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Round 2 or 22 on Value-Added Testing

Posted on | February 10, 2011 | Comments Off on Round 2 or 22 on Value-Added Testing

I’ve written a piece for the Huffington Post and Thoughts in Public Education about the reanalysis of the value-added teacher evaluation exposé published by the Los Angeles Times last August. Derek Briggs, who heads the research and methodology program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and doctoral student Ben Domingue used the same data at Richard Buddin, who ran the analysis for the Times.

They got different results. Not unexpected. And they wrote a 32 page technical report showing how and why they got different results. Nothing strange there.

The report was sponsored and issued by The National Education Policy Center, a reliably left-of-center organization that is in part financed by teacher unions, and the press release had more of the in-your-face quality than I would have liked to see. Nevertheless, the Briggs and Dominque were free to pursue the work as they wished. Briggs is a veteran of value-added research work and an expert on causal analysis. They completed their work, and the final report was not altered or spun by NEPC.

The same cannot be said about the L.A. Times reporting of the piece, and that is the major point of my HP piece. When a newspaper goes from reporting events that take place to creating the events, which is the case with the value-added teacher evaluation story, then its handling of contrary opinions and evidence must be straightforward. Monday’s story was anything but that. It spun the story to make it look as if Briggs and Dominque essentially agreed with the Times analysis.

(It also broke the embargo on the story’s release (everyone else with the exception of a Washington Post blogger) played by the rules, but that’s a relatively minor issue, even though it really tees off other journalists.)

The larger point is that if value added analysis is going to be accepted as a reasonable form of research and if it is going to be applied to individual teachers rather than entire schools, very careful work needs to be done in order to polish the method and make it credible. The Times stonewalling prevents an important public policy discussion from taking place. There has been a barrage of scholarly and policy criticism of the Times. Little of it has gotten serious attention in the paper.

Please read the Briggs and Dominque research for yourself along with their response to the Times piece.

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Claremont Colleges Talk on “Learning from L.A.” Available On-Line, Here

Posted on | February 1, 2011 | Comments Off on Claremont Colleges Talk on “Learning from L.A.” Available On-Line, Here

The good people at the Honnold Library have edited my talk from last November and integrated it with the slide show.  It is available at the Library’s web site.

Category: Uncategorized

A Cautionary Story About Merit Pay

Posted on | January 26, 2011 | Comments Off on A Cautionary Story About Merit Pay

In a just published piece on the PACE blog, I talk about the unintended consequences of paying teachers based on student results.  In the long run, actually much more quickly than one might think, Talent will organize to insure its economic success.  The blog piece retells the story of how baseball players became superstars with outsized paychecks.  It’s a long way from teacherdom, and teacher salaries to major league baseball, but the principle holds: if you name something, and say that it is valued, it is likely to have economic consequences.  I am not at all sure that pipers of economic competitiveness among teachers have figured out the cost of the tune they are playing.  But some smart union organizer will.  Read the whole piece here.

Category: California, Education Reform, teacher unions, Uncategorized
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Education Diagnosed in 10 Minutes

Posted on | January 8, 2011 | Comments Off on Education Diagnosed in 10 Minutes

Sir Ken Robinson’s remarkable way of summarizing the world is making its way around the Internet.  At last count, nearly 2.5 million hits.  See this from TED. The problem in the current system, he notes, is that the people are trying fix the future by replicating the lessons from the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution.  He takes a swipe at age-group batch processing, ADHD, standardized testing and teaching.  “I believe we have to go in the exact opposite direction.”  Enjoy.

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Teacher-Run School Gets Good Ink

Posted on | December 31, 2010 | Comments Off on Teacher-Run School Gets Good Ink

The Avalon School in St. Paul, which I profiled in a case study (available freely by clicking the Projects link) has received a nice mention in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune. The story was also linked in Education Week, and a Forbes magazine blog.  It’s good to have this work seen and used.  And this from Joe Nathan via Tom Vander Ark in The Huffington Post; also in the Carnegie Foundation blog.

Category: Uncategorized

Short thoughts on a sunny Christmas afternoon

Posted on | December 25, 2010 | Comments Off on Short thoughts on a sunny Christmas afternoon

The rain has ended and the snow-clad San Gabriels look down on Claremont today.  It was a starry Christmas Eve, and I gathered with friends and congregants to sing Silent Night at Midnight by candlelight.  I have experienced the service of Lessons and Carols for more than half a century, and it still moves me.  Our little Presbyterian congregation is blessed with extraordinary music.  Jenelle Westerbeck Anderson, Jerry DeMasi, and scores of others brought the evening the majesty and wonder it needed.

Today in particular is is worth reflecting on the last paragraphs from Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s New book on religion in America:

How has America solved the puzzle of religious pluralism–the coexistence of religious diversity an devotion?  And how has it done so in the wake of growing religious polarization?  By creating a web of interlocking personal relationships of people of many different faiths.

This is America’s grace.

Or to quote Howard Rice’s bumper sticker: God loves the whole wide world; no exceptions.

Category: Uncategorized

Speaking at PACE Seminar in Sacramento on December 17

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | Comments Off on Speaking at PACE Seminar in Sacramento on December 17

Upcoming Seminar:  Learning from LA: Policy Levers for Institutional Change

Date:         Friday, December 17, 2010
Time:        11:30am-1:30pm   Lunch will be provided.
Location:   UC Center Sacramento, 1130 K Street, Conference Room

Presenter:  Charles Taylor Kerchner, Research Professor, Claremont Graduate University

Please RSVP to Sandra Morales or (916) 669-5425.

The history of the Los Angeles Unified School District over the past five decades, reveals an organization pulled up from its early 20th Century Progressive Era roots.  Decades of reform efforts have provided a lively audition for what a new institution of public education could look like. But public policy and the surrounding political system have created an atmosphere of continuing crisis rather than a new institutional stability. In this seminar Charles Kerchner reviews the recent history of LAUSD, drawing from the recent book, Learning from L.A.: Institutional Change in Public Education. He shows how successive reform efforts have outlined the design of a more effective educational system, and identifies some policy levers that can help to create a new institutional structure for public education, in LA and for all of California and beyond.

More information on upcoming PACE seminars can be found at http://pace.berkeley.edu


Category: Uncategorized

Teacher-Run Schools and the History of Worker’s Cooperatives

Posted on | November 24, 2010 | Comments Off on Teacher-Run Schools and the History of Worker’s Cooperatives

Following our case study on teacher-run schools, Henry Levin wrote to remind me of Worker Cooperatives in America, a 1984 book he co-edited with Robert Jackall.  It still offers pertinent insight into the opportunities and problems of worker owned and operated organizations. “[T]he affective ties which are the basis for selection into collectives bind workers to one another and to their groups in very intense ways.  One one hand, such ties provide collectives with a resiliency that is necessary to cope with their marginality; on the other, they personalize and thus intensify even routine disputes, often producing tangled emotional situations that are very difficult to reconcile.  Many cooperatives founder on the very intensity that is their hallmark.” (95-96)

It is not surprising that cooperatives are again drawing attention; founding them is a historic reaction to hard times. Last night, PBS aired a NOW show on local sourcing, and job creation, including cooperatives.

It is unfortunately the case that our society is so attuned to hierarchical control that we do not train ourselves, our students, or our children in other possibilities.

Category: Uncategorized

Annotating Jerry Brown: Comments on the Governor-Elect’s Education Plan

Posted on | November 20, 2010 | Comments Off on Annotating Jerry Brown: Comments on the Governor-Elect’s Education Plan

Mike Kirst chided me for not paying attention to Jerry Brown’s education plan in earlier comments about what he should do as governor.  So, I took another look.  It’s smart, pragmatic, and a little pregnant.  See the post at Topics in Public Education. Comments invited.

Category: Uncategorized

The Buzz About Teacher-Run Schools

Posted on | November 18, 2010 | Comments Off on The Buzz About Teacher-Run Schools

The media have discovered teacher run schools in a big way.  Christine Hoag of the Associated Press wrote about the Woodland Hills Academy in Los Angeles, which converted to a teacher-run school, albeit one with a principal.  Her story has been published throughout the country, and has received substantial attention.  Alan Coverstone wrote a supportive opinion piece in the Nashville Tennessean as did Gera Summerford, president of the Tennessee Education Association.  Hoag’s article as published on the Huffington Post received a large number of comments.  My case study on teacher run schools continues to be available by clicking the link in the next column.

Interestingly,  Woodland Hills Academy exists within the Los Angeles Unified School District, which I believe is rapidly becoming a national model for how a public school district can assemble a portfolio of schools operated in diverse ways.  WHA serves a racially mixed student body, about 30 percent white, 47 percent Latino, with about half the student eligible for free or reduced price lunch.

Thanks to Kim Ferris-Berg for circulating the links.

Category: Uncategorized
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About

Charles Taylor Kerchner is an Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University. My daily musings appear in the blog. The archives of my EdWeek blog are available via link under the 'On California' head. Some of my photography can be seen by clicking on 'Gallery.' And numerous links to academic work and other research and commentary can be found by clicking on 'Projects.'

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