"Administration Working To Forge Gun Control Compromise"
The Washington Post reports the White House "announced Monday that the administration is starting a series of sessions with leaders on both sides of the gun control issue to try to reach compromise on legislation to reduce gun violence." The meetings "come after President Obama called Sunday for greater enforcement of gun control laws and better background checks. ... Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group started by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is expected to be involved in the discussions, but administration officials will also reach out to groups generally opposed to tighter gun restrictions." ....
NRA Declines To Participate In White House Talks The New York Times says the National Rifle Association "is refusing to join the discussion - possibly dooming it from the start, given the lobby's clout with both parties in Congress."
======
And THAT is what's wrong with the system.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Statistically Doomed
This is despicable. It is wrong and aggravating and an example of EXACTLY what will happen all over the country. We will look back on this period of time in decades to come and mark it as a period of reactionary failure by those in charge of the system. Children of this era will in fact lose ground educationally.
No system will retain talented and competent teachers – because those that are in fact talented and competent, no matter how dedicated, will not stand for it. For all the abuses of the systems that have been put in place (and yes, there are many), you cannot avoid the “real” and ”practical” in favor of pure statistical analysis.
We have seen it, and are constantly arguing it in the area of health care quality measures. These companies rate entire hospitals and systems and services in statistically incorrect manners. Yet paint it as the end-all and be-all , with uber-complicated formulas and oversimplified pretty graphs…. And they sell it (for their own profit) as a tool for people to “choose” which hospital to go to. When pressed, they point to a one-line caveat in tiny print at the bottom of a web page that supposedly exonerates them from responsibility.
We also have seen it in baseball, where Moneyball originally was touted as the perfect way to quantify players’ performances. And over time, it has been proven that it does not work like that – that the accurate measurement of performance is NOT so clinically analyzed.
And because of politics & cronyism and bad appointments, the people that are put/elected into power are NOT knowledgeable in this area. These people are sometimes (often) NOT the sharpest tools in the shed. Add to that the fact that the citizenry is biased, reactionary, and over-emotional on the subject …. And mob mentality takes over.
We have set ourselves up to ruin the HELL out of the system & the kids who must go through it.
========
Evaluating New York Teachers, Perhaps the Numbers Do Lie
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: March 6, 2011 The New York times
No one at the Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies works harder than Stacey Isaacson, a seventh-grade English and social studies teacher. She is out the door of her Queens home by 6:15 a.m., takes the E train into Manhattan and is standing out front when the school doors are unlocked, at 7. Nights, she leaves her classroom at 5:30.
Related in Opinion
Though her principal praised her work, Stacey Isaacson received a poor ranking in a statistical model used by New York City schools to evaluate teachers.
“She’s very dedicated,” said Tejal Bahtt, a fellow teacher. “She works way harder than I work. Yesterday I punched in at 7:10 and her time card was already there.”
Last year, when Ms. Isaacson was on maternity leave, she came in one full day a week for the entire school year for no pay and taught a peer leadership class.
Her principal, Megan Adams, has given her terrific reviews during the two and a half years Ms. Isaacson has been a teacher. “I know that this year had its moments of challenge — you always handled it with grace and presence,” the principal wrote on May 4, 2009. “You are a wonderful teacher.”
On the first day of this school year, the principal wrote, “I look forward to being in your classroom and seeing all the great work you do with your students,” and signed it with a smiley face.
The Lab School has selective admissions, and Ms. Isaacson’s students have excelled. Her first year teaching, 65 of 66 scored proficient on the state language arts test, meaning they got 3’s or 4’s; only one scored below grade level with a 2. More than two dozen students from her first two years teaching have gone on to Stuyvesant High School or Bronx High School of Science, the city’s most competitive high schools.
“Definitely one of a kind,” said Isabelle St. Clair, now a sophomore at Bard, another selective high school. “I’ve had lots of good teachers, but she stood out — I learned so much from her.”
You would think the Department of Education would want to replicate Ms. Isaacson — who has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia — and sprinkle Ms. Isaacsons all over town. Instead, the department’s accountability experts have developed a complex formula to calculate how much academic progress a teacher’s students make in a year — the teacher’s value-added score — and that formula indicates that Ms. Isaacson is one of the city’s worst teachers.
According to the formula, Ms. Isaacson ranks in the 7th percentile among her teaching peers — meaning 93 per cent are better.
This may seem disconnected from reality, but it has real ramifications. Because of her 7th percentile, Ms. Isaacson was told in February that it was virtually certain that she would not be getting tenure this year. “My principal said that given the opportunity, she would advocate for me,” Ms. Isaacson said. “But she said don’t get your hopes up, with a 7th percentile, there wasn’t much she could do.”
That’s not the only problem Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile has caused. If the mayor and governor have their way, and layoffs are no longer based on seniority but instead are based on the city’s formulas that scientifically identify good teachers, Ms. Isaacson is pretty sure she’d be cooked.
She may leave anyway. She is 33 and had a successful career in advertising and finance before taking the teaching job, at half the pay.
“I love teaching,” she said. “I love my principal, I feel so lucky to work for her. But the people at the Department of Education — you feel demoralized.”
How could this happen to Ms. Isaacson? It took a lot of hard work by the accountability experts.
Everyone who teaches math or English has received a teacher data report. On the surface the report seems straightforward. Ms. Isaacson’s students had a prior proficiency score of 3.57. Her students were predicted to get a 3.69 — based on the scores of comparable students around the city. Her students actually scored 3.63. So Ms. Isaacson’s value added is 3.63-3.69.
What you would think this means is that Ms. Isaacson’s students averaged 3.57 on the test the year before; they were predicted to average 3.69 this year; they actually averaged 3.63, giving her a value added of 0.06 below zero.
Wrong.
These are not averages. For example, the department defines Ms. Isaacson’s 3.57 prior proficiency as “the average prior year proficiency rating of the students who contribute to a teacher’s value added score.”
Right.
The calculation for Ms. Isaacson’s 3.69 predicted score is even more daunting. It is based on 32 variables — including whether a student was “retained in grade before pretest year” and whether a student is “new to city in pretest or post-test year.”
Those 32 variables are plugged into a statistical model that looks like one of those equations that in “Good Will Hunting” only Matt Damon was capable of solving.
The process appears transparent, but it is clear as mud, even for smart lay people like teachers, principals and — I hesitate to say this — journalists.
Ms. Isaacson may have two Ivy League degrees, but she is lost. “I find this impossible to understand,” she said.
In plain English, Ms. Isaacson’s best guess about what the department is trying to tell her is: Even though 65 of her 66 students scored proficient on the state test, more of her 3s should have been 4s.
But that is only a guess.
Moreover, as the city indicates on the data reports, there is a large margin of error. So Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile could actually be as low as zero or as high as the 52nd percentile — a score that could have earned her tenure.
Teachers are eligible for tenure in their third year. To qualify, a teacher must be rated “effective” in three categories: instructional practices, including observations by the principal; contribution to the school community; and student achievement, including the teacher data report. Ms. Isaacson was rated effective on the first two.
The past chancellor, Joel I. Klein, imposed new policies to make tenure harder to earn.
In an e-mail, Matthew Mittenthal, a department spokesman said: “We are saying that a teacher’s tenure decision should simply be delayed (not denied) until that teacher has demonstrated effective practice for consecutive years in all three categories. The alternative is what we’ve had in the past — 90-plus percent of teachers who are up for tenure receive it. Do you think journalists deserve lifetime jobs after their third year in the business?”
The view seems to be gaining support.
However, the number of years that it should take to earn tenure does not get to the heart of the problem.
The tougher question, says Ms. Isaacson, is how to create a system that will fairly evaluate teachers, whether it is used to grant tenure or lay off teachers. “I don’t have a problem looking at teachers based on merit,” she said. “Every job I had, I was evaluated based on merit.”
Marya Friedman, a sophomore at Bronx Science, describes Ms. Isaacson as brimming over with merit. “I really liked how she’d incorporate what we were doing in history with what we did in English,” Marya said. “It was much easier to learn” — which, of course, is what great teachers strive for.
No system will retain talented and competent teachers – because those that are in fact talented and competent, no matter how dedicated, will not stand for it. For all the abuses of the systems that have been put in place (and yes, there are many), you cannot avoid the “real” and ”practical” in favor of pure statistical analysis.
We have seen it, and are constantly arguing it in the area of health care quality measures. These companies rate entire hospitals and systems and services in statistically incorrect manners. Yet paint it as the end-all and be-all , with uber-complicated formulas and oversimplified pretty graphs…. And they sell it (for their own profit) as a tool for people to “choose” which hospital to go to. When pressed, they point to a one-line caveat in tiny print at the bottom of a web page that supposedly exonerates them from responsibility.
We also have seen it in baseball, where Moneyball originally was touted as the perfect way to quantify players’ performances. And over time, it has been proven that it does not work like that – that the accurate measurement of performance is NOT so clinically analyzed.
And because of politics & cronyism and bad appointments, the people that are put/elected into power are NOT knowledgeable in this area. These people are sometimes (often) NOT the sharpest tools in the shed. Add to that the fact that the citizenry is biased, reactionary, and over-emotional on the subject …. And mob mentality takes over.
We have set ourselves up to ruin the HELL out of the system & the kids who must go through it.
========
Evaluating New York Teachers, Perhaps the Numbers Do Lie
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: March 6, 2011 The New York times
No one at the Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies works harder than Stacey Isaacson, a seventh-grade English and social studies teacher. She is out the door of her Queens home by 6:15 a.m., takes the E train into Manhattan and is standing out front when the school doors are unlocked, at 7. Nights, she leaves her classroom at 5:30.
Related in Opinion
Though her principal praised her work, Stacey Isaacson received a poor ranking in a statistical model used by New York City schools to evaluate teachers.
“She’s very dedicated,” said Tejal Bahtt, a fellow teacher. “She works way harder than I work. Yesterday I punched in at 7:10 and her time card was already there.”
Last year, when Ms. Isaacson was on maternity leave, she came in one full day a week for the entire school year for no pay and taught a peer leadership class.
Her principal, Megan Adams, has given her terrific reviews during the two and a half years Ms. Isaacson has been a teacher. “I know that this year had its moments of challenge — you always handled it with grace and presence,” the principal wrote on May 4, 2009. “You are a wonderful teacher.”
On the first day of this school year, the principal wrote, “I look forward to being in your classroom and seeing all the great work you do with your students,” and signed it with a smiley face.
The Lab School has selective admissions, and Ms. Isaacson’s students have excelled. Her first year teaching, 65 of 66 scored proficient on the state language arts test, meaning they got 3’s or 4’s; only one scored below grade level with a 2. More than two dozen students from her first two years teaching have gone on to Stuyvesant High School or Bronx High School of Science, the city’s most competitive high schools.
“Definitely one of a kind,” said Isabelle St. Clair, now a sophomore at Bard, another selective high school. “I’ve had lots of good teachers, but she stood out — I learned so much from her.”
You would think the Department of Education would want to replicate Ms. Isaacson — who has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia — and sprinkle Ms. Isaacsons all over town. Instead, the department’s accountability experts have developed a complex formula to calculate how much academic progress a teacher’s students make in a year — the teacher’s value-added score — and that formula indicates that Ms. Isaacson is one of the city’s worst teachers.
According to the formula, Ms. Isaacson ranks in the 7th percentile among her teaching peers — meaning 93 per cent are better.
This may seem disconnected from reality, but it has real ramifications. Because of her 7th percentile, Ms. Isaacson was told in February that it was virtually certain that she would not be getting tenure this year. “My principal said that given the opportunity, she would advocate for me,” Ms. Isaacson said. “But she said don’t get your hopes up, with a 7th percentile, there wasn’t much she could do.”
That’s not the only problem Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile has caused. If the mayor and governor have their way, and layoffs are no longer based on seniority but instead are based on the city’s formulas that scientifically identify good teachers, Ms. Isaacson is pretty sure she’d be cooked.
She may leave anyway. She is 33 and had a successful career in advertising and finance before taking the teaching job, at half the pay.
“I love teaching,” she said. “I love my principal, I feel so lucky to work for her. But the people at the Department of Education — you feel demoralized.”
How could this happen to Ms. Isaacson? It took a lot of hard work by the accountability experts.
Everyone who teaches math or English has received a teacher data report. On the surface the report seems straightforward. Ms. Isaacson’s students had a prior proficiency score of 3.57. Her students were predicted to get a 3.69 — based on the scores of comparable students around the city. Her students actually scored 3.63. So Ms. Isaacson’s value added is 3.63-3.69.
What you would think this means is that Ms. Isaacson’s students averaged 3.57 on the test the year before; they were predicted to average 3.69 this year; they actually averaged 3.63, giving her a value added of 0.06 below zero.
Wrong.
These are not averages. For example, the department defines Ms. Isaacson’s 3.57 prior proficiency as “the average prior year proficiency rating of the students who contribute to a teacher’s value added score.”
Right.
The calculation for Ms. Isaacson’s 3.69 predicted score is even more daunting. It is based on 32 variables — including whether a student was “retained in grade before pretest year” and whether a student is “new to city in pretest or post-test year.”
Those 32 variables are plugged into a statistical model that looks like one of those equations that in “Good Will Hunting” only Matt Damon was capable of solving.
The process appears transparent, but it is clear as mud, even for smart lay people like teachers, principals and — I hesitate to say this — journalists.
Ms. Isaacson may have two Ivy League degrees, but she is lost. “I find this impossible to understand,” she said.
In plain English, Ms. Isaacson’s best guess about what the department is trying to tell her is: Even though 65 of her 66 students scored proficient on the state test, more of her 3s should have been 4s.
But that is only a guess.
Moreover, as the city indicates on the data reports, there is a large margin of error. So Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile could actually be as low as zero or as high as the 52nd percentile — a score that could have earned her tenure.
Teachers are eligible for tenure in their third year. To qualify, a teacher must be rated “effective” in three categories: instructional practices, including observations by the principal; contribution to the school community; and student achievement, including the teacher data report. Ms. Isaacson was rated effective on the first two.
The past chancellor, Joel I. Klein, imposed new policies to make tenure harder to earn.
In an e-mail, Matthew Mittenthal, a department spokesman said: “We are saying that a teacher’s tenure decision should simply be delayed (not denied) until that teacher has demonstrated effective practice for consecutive years in all three categories. The alternative is what we’ve had in the past — 90-plus percent of teachers who are up for tenure receive it. Do you think journalists deserve lifetime jobs after their third year in the business?”
The view seems to be gaining support.
However, the number of years that it should take to earn tenure does not get to the heart of the problem.
The tougher question, says Ms. Isaacson, is how to create a system that will fairly evaluate teachers, whether it is used to grant tenure or lay off teachers. “I don’t have a problem looking at teachers based on merit,” she said. “Every job I had, I was evaluated based on merit.”
Marya Friedman, a sophomore at Bronx Science, describes Ms. Isaacson as brimming over with merit. “I really liked how she’d incorporate what we were doing in history with what we did in English,” Marya said. “It was much easier to learn” — which, of course, is what great teachers strive for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
