The world wasn't exactly shocked in 2009 when Alex Rodriguez's name turned up on a list of 104 Major League Baseball players who had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
Nor was anyone surprised to learn later that year that David Ortiz -- the Red Sox's "Big Papi" and a six-time All Star -- was on the same list. Except, that is, David Ortiz. For years, his standard line about drug testing was, "All I know is they're going to find a lot of rice and beans." And steroids, he forgot to say.
Both the league and the players had planned on keeping the results private. And so they were -- until 2009.
Promised confidentiality has, of course, a checkered history. Circumstances change, leaders change, norms change. Technology turns science fiction into reality. And what was once never intended for public consumption ends up as front-page news -- or online, for billions of us to download.
The U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton know this only too well. So do New York City teachers. Under a 2008 agreement between Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, all New York City teachers of math and English in grades 4 to 8 receive an annual "Teacher Data Report" that tells them how their students perform on standardized state tests.
But the data reports do more than that -- they calculate a teacher's individual "value-added" score, which indicates whether his or her students are doing better or worse than statistical models predict they'd do given their background characteristics. The thinking is that teachers whose students make exceptional gains year after year should somehow be rewarded or at least studied so that other teachers can emulate what they're doing. The flip-side of this, naturally, is that teachers whose students routinely learn less than the models predict should be helped -- or forced out.
Reliable value-added models are notoriously tough to build, as they must take into account numerous factors beyond a teacher's control, including class size, students' prior test scores and students' poverty status. New York City's model takes into account about three dozen such factors. Still, experts caution that value-added analysis is far from perfect, not least because its only measure of student learning is standardized test-score results.
The 2008 agreement made clear that the Teacher Data Reports were not to be used in teacher evaluations or tenure decisions. Nor were they intended for the eyes of anyone but the relevant teachers and principals. To this day, the New York City Department of Education website is unambiguous about this: "Teacher Data Reports are designed to be used internally, and should not be shared with parents, students, or the general public" (emphasis in the original).
But original intentions -- as A-Rod, Big Papi and the State Department have learned -- might not matter much. Race to the Top, the Obama administration's signature education-reform initiative to date, urged states to factor student achievement into teacher evaluations. Many states, including Colorado and New York, changed relevant laws in hopes of winning part of Race to the Top's $4.3 billion jackpot.
Last week, the Bloomberg administration squared off against the teachers' union in court, arguing that the names and value-added ratings of roughly 12,000 New York City teachers should be made public. Bloomberg and Klein contend that the public has a right to know how public employees are performing. The union, in a 156-page filing, has countered that the Teacher Data Reports are often incomplete and inaccurate -- and thus not ready for prime-time.
Value-added scores were headline news earlier this year when the Los Angeles Times published a series of articles, "Grading the Teachers," based on district data that the paper acquired through the California Public Records Act. The Times also unveiled a publicly accessible database containing the value-added scores of about 6,000 elementary teachers in L.A. Unified School District. (Disclosure: The Hechinger Report, for which I write, helped fund the work of the economist who crunched the numbers for the Times, but it did not participate in the analysis.)
Other newspapers nationwide soon were clamoring to do the same -- get their hands on value-added data and publish pieces about the high-performers and low-performers. At the same time, a spate of new reports on both the promises and perils of value-added analysis went mainstream. Proponents have tended to speak of value-added as if they've found the Holy Grail -- finally, public education will be fixed! Opponents see instead the demonization of teachers and an obsession with mostly meaningless metrics that don't capture the subtleties of a teacher's work.
A ruling is expected in New York City as early as this week. But regardless of what Judge Cynthia Kern decides, it's safe to say that the current teacher-evaluation system is broken in most school districts nationwide -- and that value-added analysis is here to stay.
The reality is we like numbers and we love accountability, at least when it comes to schools. We are addicted to standardized test scores. We hate failure. And we cannot fathom why our urban public schools have been in such a deep funk for such a long time.
We know teachers are important. But are they, by and large, doing a good job? How can we know? What's the evidence, other than gut feelings?
The answer is we don't really have good ways to measure teacher performance right now. Our system for evaluating teachers wasn't built to take into account their performance, so we're struggling mightily to find ways of doing so.
The uselessness of current teacher-evaluation systems was made apparent in "The Widget Effect," a 2009 report by The New Teacher Project that found more than 99 percent of teachers are rated "satisfactory" each year. The report, subtitled "Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness," also found that teacher performance played no role in districts' decision-making about professional development, compensation, tenure and layoffs.
The Obama administration, as well as many think tanks and education reformers, is determined to change that. And value-added scores will almost certainly play a prominent role.
To many reformers, value-added analysis is sleek and sexy -- it involves lots of numbers and esoteric talk of "controls," "confidence intervals" and "statistical significance." Skeptics say it's all statistical pyrotechnics -- flashy but frivolous. Nonetheless, there's an emerging consensus that a new system will need to take into account multiple measures of a teacher's performance -- value-added scores, but also classroom observations by peers and principals, lesson plans, portfolios and self-evaluations.
A perfect evaluation system is probably a pipedream. Andrew Rotherham, who writes the Eduwonk blog as well as the weekly "School of Thought" column for Time magazine, says that "You can't have a system that makes sure nothing unfair happens to someone. ... People can be let go for the wrong reasons. That can happen. That is life."
The real question, then, is whether value-added analysis is an improvement over tools we've relied on in the past, and for Rotherham and many other experts in the field, the answer is an unambiguous "yes."
Not everyone agrees, including some observers abroad. Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture, says: "It's very difficult to use this data to say anything about the effectiveness of teachers. If you tried to do this in my country, Finnish teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn't return until this crazy idea went away. Finns don't believe you can reliably measure the essence of learning."
Grading the Teachers: Value-Added Analysis - latimes.com
Los Angeles Teacher Ratings - Los Angeles Times
Rating Teachers: The Trouble with Value-Added Analysis - TIME
Teachers union president criticizes LA Times 'value added' teacher ...
Education Week: A Look at the Fuss Over Value-Added Teacher Data
Value-Added: It's Not Perfect, But It Makes Sense
New Chancellor Cathie Black's take on value-added teacher data: It's not black ...
And NYC notoriously removes some of the brightest and most honored teachers from duty for reasons that are downright unnerving. Many teachers sent to the rubber rooms are whistle blowers who report corruption and abuse in the school or system, which is what corrodes quality in education. This also is trend in LA where tenure and union are not nearly as substantial as the anti/teacher propaganda has led the public to believe. There is no due process for teacher when they provoke administrative discipline/-they use threats to a teacher's credentials as intimidation, displace and defame us wantonly and get away with it. Decades of excellent service mean nothing to them. This is cost effective not highly-qualified. Mercenary teacher cleansing allows the unnecssary expense they generate to remain unscathed.
At Jordon HS in Watts teachers have all lost their jobs, which they can reapply for, but as teachers at Freemont know that is humiliating and biased by a preference for newer, cheaper models which are easier to control.
What taxpayers do NOT know is that school districts are full of corrupt EducRAT$ who siphon money from classrooms in the schools that need it most, commandeering failure for more profits and protected by legislation the makes them impervious to prosecution and civil liability even when they act in malice
And they do.
In order for a teacher to be rated unsatisfactory the administration must provide ways for the teacher to improve. Too many administrators see this as too much work and give the teacher a good evaluation.
Teachers with good evaluations get quickly hired into new schools if they apply to another school in the district. Teachers with bad evaluations don't get hired into new schools.
Taking steroids is illegal. Also, many baseball players lied and claimed they did not take steroids under oath. Both of those actions are crimes.
I agree, when a teacher does illegal acts, they should no longer expect privacy.
When teachers have a legally binding contract, one which they are honouring on their side, they should actually have the expectation of privacy and that the folks on the other side will honour their agreement. It would seem to me that it's the DOE trying to break and justify a legally binding contract.
Sounds about as reasonable as the recent outcry about states being "on the hook" for teacher pensions. As in, the legally agreed upon pensions teachers pay money into that they accept in lieu of pay raises and such.
When you agree to a legally binding contract, you actually need to follow it. Even right wing lobby groups and writers financially supported by think tanks can't convince me otherwise.
I know that this sounds like simplistic boilerplate, but Bush's/Obama's war on teachers, while completely ignoring the effect of poverty on education outcomes......it always leads me back to the same place. It's amazing: privatizing education was seen as a major failure back in the late 80s/early 90s. Nowadays, it's accepted orthodoxy.
the article appears to reject a "gut" reaction as a way to measure teaching or learning. but gut reactions are relevant. the teaching/learning nexus is highly interactive and includes verbal, nonverbal, conscious and unconscious communication. gut reactions count. the problem for politicians and people in the "educational market" is that it's all so hard to put numbers on.
well, sorry. teaching/learning is an art AND a science. the art part, the magic part, can't be measured. And that unmeasurable part is the part students take with them into life. we're all so individual that the layering process of learning occurs differently for everyone.
bureaucrats,.politicians and crooks want to quantify everything. but in education that doesn't work. that anyone takes seriously a "formula" devised to exactly measure what a teacher adds to a child's learning, is preposterous! it's self-satire. it's twilight zone.
in the near future, teachers will be people who unwrap the cellophane on a rosetta stone learning program and pass out the materials.
I spoke of our approaching 1984. What is happening is chilling. So cold.
Please don't miss this youtube video on the subject of video surveillance of teachers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpmQZ5MXs8c
You're right, these are "public" schools.
When I taught, I always made a point of welcoming my kids' parents to my classroom and encouraging them to visit. That is only right because our schools are their schools. I wanted them there and I wanted them to feel welcome and appreciated.
But what is happening today is above and beyond. Teachers know their profession and public ed itself are under enormous attack from multiple fronts. And they know nothing good will come of this. Unless the privatizers' plans backfire and this video thing works instead to increase citizen support for our schools.
And it may be that Bill Gates really does mean well. How could I know? But as a teacher, I can tell you that what he has in mind for public schools and teachers will only intensify what already does not work, what already is causing much harm to children and teachers alike.
And, I disagree with your logic... just because we are in a public space, it does not mean there are no longer any expectations of privacy or who sees certain activities/information. Try walking into a women's public washroom the next time you are in public and peek over an occupied stall. I think you'll quickly find there are public places that have some level expectations of privacy.
While you're at it, public classrooms are not entirely public. You cannot just walk into the school without identification, sign in, name tag, and a purpose for being there. If you try to walk in, the security guards, who are actual members of the NYPD, will kindly escort you out. There are still rules and expectations in public places. I believe the public part actually refers to admission policies and government ownership rather than the removal of all expectations of privacy.
Roughly 8% (12 million) have advanced degrees.
Teachers require and advanced degree
There are over 6 million teachers in America
So, 1/2 of people with advanced degrees need to become teachers
Considering that teachers make less than most folks with advanced degrees (ie doctors, lawyers, investors), get less respect, are blamed by parents and politicians for the failings of students, and get cursed out by the very students they are trying to help learn, I can't imagine why people are applauding focusing the majority of reform energy on firing and getting rid of pensions/unions.
Add into all of this that 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years, most of them because they can't hack the job and don't get enough support, and, statistics clearly show that teachers are not very effective in their first two years of teaching, and, one has to wonder when people are going to take their heads out of the sand and get a grip on reality. There is not an unlimited supply of people qualified & willing to do this job, and, being in the trenches at an urban school, many talented/effective teachers are burnt out and frequently talk of leaving. If you actually truly believe teachers make a difference, maybe the primary focus should be on keeping teachers and keeping the job competitive, not adding extra stress to the job to shoo away more talented individuals.
It is mathematically impossible to create a value added model that is without a flaw. It is impossible to measure the thousands of things I do everyday and the millions of influences I have each year. I'm very sorry that someone had someone they considered a "poor" teacher at one time. But the truth is . . . some of us are well worth the money. It's also true that even the best teacher is hated by someone - child or parent that did not agree with one or many of the things that teachers do everyday, that could cause someone to explode. Give a teacher a break - please hate someone else who isn't trying. Our backs are not large enough to take the blame for everything bad that happened to everyone in the universe. yeeeesh.
However, according to the most recent teacher effectiveness study funded by the Gates Foundation, teachers who have the stamina and strength of character to hold their pee all day are 3 to 4 times more likely to generate high test scores.