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Re: just curious
Really? Principals usually do not taunt or bully.
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 4, 2010, at 1:38 PM, Bob DeBuhr <bdebuhr@gmail.com> wrote:
Retired Elementary School Principal.
On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 10:20 AM, Sharon Schmidt
<smgschmidt1@aol.com> wrote:
Hi Art,
It seems like on this list most of us are teachers. Many parents.
Some
researchers. Some journalists. Some writers. Some organizers.
What are you?
Sincerely,
Sharon Schmidt
Substance editor: www.substancenews.net
Steinmetz high school teacher, adviser to Steinmetz Star:
www.steinmetzac.com
Chicago Teachers Union Testing Committee, Chair: www.ctunet.com
Parent: Josh (public school kindergartner), Sam (Chicago public
school 4th
grader)
Stepparent: Dan (in the college of engineering at UC Berkeley)
-----Original Message-----
From: aburke5054@aol.com
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Sat, Dec 4, 2010 11:20 am
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Gates, ETS Press New Forms of Teacher Evaluation
Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation are guided by research that
shows that
teachers are the strongest in-school determiners of children's
achievement,
so
much so that improving teaching quality could go a long way towards
closing
the
achievement gap. To the degree that is true it makes good sense to
advance
programs that promote improvements to the way we train teachers and
to the
ways
that we support and evaluate them.
And Gates is not unmindful of influences on children beyond
teaching, the
work
of the Gates Foundation in early learning shows that clearly. You
might try
finding out where Gates/GF are really coming from and what they are
really
doing
instead of spouting lame speculations.
Art
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian LeCloux <neaguy@hotmail.com>
To: Assessment Reform Network <arn-l@interversity.org>
Sent: Sat, Dec 4, 2010 8:59 am
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Gates, ETS Press New Forms of Teacher Evaluation
Re
"More than 9 out of 10 teachers get top marks, according to a
prominent
study
last year by the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group focusing on
improving
teacher quality."
If the story is referring to The Widget Effect Report from 2009, the
Executive
Summary of the study doesn't say that 9 out 10 teachers get "top
marks."
The Executive Summary says that in the districts examined for the
report
who use
a binary rating they use the terms "satisfactory" or
"unsatisfactory" to
rate
teachers. "Satisfactory" and "top" do not seem to be equivalent
unless
they
are using an unusual thesaurus.
The authors of the report want to better differentiate the
abilities of
teachers
so that the excellent ones, as they define them, can be rewarded.
Merit
pay.
And, the article talks about using video to study teacher
effectiveness
along
with a discussion of whether that is the best way to observe
teachers.
But,
remember when Peter Farruggio talked about making short videos to
reflect
student learning on this list? How about that, Mr. Gates? How
about
using
video to better reflect what students know and can do?
Some examples of student exhibitions have been shown on line during
National
Student Exhibition month in May.
Wouldn't it be great if Bill Gates could approach education reform
holistically
publicly advocating with his media presence for improvement in all
of the
many
factors that affect teaching and learning inside the classroom?
He seems
to
be---and maybe this is just an appearance from the way the
mainstream media
frames their stories about his efforts---overemphasizing the teacher
factor,
while underemphasizing all of the other factors; a possible
fundamental
attribution thinking error.
Brian
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 10:16:57 -0500
From: bobschaeffer@earthlink.net
To: arn-l@interversity.org; ARN-state@yahoogroups.com;
arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com;
epata@interversity.org; rethinkaccountdc@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [arn-l] Gates, ETS Press New Forms of Teacher Evaluation
Teacher Ratings Get New Look, Pushed by a Rich Watcher
By SAM DILLON
PRINCETON, N.J. â In most American schools, teachers are evaluat
ed by
principals or other administrators who drop in for occasional
classroom
visits
and fill out forms to rate their performance.
The result? More than 9 out of 10 teachers get top marks,
according to a
prominent study last year by the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit
group
focusing
on improving teacher quality.
Now Bill Gates, who in recent years has turned his attention and
considerable
fortune to improving American education, is investing $335 million
through
his
foundation to overhaul the personnel departments of several big
school
systems.
A big chunk of that money is financing research by dozens of social
scientists
and thousands of teachers to develop a better system for evaluating
classroom
instruction.
The effort will have enormous consequences for the movement to hold
schools
and educators more accountable for student achievement.
Twenty states are overhauling their teacher-evaluation systems,
partly to
fulfill plans set in motion by a $4 billion federal grant
competition, and
they
are eagerly awaiting the research results.
For teachers, the findings could mean more scrutiny. But they may
also
provide
more specific guidance about what is expected of the teachers in the
classroom
if new experiments with other measures are adopted â including tes
ts that
gauge
teachersâ mastery of their subjects, surveys that ask students abo
ut the
learning environments in their classes and digital videos of
teachersâ
lessons,
scored by experts.
âItâs huge,â said Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean of the
University of
Michigan
School of Education. âTheyâre trying to do something nobodyâs
done before,
and
do it very quickly.â
The Gates research is by no means the first effort of its kind.
Economists
have already developed a statistical method called value-added
modeling
that
calculates how much teachers help their students learn, based on
changes in
test
scores from year to year. The method allows districts to rank
teachers from
best
to worst.
Value-added modeling is used in hundreds of districts. But teachers
complain
that boiling down all they do into a single statistic offers an
incomplete
picture; they want more measures of their performance taken into
account.
The Gates research uses value added as a starting point, but aims to
develop
other measures that can not only rate teachers but also help
educators
understand why one is more successful than another.
Researchers and educators involved in the project described it as
maddeningly
complex in its effort to separate the attributes of good teaching
from the
idiosyncrasies of individual teachers.
Mr. Gates is tracking the research closely. The use of digital
video in
particular has caught his attention. In an interview, he cited its
potential for
evaluating teachers and for helping them learn from talented
colleagues.
âSome teachers are extremely good,â Mr. Gates said. âAnd one
of the goals
is
to say, you know, âLetâs go look at those teachers.â Whatâs
unbelievable is
how
little the exemplars have been studied. And then saying, âO.K., Ho
w do you
take
a math teacher whoâs in the third quartile and teach them how to g
et kids
interested â get the kid whoâs smart to pay attention, a kid
whoâs behind
to pay
attention?â Teaching a teacher to do that â you have to follow
the
exemplars.â
The meticulous scoring of videotaped lessons for this project is
unfolding on
a scale never undertaken in educational research, said Catherine A.
McClellan, a
director for the Educational Testing Service who is overseeing the
process.
By next June, researchers will have about 24,000 videotaped lessons.
Because
some must be scored using more than one protocol, the research will
eventually
involve reviewing some 64,000 hours of classroom video. Early next
year,
Dr.
McClellan expects to recruit hundreds of educators and train them
to score
lessons.
The goal is to help researchers look for possible correlations
between
certain
teaching practices and high student achievement, measured by value-
added
scores.
Thomas J. Kane, a Harvard economist who is leading the research, is
scheduled to
announce some preliminary results in Washington next Friday. More
definitive
conclusions are expected in about a year.
The effort has also become a large-scale field trial of using
classroom
video,
to help teachers improve and to evaluate them remotely.
âVideo lasts,â Dr. McClellan said, creating possibilities for di
alogue
among
teachers about improving classroom techniques. âColleagues can wat
ch your
video
and say, âRight here â where you did that â try this next
time.â So the
teacher
learns a new skill.â
There are advantages for teacher evaluations, too, Dr. Kane said.
With videos, for instance, several professionals, rather than just
one
principal, could rate the same classroom performance, making
ratings less
subjective, he said.
âIt potentially creates a cottage industry for retired principal
s, or
even
expert teachers, to moonlight on weekends scoring classroom
observations,â
he
said.
An Internet-based approach to teacher evaluation could also
alleviate
some
pressures on school districts. New laws in many states, after all,
are
requiring
more frequent observations of teachers.
A new evaluation system in Washington, D.C., for example, requires
five
observations each year, compared with the previous systems that
required
one or
two at most, and in many cases none at all. Starting next fall, a
Tennessee
law
will require at least four observations a year, rather than one
every five
years.
In some districts, the increased pace is straining the workload of
administrators. Memphis officials realized that under the new
rules, their
district would need to conduct more than 28,000 classroom
observations
annually,
a task that could overwhelm the cityâs school principals.
âThis technology can help us face the logistical challenge of be
ing in so
many
places at the same time,â said John Barker, who leads the distric
tâs
research
and evaluation office.
The district still intends to have principals visit classrooms,
but in
January
will start a pilot program to use videotaped observations, he said.
Dr. Kane said the foundation hoped more school districts would start
using
classroom videos, for training and for evaluations, and has worked
to keep
costs
down.
Teachscape, a contractor providing cameras, software, and other
services
for
the research, estimated first-year startup costs of about $1.5
million for
a
district with 140 schools and 7,000 teachers to buy one camera per
school
and
lease the software to carry out classroom observations using
digital video.
After that, annual costs would drop to about $800,000, said Mark
Atkinson,
the
chief executive of Teachscape, which is based in San Francisco.
In addition to the cost â which many struggling districts may co
nsider
too
high â another barrier could be teacher opposition. The Memphis te
achers
union,
an affiliate of the National Education Association, has partnered
with the
foundation for the project. But Keith Harris, its president, said
the use
of
videotaped observations in evaluations raised troubling questions.
âWhose eyes would see these videos?â Mr. Harris asked. âWho
would own
them?
This seems like an âI gotchaâ kind of thing. We think these
observations
deserve
a human being.â
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of
Teachers, which
has
several affiliates participating in the research, also expressed
reservations.
âVideotaped observations have their role but shouldnât be used to
substitute for
in-person observations to evaluate teachers,â Ms. Weingarten said.
âIt
would be
hard to justify ratings by outsiders watching videotapes at a remote
location
who never visited the classroom and couldnât see for themselves a
teacherâs
interaction and relationship with students.â
Dr. Kane said doubts may disappear with time. âWeâre not
naÃve,â he said.
âWe
realize that most principals and teachers imagine an in-person
visit from a
human being when they think of classroom observations. But that could
rapidly
change. Itâs not out of the realm of possibility that millions of
classrooms
could be using this technology within four or five years.â
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/education/04teacher.html
Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
ph- (239) 395-6773 fax- (239) 395-6779
cell- (239) 699-0468
web- http://www.fairtest.org
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