Author: Chad Aldeman

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Indiana Wants to Weaken Teacher Evaluations. But Why?

Chalkbeat’s Emma Kate Fittes has a story about how Republican legislators in Indiana want to weaken the state’s teacher evaluation system:

In Indiana, districts were left to decide how to implement the vague requirement, so how teachers are evaluated currently depends on where they work. Most districts have made test scores account for around 10% of evaluations, [Tim McRoberts, associate director of the Indiana Association of School Principals] said. Teachers whose grade or subject isn’t directly tied to the state test are often evaluated based on their schools’ scores.

That doesn’t sound like student growth scores mattered very much in most Indiana districts. So how was it actually playing out for teachers? Well, here are the latest evaluation results across Indiana:

Now, you could look at these results and say the student growth scores don’t seem to matter that much anyway, so removing them from teacher evaluation results isn’t a big deal. That’s the optimistic view. The more cynical take is that Indiana is about to get rid of the only truly objective measure in its teacher evaluation systems, the only one that directly measures how much students are learning, and the one that has the strongest tie to future teacher and student performance.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman

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Latest Edu-Reads

Kris Amundson on why you should never try a new hairstyle on your wedding day… and other thoughts from the Iowa caucus debacle.

Alex Spurrier on what to think about President’s Trump’s education proposals in his State of the Union.

Aaron Garth Smith takes a look at open enrollment policies. It strikes me that open enrollment might be the low-hanging fruit of the school choice debate.

Testing opt-ins? There’s been a 60 percent increase in Advanced Placement participation rates over the last decade, with especially strong growth for black and Hispanic students. Catherine Gewertz has 7 key takeways from the latest results.

“Students of all racial/ethnic groups learn more from teachers with high grading standards, and these standards tend to be higher in schools serving more advantaged students.” That’s the main conclusion from a new study by Seth Gershenson looking at the importance of teacher expectations.

Finally, Conor Williams has a balanced take about the recent RAND study on community schools in NYC:

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Does Testing Cause Teacher Turnover?

No, finds this new study by Dillon Fuchsman, Tim Sass, and Gema Zemarro. Specifically, they conclude:

Exploiting the elimination of testing in grades one and two and for science and social
science teachers in grades six and seven in Georgia, we find that the removal of statewide achievement tests had no effect on the likelihood of leaving teaching in general, nor did it impact the probability of changing schools within a district or the probability of moving between districts for teachers as a whole. We did find that eliminating testing in the lower elementary grades reduced the likelihood of teachers switching grades, but the effect was small. Thus, overall, we find no support for the notion that testing alone is having a major impact on overall teacher attrition or, conversely, that reducing the amount of testing will reduce teacher shortages.

The authors did see some small effects for early-career teachers in particular, but overall the findings run almost exactly counter to the conventional wisdom.

Additionally, the authors note that, “Twelve and one-half percent of the observations in our sample represent moves to leave the teaching profession, 2.6 percent moves to change districts, 4.5 percent moves to different schools and 12.6 percent changes of grades taught within the same schools.”

That last figure is crazy, especially given what we know about the negative effects of grade-switching. As a field we worry a lot about teachers who leave the profession entirely. And yet here we have a source of teacher turnover that’s just as large that’s happening within school walls.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Latest Edu-News

I grew up in Iowa. I attended Iowa public schools. I’ve participated in the Iowa caucuses. And yet, I also think it’s time for Iowa to lose its privileged status as the first contest of the presidential primaries. Read why in my latest column for The 74.

Andy Rotherham on the toxic debate around charter schools, and how that obscures the hard challenges both sides should be tackling instead.

This is a good short primer on the status and results of performance-based funding initiatives in higher education.

The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is donating $100 million to boost low-income student graduation rates at the University of Texas.

The Urban Institute has a set of policy briefs about what we can learn about postsecondary outcomes and success using state data systems in Connecticut and Virginia. Here’s their summary of the whole series.

Eric Hanushek has a new paper outlining the arguments for raising teacher compensation, especially for the most effective teachers. (Disc: I gave comments at an earlier stage of the project.)

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

 

 

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Latest Edu-Reads

Robin V. Harris has a great story about Polly Williams, considered the “mother of school choice,” a Milwaukee-area Democrat, black activist and community organizer, and the longest-serving woman in the Wisconsin state legislature.

Last year Galileo Learning reached a record-breaking goal, offering scholarships to upwards of 15 percent of their campers. Here’s how the Bellwether team helped.

Here’s a cool data visualization tool from the Urban Institute that lets you look up individual schools to see how student demographics have changed over time.

Speaking of diversity, a new study finds that voters in local school board elections often look very different than the student body in their school district. As Matt Barnum notes in his Chalkbeat write-up, part of the problem is due to school board elections being off-cycle from national presidential elections. The smaller, less-diverse turnout in school board elections tends to elect less-diverse school board members who, in turn, support policies that are less likely to benefit black and Hispanic students.

Timothy Shanahan on the “last mile problem” in reading instruction.

Brandon Lewis on how districts can differentiate their own local school rating systems from the ratings put out by their state.

Checker Finn compares the quality checks on test-based accountability systems versus subjective evaluations of student work:

When we seek alternatives to the proctored and monitored exam form of high-stakes accountability, however, the challenges multiply. Nearly always, those alternatives—whether classroom work, teacher-administered exams, student projects, performances, portfolios, you name it—are judged subjectively, almost always by adults who know the kids’ identities and academic track records, and most of the time by adults who also have reasons to seek student success, whether it’s because they care about a kid passing and graduating or they’re being hassled by parents or principal or they know that the school’s passing or graduation rate is on the line.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Latest Edu-Reads

“the decline [in unionization] remains virtually unchanged through Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, dramatic alterations in the composition of Congress and statehouses, and amid the working lives of an entire generation of Americans.” That’s Mike Antonucci on the long-term decline of unionism.

A new research paper from Dongwoo Kim, Cory Koedel, and P. Brett Xiang finds that, “a 1% (of salaries) increase in the annual required pension contribution corresponds to a decrease in total teacher salary expenditures of 0.24%.”

A new Rand study finds that NYC’s Community Schools program boosted student attendance, credit accumulation, graduation rates, and math achievement. However, the program costs roughly $200 million a year, prompting Jennifer Jennings, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, to ask, “The question is really: Did it work better than other things that cost similar amounts of money or with fewer public dollars?”

Are district accountability systems duplicative of state efforts, or are they providing a unique contribution? Denver is about to find out.

LaVonia Abavana, a Camden parent, talks about navigating her school choice options with a special-needs child.

A study by Elaine M. Allensworth and Kallie Clark on graduates of Chicago public high schools found that high school GPAs were much more predictive than ACT scores of the students’ probability of graduating from college.

Three community colleges in Ohio were able to double their three-year graduation rates and increase their transfers to four-year colleges by 50 percent, thanks to an effort to replicate the successful CUNY ASAP program.

How can the NFL diversify its head coaching ranks?

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Latest Edu-Reads

Howard Blume and Sonali Kohli look back on what’s happened in the wake of last year’s teacher strike in Los Angeles.

Educators for Excellence surveyed teachers on their opinions on pay, the profession, and performance.

Phyllis W. Jordan on the risks of including surveys in formal accountability systems.

Alex Spurrier on Blaine Amendments and why the Supreme Court may rule against them.

EdBuild identifies the 50 most segregating school district boundaries.

Nick Allen on helping low-income students succeed in postsecondary education by focusing on “match” and “fit.”

“Most predictions on the future of work suggest sustaining employment will depend on workers’ abilities to master new skills on the job. Short-term training programs tend to develop specialized skills, which may get an individual a job in the near term, but not necessarily include the foundational competencies that can affect income mobility — where it counts — on the job.” That’s Jim Jacobs on the pitfalls of short-term training programs.

Andy Rotherham on whether we’re asking textbooks to do too much on their own.

Buried in this Chicago Sun-Times dive into the Chicago Teachers Union finances is this sentence:

Asked about the union’s political activities, Jennifer Johnson, the CTU’s chief of staff, says the CTU’s work is “inherently political.” But she notes that members can decide whether their dues go to the union’s PACs.

Um, isn’t Johnson totally giving up on the unions’ argument in the 2018 Janus case? If all teachers union work is inherently political, as Johnson seems to admit here, then the court made the correct decision in Janus.

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office has an update on school district budgets, student enrollment, and staffing:

Overall Teacher Workforce Has Been Increasing. School districts had about 295,000 full‑time equivalent (FTE) teachers in 2018‑19, an increase of about 18,000 (6.4 percent) over the 2013‑14 level. Coupled with the effects of declining student attendance, the statewide student‑to‑teacher ratio, in turn, has been dropping over the past several years. In 2018‑19, it stood at about 21:1—comparable to the level prior to the Great Recession. Similarly, by 2018‑19, the statewide student‑to‑administrator ratio (237:1) had dropped below pre‑recession levels. Given the return of staffing levels to pre‑recession levels, coupled with declining student attendance, the pressure to hire additional teachers and reduce class sizes is likely to subside over the coming years. 

The LAO recommends that California use one-time budget surplus money to pay down pension and healthcare obligations, while the Governor’s office has other ideas. John Fensterwald digs into that dynamic.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Latest Edu-Reads

Beth Hawkins has your must-read of the week with the incredible true story of the Rosenwald schools. Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, partnered with Booker T. Washington to build more than 5,000 schools for black communities across the South. Researchers from the Federal Reserve “concluded that the Rosenwald schools significantly bolstered literacy, earnings and South-to-North migration among rural blacks.” Check out the full story here.

“Dallas ISD is in fact retaining its best teachers at rates above the state’s and the district’s retention rates before the implementation of TEI. Overall, the district has kept 93% of teachers rated “Proficient II” or above. The district has retained 100% of its master-level teachers.” That’s from an update on how Dallas is doing on retaining its best teachers.

Education Strategy Group has a new resource on how states can boost FAFSA completion rates.

InsideHigherEd reports on a new study finding that many programs at public and nonprofit colleges would also fail the “gainful employment” test.

A new brief by John V. Winters concludes, “Working in a locality where a greater share of the population has a college degree is correlated with higher wages and better employment outcomes even controlling for individuals’ own education and other characteristics. Studies based on various natural experiments suggest that this positive relationship is causal.” That is, education is not just a benefit to individuals, it also has wider societal benefits.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Latest Edu-Reads

After Memphis instituted universal screening for its gifted and talented programs, it saw a dramatic uptick in the number of black and Hispanic students who were identified.

Dana Goldstein’s New York Times piece on how textbooks differ across states is well done (and laid out beautifully). History may be written by the victors, but apparently it also has to cater to the whims of state boards of education.

Newark charter schools are producing large gains in reading and math achievement.

Matt Barnum has a helpful rundown of what the research says on what works (and doesn’t) to help students complete college.

Mary Wells offers five ways districts need to change to support autonomous schools.

This two-part conversation with Rick Hess about the complex nature of educational reform and philanthropy is worth your time. Here’s part one and part two. Mostly, it made me think of all the strange career incentives that are baked into our educational system.

How basketball is changing, in one graph.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Has Common Core Failed?

The answer to the question, “has Common Core failed?” depends on what you think the goals of the Common Core movement were. In my mind, here’s a short list of what the Common Core movement accomplished:

  • More rigorous state standards;
  • More commonality across different sets of state standards; and
  • A further push on the idea that K-12 schools should prepare students to be “college- and career-ready.”

If, however, you held out hope that state standards themselves would lead to higher student achievement, well, you should read Morgan Polikoff and Tom Loveless’ columns in this Education Next debate on the long-term impacts of the Common Core.

Taking the opposing view, Mike Petrilli argues that Common Core just hasn’t had an effect yet. Ten years into the Common Core era, I’m with Polikoff and Loveless: Improving state standards may have been a worthy policy to pursue, but any downstream effects should be showing up by now. If anything, implementation fidelity is getting worse over time, not better. And, although Petrilli seems to think the opposite, I attribute the Common Core as one of several contributing factors that led to the weaker accountability systems adopted in the wake of the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act.

From my vantage point, the Common Core was a perfectly good idea that got over-extended and over-hyped.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman