UPDATE: This fantastic Gotham Schools article explains that New York's rating system was designed to guarantee that "effective" and "ineffective" teachers would be found all over the city. Which renders the New York Times story--and my post--basically moot.
Still, this wasn't the first bit of evidence showing that we might not have a teacher effectiveness gap, or at least much of one. This rigorous CALDER study, in particular, found that:
The average effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty schools is in general less than teachers in other schools, but only slightly, and not in all comparisons. The authors also find differences in within-school-type variation in teacher effectiveness in nearly every comparison. These differences are largely driven by the longer tail at the bottom of the teacher effectiveness distribution in high-poverty schools. Teachers at the top of the effectiveness distribution are very similar across school settings.
So the evidence on the lack of a gap isn't as open and shut as my post implies. But it certainly appears likely that the gap is much smaller than we once thought -- which does call for pushing the pause button on massive efforts to move teachers around.
The finding -- reported by the Times this weekend -- that really good, and really bad, teachers are evenly distributed around New York City is jaw-dropping news. It upends everything we thought we knew about teacher quality, especially the notion that our achievement gap is caused in large part by a "teacher quality gap," with the worst teachers clustered in the neediest schools. But they aren't. So now what?
Let me stipulate that this finding might be incorrect (though previous analyses have come to similar conclusions). Maybe it's harder for teachers in affluent schools to show strong value-added gains, because their students are already topping out on the tests. Perhaps student mobility is making teachers in high-poverty schools look better than they really are. (Their worst students don't show up for testing -- or have already moved onto another school.)
But assume it's true. What are the implications?
We have a lot of problems in K-12 education to address. Let's be grateful that we can take "closing the teacher effectiveness gap" off our to-do list.
Originally published on the Fordham Institute's Flypaper blog.
Follow Michael J. Petrilli on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MichaelPetrilli
High poverty students with a lot of mobility to not benefit teachers in those areas. Where do you think they move to? Affluent suburbs. If you & I teach in high poverty schools, some of your students move to my school, some of my students move to your school, and we both lose in the deal due to the lack of continuity for the students moving.
The value added formula is very complicated and gives extra weight for increasing the performance of high poverty students among other things. The reason teachers in all these different settings come out about the same, on average, is because the value added formula is calibrated to make this happen. This is like me using a strict curve in my class and saying my test was about right because I had just as many students that did really well (A) as failed. It has nothing to do with the test or the students knowledge, the grading system I used ensured the same number of A's and F's (not that I actually use a strict curve).
12.25%(!!!)
"Maybe student mobility is making teachers in high poverty areas look better (they move to other schools)". Where on earth do you think these high mobility students in high poverty areas move to? Affluent schools? They are shuffled between different teachers in different high poverty areas. If you & I are teachers in high poverty areas, some of my students will move to your school, and some of your students will move to my school. Neither one of us is helped by this.
Teachers in high poverty areas get, on average, about the same ratings as teachers in other areas because the very complicated value added formula was essentially set up to make this happen. The value added scores factor in the characteristics of the students. Moving a high poverty student up 5 percentile points gets you a higher rating than moving a non-impoverished student up 5 percentile points because it is more difficult to accomplish, on average. How do you decide how much of a "curve" to give the teachers of high poverty students? Well you give enough of a curve so that they come out about the same as everyone else. Maybe the high poverty area teachers are better, maybe they are worse, maybe the are the same - there is no way of knowing from value added scores.
How exactly does test scores even evaluate a teacher? Is this truly the ONLY way we can evaluate them?
Does this take kids backgrounds at all into consideration? The fact that half our nations' kids fail to even motivate themselves to graduate? That most families now are single parent? Or are too poor to enrich the kids? Or that they are performing years below grade level when they enter classrooms?
AMERICA NEEDS TO GET OUT OF ITS DENIAL. Schools are microcosms of their communities. They are not only places of transformation, but are reflections of the priorities of those communites. I am an experienced teacher of 15 years in inner city schools and I have seen the villification process go from bad to worse. I graduated the top of my class at NYU and yet every day, I get reminded of my failures. Thank you America. I'll be quitting soon. Enjoy the nightmare you made.
And how exactly is more time for art, music, and physical education NOT part of "adding value."
This guy's bias is so apparent even a 3rd grader can see it.
2. yes, better schools whose students go on to future success don't care much about "value-added." this should be evidence enough that it doesn't add much actual value.
3. teachers are not a commodity that can be easily shifted from one school to another without disturbing the ecology of both. the quality of education in a classroom depends on many different variables, not the least of which is stability. creating instability in a school environment is generally harmful.
Which is just a quibble, as whichever number we choose, the fact remains that teachers have a small impact on that number and it's completely inaccurate to base their evaluations on it.
1. Neighbourhood Culture
2. Family Culture
3. Peer Group Culture
Above cultures generate emotional states leading to non-compliance. These cultural and emotional factors determine achievement gap.
Non-compliant kids, (almost always from chaotic environments) are unteachable. Their behaviour turns teachers into behavioral managers. They destroy the educational opportunities of students they share classes with.
The needs of the non-compliant cannot be met in regular schools. They need alternative provision.
Avoidance of this reality is the reason that the schools fail and no solution is ever found. The schools cannot provide a solution. They are the problem.
The non-compliant require an unstructured, democratic, non-institutional environment. Not school.
Those who refuse to recognize this, help make things worse and worse. And that is what is happening. Things are getting worse and worse. Numbers of non-compliant grows and grows.
It beats thinking!
Progressives are committed to an analysis of the educational crisis based upon social deprivation. If people are deprived they are vulnerable and therefore not to blame. And, if you dare to assert that the non-compliant are responsible, your narrative will be perverted by conservatives into one of the lazy and disaffected poor.
So, the truth cannot be faced. Because the truth is - the poor, the vulgar, the uneducated, the feckless, the disaffected and the chaotic are sending disturbed, alienated children into the system where they cause havoc.
Formerly, they could be intimidated into dumb obedience but with the move from traditionalist to humanistic pedagogy, rule-based systems of compliance came to be.
And, as we all now know (and many rationalize), the disaffected care not a whit for rules.
Why so sensitive to the compliance system? Because they are already savagely oppressed, the extra burden that the school imposes is intolerable. These non-compliant children are the real progressives. They demand democratization.
And progressive educators are now the new traditionalists.
Hard to bear: easy to deny.