Using kids' test scores, DOE conducting secretive experiments on teachers

Posted by Philissa at 9:52 AM

Who knew I was already right when I hypothesized two weeks ago that the DOE was hoping to change the way teachers are evaluated? Well, besides Eduwonkette, who left a comment telling me so, and at least 140 principals whose teachers are already being judged according to their students' test scores in an initiative so top secret that even the teachers don't know about it? Very few people, it appears, according to the New York Times.

In the already-underway experiment, which the Times was the first to report, the test score gains of students at 140 schools will be used to judge their teachers' success. The DOE is setting "predicted gains" for teachers based on their students' skills, experiences, and backgrounds — and then crunching the numbers to see if the teachers meet those goals. The DOE told the Times, which broke the story, that it doesn't plan to use the results to make hiring or firing decisions about individual teachers. But Chris Cerf, who apparently has been deputized to talk up the program, said the results could be one factor used in those decisions, and that ultimately making the results public (a la the progress reports) would reward good teachers and put pressure on bad ones. Certainly, the DOE must be interested in providing more ammunition for the teacher firing squads assembled earlier this year.

Naturally, the UFT's Randi Weingarten, who has backed down in her opposition to other controversial plans, including the Teacher Performance Unit, sounds angry about this one, telling the Times that she and the city disagree on whether results from this pilot or its expansion could be used under the teachers' contract to make hiring or firing decisions. (On the other hand, the Times says the UFT has known about the experiment for four months, but we haven't heard any complaints until now.)

The initiative also appears to undercut the little agency afforded teachers in determining how performance pay is distributed this year. I'm pretty sure that we don't know how many of the schools included in the performance pay pilot elected to distribute their earnings across the whole faculty rather than to individual teachers, but I think it's safe to guess that's what happened in most schools. Now the DOE is doing the divisive, problematic work its teachers declined to do.

The Times predicts a battle this summer between the DOE and the UFT over the experiment results. Let's hope Randi Weingarten (or, potentially, her successor) is up for the fight. The DOE is abusing test score data, which aren't meant for this kind of crunching, and keeping teachers in the dark about how they're being evaluated. Regardless of the quality of the research (though even that is questionable — Eduwonkette wonders whether the experiment is ethical given that many of the research subjects don't know they are part of an experiment at all), the way the DOE has gone about this one is just not right.

Starting in 2009, college courses for "potential dropouts"

Posted by Philissa at 10:46 AM

The DOE is maneuvering to offer 12,000 "potential dropouts" a year of college courses while still in high school, the New York Times reports today. The $100 million initiative, which the DOE hopes to launch in 2009 with or without state funding, is predicated on the idea that kids in dual-enrollment programs are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll and stay in college. A recent report, based on analysis of data from New York and Florida, advanced this conclusion; the report also found that low-income kids benefit more from dual-enrollment than their wealthier peers but that schools frequently set standards for admission to college courses that exclude many students.

The DOE plans to eliminate those constraints and in fact to push the neediest kids to take the new courses. Many are excited about the initiative because it could help families save on college costs and get disaffected kids excited about school. Others, such as Leon Botstein, who as president of Bard College has pioneered rigorous early college schools in the city, are concerned that most high schools can't provide college-caliber instruction or atmosphere. "The idea would be to improve the quality of teaching and the treatment of students as adults. This is easier said than done," he told the Times. "You can’t do it in the environment of the traditional high school. You need entirely different faculty." It's not clear whether following those recommendations is part of the DOE's plan.

No one can argue that academically proficient at-risk and low-income kids shouldn't have access to AP courses, Regents-level work in middle school, and college courses. I've certainly visited schools that don't offer advanced courses because they think their students can't handle the work. But the key to high expectations is consistency, and kids don't become "potential dropouts" because they've had excellent education since they entered school. How can the DOE can possibly expect kids who are reading and writing far below grade level to complete college-level work? Shouldn't it devote energy (and state and private dollars) to providing engaging high school-level instruction so kids don't have to enroll in remedial courses in college, a major problem in the CUNY schools? Or perhaps the DOE thinks its high school reforms will be sufficiently successful by 2009 that all kids will be ready for college-level work.

I'm also curious about the recent report extolling the values of dual enrollment. I haven't read it yet, but maybe someone who has can answer this question: Is there evidence to suggest enrolling in college courses actually causes students to graduate from high school at a higher rate? Or is there just a correlation between the two outcomes? It seems more than possible that they are simply both products of better academic preparation (possibly gained at home) and higher motivation. If that's true, enrolling kids with low skills who haven't been motivated to excel before might not achieve the same results. Sounds like the DOE will need a benefactor to fund incentives for enrollment in college courses.

Is the city's "outside" evaluation group really independent?

Posted by Philissa at 11:16 AM

The Times took a look yesterday at the Research Partnership for New York City's Schools, which you read about here last month. There's not much new in the Times article, and there's definitely no word from those who are legitimately concerned that the members of the research group have interests in seeing the data bear out certain results. Over at NYC Educator, reality-based educator writes, "taking a closer look at just who will be doing all the analysis and who will be paying for it, you'd have to say that nearly everybody in this supposed 'outside agency' is connected to the school system."

My take on the panel is not quite as cynical as reality-based educator's, but I agree it's problematic that organizations leading various reform efforts are represented on a panel whose job it is to evaluate reform efforts that include their own. I'm not sure what the solution is. There are a finite number of individuals and organizations who truly care about school reform, and it seems natural that they would seek to enact those reforms in addition to talking about them. So I'm not sure it's possible to get away from these conflicts of interest if educators are to have any influence at all over what conclusions are drawn from education data.

Public advocate launches education hotline

Posted by Philissa at 9:30 AM

After her staff called almost 100 phone numbers at district offices and received responses to fewer than half, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum released a report yesterday saying what many observers have long known: the DOE's reorganization has left parents in the dark. "The start of the school year can be a stressful time for parents and students. The DOE makes matters worse by providing very little information and support," Gotbaum said in a New York Post article.

Gotbaum has set up an education hotline for parents to find out information that district offices should be making available. Right now, the hotline is just getting started, but it should be fully up and running soon. Call 212-669-7250, and let Insideschools know what you find out!

As always, you can call also Advocates for Children's helpline at 1-866-427-6033 with your education issues.

Middle school reforms on the way

Posted by Philissa at 8:48 PM

Today, the mayor and chancellor announced a host of reforms based on the recommendations put forth by the City Council's Middle School Task Force. Council speaker Christine Quinn convened the task force this spring to address what the New York Times recently called the "critical years" of middle school, when adolescence threatens to derail kids' academic and social successes.

Parents will be most interested in the DOE's commitment to add Regents-level courses to all middle schools by 2010 and the fact that the highest-need schools will receive extra funds. Here's exactly what the DOE has agreed to, from the city's press release:

• Identifying at least 50 high-need middle schools that will have access to a $5 million fund to implement the Middle School Task Force recommendations
• Working to implement Task Force recommendations citywide
• Waiving fees for professional development for high-need schools
• Expanding Regents-level courses citywide
• Establishing an ongoing discussion on middle-grade reform with various stakeholders

Interestingly, the task force report mentions 15 times that middle school class size is too large, but the DOE's announcement does not address class size at all, except in a quote from UFT President Randi Weingarten. The announcement similarly does not address parent involvement or safety and discipline at all, although those topics take up more than 10 pages in the report.

It's possible that those topics will be broached by the DOE's new "Director of Middle School Initiatives." The person appointed to this new position, housed in the Division of Teaching and Learning, will be responsible for making sure the task force recommendations are carried out. The mayor announced today that Lori Bennett will be the first person to take on this task; she was formerly a LIS in Region 8, where her new boss, Marcia Lyles, was the superintendent.

Klein's statistics painting too pretty a picture?

Posted by Unknown at 3:16 PM

Chancellor Klein's PR staff deserves as much credit for the City's recent statistical gains as the administration's reorganization, according to Sol Stern's recent column in City Journal. Stern is a scholar at the conservative-tending Manhattan Institute. Stern's piece gives yet another look at the history of NYC's education reform, but it goes beyond a simple history to do a bit of investigative journalism, delving into the tactics of Klein's formidable public relations staff. Stern writes:

The most notorious case of Bloomberg’s data manipulation occurred during the 2005 mayoral race. In May of that year, city hall bused education reporters to P.S. 33, a poor, predominantly minority school in the Bronx, where Bloomberg congratulated the children, their teachers, and Principal Elba Lopez on a miracle: 83 percent of the school’s fourth-graders scored at grade level on the 2005 reading test, compared with only 35.8 percent the previous year—an unheard-of one-year gain of close to 50 percentage points. The school’s score was just 4 percentage points below the average for the state’s richest suburban districts. Further, the mayor announced, the percentage of the city’s fourth-graders passing the state’s reading test had risen by a “record-breaking” 10 points in just one year.

If Bloomberg had really introduced accountability into the city’s education system, the implausible P.S. 33 scores would have raised red flags at the education department and perhaps even prompted a fraud referral to the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigations. Instead, the mayor got the political boost that he sought, with front-page headlines hailing the “historic” gains. Almost no commentary pointed out that fourth-grade reading scores rose by almost 10 percentage points in the rest of the state, too, suggesting that the 2005 test might have been easier than the previous year’s.

Though the full article is nearly 4000 words, it's well worth the time. Thanks to NYC Public School Parents for bringing this one to our attention.

Contracts for Excellence plan draws critiques from Council, public

Posted by Unknown at 2:26 PM

This morning the City Council's Education Committee conducted a hearing on the Department of Education's proposed plan to spend $228 million in state Contracts for Excellence funds. [See previous posts on this topic.] The hearing was organized by Councilman Robert Jackson, president of the Education Committee. Those testifying included officials from the Department of Education, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, and the teachers' and administrators' unions, among others. The hearing was basically an opportunity for council members to get information and, in some cases, to offer their thoughts on the DOE's plan; the plan does not require a signature of approval from the City Council to move forward.

Jackson directed the meeting, and the most interesting part by far was the first two hours, during which Chancellor Klein and Marcia Lyles outlined the DOE's plan and argued that it does, in fact, conform to Governor Spitzer's mandates. (Other testimony, of course, was also pertinent, but was very similar to what we saw during the public hearings on the plan.) Below are what I took to be some of the high points from that segment of the hearing.

• The DOE website has (finally) published a breakdown of Contracts for Excellence funding by district. Although this breakdown does show the amount of money to be spent on each of the five permitted "program areas" in each district (e.g. smaller class sizes, more time on task, etc.), Jackson complained that the document is hardly a comprehensive plan. Instead, it is simply aggregated, by district, individual schools' planned spending in each area.
  
• Jackson was frustrated that the DOE had not made substantive changes to its Fair Student Funding plan in response to the Contracts for Excellence requirements; instead, the department claimed that the plan already complied with the required mandates. In response, Klein argued that the same ultimate goals lie at the heart of both the Contracts for Excellence and Children First reforms, and that it is then unsurprising that Children First's Fair Student Funding didn't have to change much to comply with the state's requirements.
• In response to criticisms about the timing of the DOE's public hearings on the plan, Klein stressed the tight timeline his office faced in organizing the coming year's budgets, saying that "while, as noted, there is a near perfect symmetry between the substance of our reforms and CFE, we must all acknowledge the practical timing challenges related to fulfilling the mandate of the new legislation this first year." Klein said next year's process would be smoother and better advertised in advance.
  
• As with the rest of the Children First reforms, Klein emphasized the need not only for more money, but for that money to be spent well. He returned to this theme several times, using to respond to Jackson's skepticism about whether assessments could qualify for increased "time on task" and to Councilman Koppell's worry that arts education would be neglected in the absence of specific Project Arts allocations.
• Jackson and Klein debated the effectiveness of team teaching as a way to reduce class sizes. According to Klein, the Contracts for Excellence regulations allow adding an additional teacher to a classroom as a means to reduce class size. Although he agreed with Jackson that this measure may not be ideal, he said that, in the absence of more space (which will take time under the new five-year capital improvement plan) it was sometimes the only option.
  
• With respect to class sizes, a point of contention was whether CTT classes should count as such a reduction. CTT, or Collaborative Team Teaching, places special education students in a class with regular students, and the class is taught by two teachers, one of whom is certified in special ed. The DOE plan includes CTT classes in its class size reduction plans. Geri Palast, of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (one of the organizations that sponsored the lawsuit from which the Contract for Excellence funds resulted) criticized this view of CTT classes, saying that CTT programs targeted classes with special needs and autistic students, not students in large classes, and that the funds were therefore not going toward the "highest needs students" as the CFE law requires.

There was, of course, much more covered than can be summed up in these highlights, but these are the significant points that weren't already seen during the public hearings. Have more questions about specific testimony or content? Leave a comment and I'll post some more info.

Commentary on the cash-for-kids plan

Posted by Philissa at 10:41 AM

Since the DOE announced last month its plan to pay some students for their performance on tests, the education world has been abuzz with commentary on the program. Here's a roundup of the dialogue.

Today in the Times, Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, says decades of psychology research suggest the plan could backfire. He writes:

Assumptions that economists make about human motivation, though intuitive and straightforward, are false. In particular, the idea that adding motives always helps is false. There are circumstances in which adding an incentive competes with other motives and diminishes their impact. Psychologists have known this for more than 30 years.

Less demurely, historian Diane Ravitch lambasted the plan in the Huffington Post shortly after it was announced, calling it "anti-democratic, anti-civic, anti-intellectual, and anti-social."

The plan to pay kids has also found a host of defenders. In the comments on Ravitch's piece, for example, one person wrote: "I think I know a lot more about poor people and kids than you do and you are WRONG. This plan sends exactly the right message: good grades are valuable."

And the Staten Island Advance took a look at a similar program in a small town in Ohio and reported that school officials there had seen some signs of success. Those officials also told the Advance that the program had been well received because they had consulted with community members for months before launching the program.

No big surprise: voucher results are "inconclusive" thus far

Posted by Unknown at 2:31 PM

The first test results from Washington D.C.'s voucher experiment were released late last week, and (not surprisingly) both sides of the debate are claiming victory, or at least not admitting defeat.

The Washington Post article linked to above does a good job of summarizing the results and the history of the issue there; the ultimate result, in my eyes, is that it's really still too early to tell whether the results are positive or not. Most programs that fundamentally change the game in public education take more than a single year to demonstrate results. So I wouldn't grant the naysayers too much credence quite yet.

That said, some on the pro-voucher side have said that the simple fact that students who switched schools didn't do worse is support for their position. I'm skeptical of this argument, too-- ultimately I think we just need more time to wait and see.

On a procedural note, I was heartened to read about how the effects of the vouchers were measured, comparing voucher applicants who received vouchers to those who applied but did not receive them. Since the vouchers were awarded by lottery, this method should accurately provide the random variation necessary for a good control group. If this method can be used in subsequent years, after the effects of school changes are more substantial, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to see the real results of D.C.'s program.

A brief history of the DOE

Posted by Philissa at 5:17 PM

In the July 9 issue of the Nation, which is online now, Columbia professor Lynnell Hancock has a long article about the city's schools, titled "School's Out." For those of us who have been carefully watching the schools since Bloomberg and Klein took them over, there isn't too much new information, but if you need a refresher about the many changes that have taken place, it's a useful summary. Hancock touches on the administration's corporate contacts and connections, the bus crisis, social promotion, small schools, parent involvement, and testing, among other issues. Here's a taste of her take on the system: "No matter how competent and committed the players at the top, public-sector reforms on this imposing scale may be doomed if the people most affected are left outside."

Is Bill Gates wrong on schools?

Posted by Philissa at 9:19 PM

A column making the rounds of other blogs this week is “Schooling Bill Gates,” which proposes to let Bill Gates know what schools really need. Gates, who is funding a quixotic effort to make education a key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, advocates a standard national curriculum, more school hours, and merit pay for teachers. In the column, which originally appeared in Wiretap Magazine, Sarah Seltzer says what would help students most is actually making public schools more like the private school she attended: small class size, less class time and more extracurricular activities, and independence and respect for classroom teachers. While the column is long on ideas and a little shorter on policy, Seltzer does hint that improving the quality of life for teachers might do as much to attract and retain them as increasing their salaries — a dimension of the teacher-pay issue that is rarely discussed.

Seltzer writes that some of her ideas were borne of her year teaching English in the Bronx as a Teaching Fellow; she also blogged her experience, which she summed up as “not soooo horrible.”

Parents "Ask Martine" about school changes

Posted by Insideschools Staff at 9:50 AM

Parents raised questions about special education, middle school admissions, parent coordinators, and changes planned for the new school year at the first of a series of “Ask Martine and Friends” meetings with the Department of Education’s chief parent officer, Martine Guerrier. Some 200 parents attended the Saturday session at Brooklyn Tech High School led by Guerrier and other Department of Education officials who answered questions submitted by audience members.

Although some questions were met with rather short and unsatisfactory answers, Guerrier and her colleagues did announce new information about the upcoming reorganization that parents were eager to hear, and said that additional questions would be answered on the website.

Read more...

Coming soon: cash for successful students

Posted by Philissa at 11:18 PM

In Ben's last post, he took a look at merit pay for teachers. Now, New York City is going to pioneer offering merit pay for students — offering kids cash prizes for academic achievement.

Last week, when the first rumors of the mayor's plan to introduce monetary "incentives" for strong school performance hit the newspapers, I hoped they would prove to be just rumors. But today the city announced a pilot version of the incentive program, in which families will receive cold, hard cash for getting kids to school, showing up at parent-teacher conferences, and applying for a library card. At the high school level, it looks like the money will go straight to teenagers who take the PSAT and Regents exams and who make progress toward graduating. The incentive schedule includes a $400 graduation bonus.

This program is just one of three privately funded initiatives that make up what the city is calling "Opportunity NYC" and billing as "the nation's first conditional cash transfer program." In addition to paying for school performance, Opportunity NYC includes financial incentives for adults who maintain health insurance and who hold down a job or enroll in a job training program. All of the programs will be launched this fall on a pilot basis — the education program will be open only to families living in one of six neighborhoods whose income is below 130 percent of the poverty level and who have at least one child in grade 4, 7, or 9. Schools can also volunteer to participate in a trial of a program that will pay students for high scores on the interim assessments that all schools are supposed to give next year.

These programs represent a major achievement for Roland Fryer, the Harvard economics professor who has spent his career (short so far; he is just 30 years old) investigating whether incentives can convince people to change their environment. A fascinating 2005 New York Times Magazine cover story about Fryer suggested that DOE officials were already interested in his plan, but that he was having a hard time selling it to principals, who worried that paying kids for test scores would send the message that learning itself is an insufficient incentive. Last month, Fryer pitched his plan in a letter to principals of empowerment schools. I'm curious what has changed to get principals on board now.

While I'm always eager to hear about innovative strategies to motivate students and their families, the notion of exchanging cash for school performance just doesn't sit right with me. I wonder whether the incentives are large enough to persuade people to improve their behavior, or whether some families will just be rewarded for what they are already doing well. I also wonder, as others have, whether cash incentives will make tests even more stressful for kids than they already are. These are probably questions that Roland Fryer is eager to answer — I just wish it weren't the city's kids and their families who have to be his test subjects.

Merit pay for teachers: the state of the debate

Posted by Unknown at 1:30 PM

Today the New York Times published an article by Sam Dillon on the growing trend toward merit-based pay for teachers. Although Chancellor Joel Klein's plan for incentive-based teacher pay in New York City has stalled, the Times article reports that the movement is gaining steam at the national level. Dillon cites University of Wisconsin's Allan Odden, a professor of educational administration who studies teacher pay. According to Odden, the merit pay trend has now reached "critical mass," and teachers unions (whose members have historically opposed merit-based compensation) have begun to cooperate with the movement in some regions.

In New York City, Klein has wanted to implement an incentive-based compensation program since he became chancellor, but the issue has stalled over conflicts with the city's teachers union.

Despite the standoff over Klein's incentive pay proposal, merit pay did see a recent boost in New York City when a group of NYC charter schools received a federal grant for $10.5 million from the Teacher Incentive Fund. Check out the New York Sun's article for more.

For more on the state of the merit pay debate, check out the Economist's May 10 article.

Hemphill on ed reform: DOE "risks losing support"

Posted by Unknown at 6:20 PM

Bloomberg and Klein's reforms have been on the right track, but the DOE's upcoming reorganization could undermine recent gains, Insideschools founder Clara Hemphill told University of Chicago alums at an event Wednesday evening.

Hemphill said Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have implemented some positive changes, noting the increase in teachers salaries and regional consolidation of some of New York's worst districts with some of its best. She said Bloomberg has been "substantially better than previous administrations" when it comes to education, citing his and Klein's attitude that "public education was salvageable and worth saving" as an improvement.

Read more...

More reform on the way...

Posted by Unknown at 5:26 PM

A new organization is throwing its weight behind the ever-growing movement of school reform. Democrats for Education Reform kicked off its first major event last Wednesday in Manhattan. The group, led by several successful Ivy League-educated businessmen, aims to "return the Democratic Party to its rightful place as a champion of children in America's public education systems."

Although DFER was immediately criticized by some, including representatives of various unions, as a group of condescending paternalists who lack real experience in education, the pro-reform crowd is no doubt glad to have them on board. DFER's priorities are in line with much of Bloomberg and Klein's familiar education goals: accountability, school choice, local control, and weighted student funding.

The very evening of DFER's opening celebration, the school-reform crowd got some welcome news about elections in New Jersey: at least four of the six pro-reform candidates supported by DFER and Newark Mayor Cory Booker won in their primary elections against incumbent opponents. Check out the New York Sun's article for a bit more information.