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Smart List: 60 People Shaping the Future of K-12 Education
Because of the very high correlation between poverty and low academic achievement, it is reasonable to expect that we won’t see a significant improvement in education for the poor until the rate of poverty is reduced. Again, the data is there if we care to acknowledge it.
That said, there are many impoverished children who get a good education with the help of parents, teachers and other mentors, as pointed out by Dr. Beverly Anderson, in the above post. These individuals are all around us and likely involved in these online discussions.
For a touching tribute to the power of one person to enhance the life chances of another, read “The Invisible Thread” by Laura Schroff. It’s the story of an affluent executive who stops to assist a poor child and ends up being his close friend. Both the benefactor and the child (now an adult) gain much from their friendship.
No, poverty is not destiny, but some have gone in the other direction to say that it doesn’t matter. Sadly, it just isn’t so.
Where did I say that poverty has nothing to do with low test scores? And why are you completely unable to respond to what I am explicitly writing here versus what you keep imagining?
*Which* variables? I’ve replied to this vague pseudo-criticism several times now. Did you bother to read up on their methodology?
Correlations may afford us expectations, but they certainly can’t rule out causal factors. Here, you’re convinced that poverty absolutely causes poor educational outcomes, but you’re not giving enough attention to the possibility that poor educational opportunities *also* drive these effects of poverty (poorly educated people pigeonholed into lower-paying jobs without healthcare, etc.). This is a crucial point to understand. If there were damning evidence that teachers could do *nothing* to help impoverished children succeed, you would finally have a point. HOWEVER, since we’re in agreement that teachers matter and, in your words, “education can be improved for the impoverished child by schools alone,” and studies like the one originally discussed in this thread further demonstrate the potential good teachers can have, my main points #1 and #2 remain unopposed.
Chris, the effects of poverty strifle kids. We know it, it’s been researched and it is really the only correlate we have to school achievement.
Your argument, and the arguments of reformers, is that poverty has nothing to do with it, or we won’t be ameliorating it any time soon, so we might as well fuck around the margins, which this paper shows does something, but very little, and we don’t really know what it is.
There is no science or study that can explain away the stifling effects of poverty unless one uses tortured logic and chooses to ignore reality and the perceptions of professionals on the ground, or better yet, make poverty irrelevant by showing that a good teacher is good for kids. That’s not much of a surprise, and I am not sure we need 3 economists to tell us so. And it says nothing about the staggering and stifling effects of poverty that NO teacher can overcome.
Poverty is why we have low test scores. Poverty is NOT a solely a measure of income, so stop with the poverty=poor nonsense, and let’s be mature educated pros and refer to low SES, which is what we all mean when talking about poverty’s effects of children.
The reformers (Chris too) would have you believe you can just as easily educate Anferney who lives in his car with his drug addict mother as it is to educate Chris, an affluent, privileged white kid from means. Who’s kidding whom?
Chris, do us all a favor and get a job arguing, like on TV or something.
True, depending on what you mean by “strifle”/stifle.
First part is wrong, as I never said “poverty has nothing to do with it”.
Second part is true, we won’t be able to fix the effects of poverty anytime soon scaled in any way relevant to the total population of disadvantaged students out there. It’s not “fuck[ing] around the margins”, however, to suggest teachers matter and can make a big difference in every student’s life. It’s not “very little”, either, as was pointed out to you already. Maybe it’s “very little” relative to the large achievement gaps that exist, but recall that we’re discussing just the impact of one good teacher. It might be very much the opposite of “very little” if we pushed for a highly effective teacher in every classroom.
Well, scientists have these things called “controls” that we sometimes use, on occasion, to elucidate cause and effect. When poverty is “controlled for”, through careful analysis, it was shown that, of the millions of students in an urban school district, good teachers mattered. They may not have overcome all of the “staggering and stifling effects of poverty”, but they had a positive effect on their students’ lives nonetheless. Such success should rightfully be seen as convincing rationale for advancing ed reform in a way to further strengthen schools. Is that wrong? What do you have against pushing for more of these impacts? Is *some* progress really that bad?
I don’t see how the definitions are relevant to the discussion, although poverty does indicate an inability to afford basic needs (that’s a cute equality you gave, though). My note to Linda seems relevant here: “Here, you’re convinced that poverty [or low SES!] absolutely causes poor educational outcomes, but you’re not giving enough attention to the possibility that poor educational opportunities *also* drive these effects of poverty [or low SES] (poorly educated people pigeonholed into lower-paying jobs without healthcare, etc.).”
That’s also never been argued. Funny how you were just reminding us to be “mature educated pros”.
I never said that “poverty absolutely causes poor educational outcomes.” Anyone who has ever read a biography knows that is untrue.
The fact that you often misquote us suggests that even you know your arguments are weak. You are basically arguing against giving the poor kid a pair of eyeglasses. Why?
*Averages*, Linda. You very specifically asserted that poverty is the cause for poorer educational outcomes, and we are obviously discussing averages. I didn’t misquote anything last time, either, which you also didn’t acknowledge. Now please do go ahead and continue to ignore the thrust of the comment you are currently responding to:
“[…] but you’re not giving enough attention to the possibility that poor educational opportunities *also* drive these effects of poverty (poorly educated people pigeonholed into lower-paying jobs without healthcare, etc.). This is a crucial point to understand. If there were damning evidence that teachers could do *nothing* to help impoverished children succeed, you would finally have a point. HOWEVER, since we’re in agreement that teachers matter and, in your words, “education can be improved for the impoverished child by schools alone,” and studies like the one originally discussed in this thread further demonstrate the potential good teachers can have, my main points #1 and #2 remain unopposed.”
If you need a study to demonstrate “the potential good teachers can have” you are worse off than I thought. You might also be interested in the potential that good doctors can have and the potential that good engineers can have and the potential that good plumbers can have.
The fact that you did not answer my question proves that your main points #1 and #2 have been proven incorrect.
(Just teasing. Don’t do anything rash.)
Well, in this very thread we have people like TFT who repeatedly state things such as, “until we deal with poverty, nothing you try will help because it is poverty that must be overcome.” So teachers only *sometimes* matter in *certain* contexts for some people. Crazy, huh?
And yes, you are just teasing. You’ve said very little to counter my arguments.
Do those who disagree with Chris think we should:
1. Not use valued-added assessment in assessing teachers
and
2. Not try to fill as many teaching slots as possible with teachers with the highest value-added records?
1) Correct. They are erroneous.
2) See #1.
Teachers always matter, just less than poverty. Thanks for all the [sic]s, you smarmy punk.
Response required, TFT:
eduwonk.com/2012/01/10047.html/comment-page-2#comment-237284
and
Pick one.
Yeahhhh, teachers always matter…:(
They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Like hospice care, they can make your death more peaceful, but you’re going to die.
Sure, we can spend time and money developing more and “better” teacher evaluations, but the impoverished kids don’t really care and it won’t help them. They need food and medicine and a teacher evaluation won’t feed them or medicate them.
And, Chris, your link isn’t working.
About your required response, reread yours and notice how you must guess, assume and figure that you’re right because facts to support your claim don’t exist.
The 3 econs claim they controlled for certain variables. They didn’t tell us which ones (there are literally thousands) nor did they tell us how.
You have faith in the paper, for reasons unknown. I and many others think the paper was bought and elucidates nothing we didn’t already know and provides no new information that can be used close the gap,m which is why we’re all talking about ed reform, right?
And, punk, when you see a typo that includes adjacent letter on a qwerty keybord, you can assume it was fat fingering and that whoever is writing to you doesn’t think you need each typo to be fixed. That you feel the need to [sic] so much I think is evidence you’re a bit out of your depth.
They really are. There is a problem if you can’t comprehend this. If teachers truly matter in every context, then “teacher quality” is one such variable we can alter in the education equation. If “nothing [we] try will help” until we “overcome” poverty, then “teacher quality” is not one such variable we can alter.
Which is it?
Here again the teachers-don’t-matter sentiment pops up, as you suggest that impoverished kids wouldn’t benefit from better teachers. But they would! Evidence speaks louder than pained analogies.
Works fine. Copy and paste it into your browser.
What an awkward way to evade my counterarguments.
This is telling, as it’s obvious now that you didn’t read up on the methodology.
Yes, conspiracy theories run deep in education.
Ah, is this a professional term shared between one “mature educated pro” to another?
The methodology was to use someone else aggregated data and then surmise.
And they aren’t mutually exclusive. The effect of the teacher, though always present, is a pittance compared to the effect of the life at home, which is also always present. One has a stronger effect than the other, but both exist.
And, you are a punk, not a pro, so we aren’t talking “one “mature educated pro” to another,” we are talking one pro to a punk.
At some point you ought to admit that you haven’t read the paper, or at least haven’t read for understanding.
Simply put, this suggests that “teacher quality is one such variable we can alter in the education equation” to improve outcomes. Right? So what you said earlier, about “nothing [we] try will help,” is then false. There *are* approaches that we can try that will help. We need to work on improving teacher quality concurrently with efforts to, somehow, “overcome” poverty.
You also keep wanting to make this really inane comparison between the impacts of a great teacher (as indicated in this study, for example, which you haven’t effectively rebutted) and the soul-crushing effects of poverty on some families. Not only is it absurd that anyone could look at the study’s results and consider them “a pittance”, but comparing these to the impacts of poverty, knowing full well we haven’t much of a chance at all in removing them anytime soon? That is faulty logic, akin to the eternal false dilemma of ed reform versus socioeconomic reform.
And as I said already to Linda and yourself (which you both ignored),
“you’re not giving enough attention to the possibility that poor educational opportunities *also* drive these effects of poverty (poorly educated people pigeonholed into lower-paying jobs without healthcare, etc.). This is a crucial point to understand. If there were damning evidence that teachers could do *nothing* to help impoverished children succeed, you would finally have a point. HOWEVER, since we’re in agreement that teachers [“always”] matter, and studies like the one originally discussed in this thread further demonstrate the potential good teachers can have, my main points #1 and #2 remain unopposed.”
And since no one has offered a rebuttal to my two main points on the matter, I’ll just refer to them again:
1) There is no single set of policies that will provide *all* of the social supports that disadvantaged students lack, and *even if* there were one already drawn up it, enacting and funding these policies is likely not a foreseeable political reality in the near future. [Even a partial list of supports would be unlikely, or too small to have any real effect. Therefore, continuing to demand we “overcome” poverty before doing anything else worthwhile will likely have us sitting on our hands for years.]
2) We can choose to pursue school reform regardless of our success in implementing socioeconomic reform, and since we have evidence like this paper suggesting school reform could have large net benefits for students, we should feel compelled to do so.
Chris,
You state that I ignored your points, yet I answered over and over again. Here is my response once again, in the most direct way I can manage:
1. Jose has asthma and misses a lot of school. Research and common sense tell us that his school achievement will improve if we can provide him with healthcare. That said, IT IS LIKELY TRUE THAT WE CANNOT OVERCOME POVERTY IN THE NEAR FUTURE, IF EVER. However, we know that we can alleviate some of the effects of poverty and that doing so will likely help poor children do better in school.
2. If Jose’s asthma is not addressed, WE CAN STILL CHOOSE TO PURSUE SCHOOL REFORM REGARDLESS OF OUR SUCCESS IN IMPLEMENTING SOCIOECONOMIC REFORM. However, the research tells us that Jose will not make as much progress if we ignore his basic needs.
I just saw a very touching “thank you” from Japan regarding the help they received after the earthquake and Tsunami. (See You Tube “A Message to Your From the People of Japan: We Will Always Remember You.”) Special credit was given to American teacher Taylor Anderson for leading her children to safety before going to her apartment and losing her life to the Tsunami. Ms. Anderson, like so many teachers everywhere, had the wisdom to know that THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF HER STUDENTS WERE NUMBER ONE. All good teachers and parents know this. Chis, you will know it too when you become a parent. Please join teachers in fighting for social justice for all American children. Thank you.
When you responded before you avoided the actual ideas completely, just like now:
Healthcare costs MONEY, Linda. It requires POLITICAL WILL, Linda. We can readily offer NEITHER.
And the research also tells us that students like Jose can still make progress regardless of whether or not healthcare becomes more affordable. If you look at this study, for example, the net gains from one teacher were pretty substantial.
However, the research does not tell us which is and is not the absolute causal factor of the other, living in poverty or poor educational outcomes, but there’s a good chance that at least improving educational opportunities will later have larger societal benefits for impoverished families.
Chris, you keep saying the same thing over and over, refusing to move an inch. When you imply your agreement, you just skip to another point (“Healthcare costs money.” Well, yes.)
As I said last year, you remind me of my younger son, who would never move an inch in his agruments. If you said, “It is night” he would say “No, it’s day” and give you the “reasons.” He went on to become a lawyer and I suggest that occupation to you as well. (With apologies to Attorney DC and Labor Lawyer)
I haven’t “moved an inch” because you haven’t given a reason to do so. I’m saying the “same thing over and over” because not once has there been a decent rebuttal given to these arguments. By the way, this is not a discussion that has only recently cropped up; I can find instances of these arguments in other threads over the last couple years, as well. They weren’t refuted then, either.
I am not rebutting your arguments. I am agreeing with them and adding more.
You are saying:
“Jose can do better in school if we improve school alone” and I am saying, “Yes, Jose can do better if we just improve school alone but he can do even better if we help him with his asthma.”
Do you understand what I am saying?
Great, so then you should understand the pointlessness of asking me if I agree that helping Jose with his asthma will help him become a better student. I’ve answered this a dozen times, paraphrased: “Yes! Now what?”
You then should also understand the frustration involved when people like TFT trivialize what good schools and teachers can do to help all students — even the neediest — with this ridiculous notion that “until we deal with poverty, nothing [we] try will help”. Or when people say, like you did earlier in this thread, “If we really want to improve education for the most disadvantaged children, we’ll have to provide him with medical and social supports,” which seemed to also imply that school reform could do no real good on its own. Recall that was what I found initially contentious.
If, however, you agree with my main points, then great — let’s all join together in advocating for authentic and pragmatic school reform grounded in research suggesting that great teachers benefit students and their future families in many ways (obviously) along with other efforts to move toward social justice.
Amen!
But what about Jose?
“we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”
Guess who.
No, Henry George.
Chris,
I’m glad you are on this blog everyday fighting so aggressively for reform and, along with it, a more objective and scientific way of looking at K-12.
Every time an education protectionist (those opposed to transparency, accountability) writes something online for the purpose of keeping their monopoly on K-12…there should be a cost; there should be a rebuttal.
I think a big piece of this disconnect/conflict is generational. The majority of the young teachers I know believe in holding schools and teachers accountable for educating children. We are tired of the constant complaining and entitlements (at our expense) of older teachers.
Ditto.
These old teachers only care about their pension and keeping tenure.
As Professor Eric Hansuk has pointed out, if we could fire 10% of our teachers, even our special education students would outperform Shanghai, Finland and Korea.
The New York Times Revisits the study
Professor Chetty said it was possible that in high-stakes conditions the usefulness of value-added ratings could be eroded significantly
While it is impressive for its scope and creativity, there is a major caution: it is largely based on test scores from the 1990s, that low-stakes era.
“It is a key limitation of the study,” Raj Chetty of Harvard, one of the three researchers, acknowledged in an interview
Page 5: “An important limitation of our analysis is that teachers were not incentivized based on test scores in the school district and time period we study.”
“These old teachers only care about their pension and keeping tenure.”
Need we say any more about why our educational system is less than stellar? If I could say only one thing about the failures of education in our country it would be this:
A significant number of Americans do not respect or value the work that schoolteachers (mainly women) do.
The problem that we have is cultural and that’s a difficult thing to change. Fortunately some of our journalists are waking up and starting to ask “Can this be true?” or “Does this make sense?” Thank you to Michael Winerip of the New York Times and other excellent journalists who are questioning some of the incredibly ridiculous claims of educational “reformers.” Soon this period that we are in will be known as The Stupid Period in American education and will be regarded as an unfortunate consequence of the Great Recession.
Linda: Very well said. Having worked as an attorney and as a teacher (mainly working w/ low-income students), I am amazed by how many attorneys (and other professionals I know) think that teaching is “easy” work.
I can attest that teaching low-income high school students (who have many socio-economic problems) is MUCH harder than working as a professional in a corporate office building. Obviously, there are exceptions here and there, but fore the most part, teachers who work in low-income schools have a really tough job — much tougher than many of the corporate suits realize.
Non-teachers often don’t understand or respect the amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into teaching in a low-income school. It’s not “easy” – It’s a difficult job that should garner the respect of others in society.
OK, before this gets out of hand I should point out that in this comment thread “PhillipMarlowe,” “EdInCider,” “edconsume”, and “Crakhaus” are the same poster.
I have a policy of not revealing the identities of commenters who choose to post anonymously but within the bounds of the comment policy here. However, out of respect for others who take the time to post their views and debate in this space I want to make you aware that these handles are being used by one person.
Thanks, Attorney DC. My husband, who was a university professor, helped me in my first grade classroom after retirement. He said it was the hardest job he ever had and marveled at the amount of work that went into it. He was also shocked at how expensive it was for me to keep my classroom equipped with the latest books and materials. If I wanted “merit pay” I could assign it to myself by not spending my own money.
There is “good” news for those of you who show such profound disrespect for the service provided by our nation’s teachers:
Oldtimers like me have retired and the baby boomers, the last of the women without other options, are now retiring in droves. I can’t think of a single person under 30 who is in K-12 or preparing to enter the field. All the well-educated children of my friends, relatives, and neighbors have entered other fields. Women, who in the old days would have become teachers, are now in the same jobs as men. They are college teachers (teaching adults is valued in our country) engineers, lawyers, businessmen, computer analysts and so forth. So now the field is open to you young people, who are so much smarter than us Old Goats. (Can’t criticize too much because I also knew everything when I was young.)
Here is my prediction: If the bad economy continues, desperate school districts will find a way to get rid of older, more expensive teachers and yes, they will be able to pick and choose from among talented applicants. Districts will no longer have to keep everyone who can control a class.
But if the economy improves and young people continue to look to other occupations, there will be the biggest teacher shortage in history. This is already being predicted for California. And the captive women will no longer be there to fill “inner-city” classrooms. I hope I live to see it.
I have a reply almost ready to that Winerip article, but wanted to first say thanks to Andy for alerting us to the dishonest use of sockpuppets here by PhillipMarlowe.
In response to Winerip’s article on this study:
The authors VERY CLEARLY state the caveats of their results throughout the paper, and even in the executive summary (obviously the only thing Winerip read–see below), explaining that gaming the tests could result in erroneous VA results. This is not an argument against using VAM, however. The study shows strong evidence that VAM is accurate in a district that did not link VAM to evaluations. VAM itself is not the problem; the problem in tying it to evaluations would be the possibility of compromised data due to cheating and explicitly teaching to the test.
Instead, this all supports the argument for strengthening test security and for requiring other forms of data on teacher effectiveness, such as observations, to help determine who is a great teacher and who is not. The conclusions also highlighted some future research to help address the question of how tying VAM to evaluations affects the metric. These variables would be very possible to factor in with a proper design; even in this study the authors were able to see that including the top 2% VAM scores (the ones omitted from their data set due to the heightened possibility of cheating) altered their results in ways that did not occur with the bottom 2%, suggestive that they could find effects of cheating on their metric even without observational data.
And the paper kind of answers this question, so maybe stop pretending this is still a debatable point?
Instead of guesstimating, Winerip could have *also* simply glanced at the Data section (like a good journalist) and found the answer, two paragraphs in:
“These data span the school years 1988-1989 through 2008-2009 and cover roughly 2.5 million children in grades 3-8. […] The data include approximately 18 million test scores. Test scores are available for English language arts and math for students in grades 3-8 in every year from the spring of 1989 to 2009.”
So, NO, the study didn’t end “when the subjects were 28,” as if they only measured one sample of 2.5 million kids from one grade level. And NO, the study didn’t “use scores [only or mainly] from the 1990s”. Test data linked to college attendance would have utilized 8th grade data from as late as 2005. Same with teenage birth rate, but even later data points are possible (depends on when one files her taxes for the first time). The earnings analysis would also have utilized data from as late as 2004, although to see the increasing average earnings up into the late 20s would have relied more on data from the 1990s. Still, the trend in earnings vs. age echoes the college going data they collected, where students earn less on average in their early 20s due to higher ed. There were no noted divides found between results from 2005 (during the, *cringe*, “Teach-to-Test ” era) and before said era in 1995, either.
As do all scientists. It’s telling that this is phrased in such a negative way.
It’s maddening that this worthless article was printed in the same section of the NYT as the original article appeared a week ago. As if this journalist’s opinions are equal in stature to the findings of a research study.
Misinformation is a huge problem in education. At least in the other sciences journalists don’t write about us all that much anymore. Maybe we’re lucky!
Chris, I think a reason that Winerip still gets this kind of play in NYT is because there still is a readership hungry for it.
This isn’t about truth–this is about job and benefits protection. There is solid research showing that the most effective teachers are more likely to leave the profession. Once you reformat teacher pay to align with effectiveness, many of these entitled and angry teachers with seniority are going to face serious salary and benefits reduction. In short, we will soon give teachers a fair market value.
This scares many of them a great deal. I see it at my school site; expect the backlack to be severe.
However, this will also bring many of those top 5% into the profession…the single best thing that could happen to students.
Thanks, Andy, for keeping tabs on the multiple-names used by the one poster on this blog and alerting us to it. We appreciate it.
Yes, thank you from me, also.
I wish to thank you as well, Andy, for alerting me to this.
Interesting meeting in DC today. You got Ms. Strauss’s attention.
Chris, with regards to the NYT, search the characters they’ve had work for them like Walter Duranty, Judith Miller, Jayson Blair, John Vinocur, Shirley Christian, Claire Sterling and Christopher Jones.
From the executive summary“parents whose children will earn around $40,000 in their late 20s should be willing to pay $10,000 to switch from a below-average to an above-average teacher for one grade, based on the expected increase in their child’s lifetime earnings”
Does it make sense for parents to spend $10,000 in current funds to ensure that their children can make an extra $8,333 over a life-time?
Phillip, how is it possible you are able to continue posting here after shamefully being outed that you used several sockpuppets to muddle the discussion? Is there no low out of reach for you? It’s bad enough you rarely respond to counterarguments, but you hardly skipped a beat after this latest incident.
PM … The executive summary on Raj’s page at Harvard differs somewhat from your quote. Instead it says …
“parents whose children will earn around $40,000 in their late 20s should be willing to pay $10,000 to switch from a below-average to an above-average teacher for one grade, based purely on the present value of the increase in their child’s lifetime earnings.”
I don’t remember where the $8,333 figure came from, but the study does not say that a one-time investment of 10 grand now buys you a total of 8 grand in the future.
Art,
I quoted the study correctly (even Chris Smyr doesn’t deny that).
The $8,333 figure comes from this line in the summary:
$266,000/$8333 equals 31.9 students per class.
In order to recoup their investment (ignoring inflation) the class size would need to be 26.6 students.
Chris,
Do you dislike those with Dissociative identity disorder?
It’s an incorrect comparison because the analyses which generated the numbers were different:
and
See the differences? In case not: both the change in teacher quality being compared (5% and 50% vs 25% and 75%) *AND* the base earnings estimates (~$20,000 vs $40,000) are different.
And did you really just suggest that you dishonestly used sockpuppets– and very obviously do not care that it was dishonest — because you have multiple personalities?