some of the built up perceptions of social pressure they've experienced in face to face groups.  They can be alone and part of a conversation or community at the same time. Find ways to allow students to initiate or extend discussions online, and watch the balance of who's communicating shift. 

Thank you, Tony Baldasaro, for bringing this topic to light!   

[image credit: theparentszone.com]