Author Archives: Tom White

Randy Dorn Favors Using Achievement Tests on Teacher Evaluations

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Elementary

20110830-203622-pic-719702789By Tom

In a recent guest editorial in the Seattle Times, Washington State School Superintendent Randy Dorn spoke in favor of using student achievement tests on teacher evaluations. Basically his rationale boils down to two reasons:

1. The state’s NCLB waiver is at risk. The Department of Education granted us a waiver from the onerous requirements of NCLB, but takes a dim view of our teacher evaluation system’s provision that student test scores can be used for evaluative purposes, instead of mandating that they must.

2. Using student test scores will make teacher evaluations more consistent, since these are tests all students must take, as opposed to district-based tests, which vary from district to district.

Let me respond to his second reason first, since it’s the weakest. As we’ve reported time and again on this blog, a main argument against using student test scores is that they aren’t consistent. The fact is, only a small minority of teachers teach in “tested” grades or subjects. Consider my school, which has 34 certificated employees. These include four music teachers, one PE teacher, one librarian, six special education teachers and one counselor. We also have three kindergarten teachers, four first grade teachers, three second grade teachers, and three third grade teachers.

None of these people teach grades or subjects for which state achievement tests could be used for their evaluations.

We also have three fourth grade teachers, three fifth grade teachers and two sixth grade teachers. That’s only eight teachers. Eight out of 34 teachers – less than 24% – for whom state tests could be used. The rest of our faculty would have to use district or classroom based tests. Yet Mr. Dorn argues that using state tests would be more consistent? How?

On the other hand, his other argument – the risk of losing the waiver – does make sense. I have to assume that Randy Dorn, Governor Inslee, or both of them have asked Washington’s congressional delegation to press Department of Education officials about the true risk to Washington’s waiver. And the fact that Mr. Dorn is still arguing in favor of capitulating to the DOE’s demands means he doesn’t think they’re bluffing. Either that or he just doesn’t want to take the chance that they aren’t.

And that’s where he and I agree. Like Dorn, I’m not willing to gamble that much money ($38 million) for the sake of fairer evaluations for teachers like me. Put another way, I’m willing to use state achievement tests instead of more meaningful district or classroom based tests as part of my evaluation if it means ensuring our NCLB waiver.

Enough is Enough: Fund the COLA

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy

ColaBy Tom

For the past six years, educators in Washington State have gone without a cost of living adjustment to their salary. In two of those years, 2011 and 2012, teacher salaries actually went down. All of this despite the fact that back in 2000 the state voted two-to-one in favor of Initiative 732, which provided an automatic, annual COLA.

Although many legislators oppose it, Governor Inslee has proposed reinstating the COLA for several reasons. He thinks it’s fair, he thinks we can afford it and he thinks the State Supreme Court has essentially mandated it, by insisting that the state spend more on education.

I agree. Since 2006 teachers have lost 16% of their purchasing power. Housing, groceries, fuel and college prices have gone up, while our salaries have either gone down or stagnated. A COLA, by definition, is not a salary increase. It is a salary adjustment; a device meant to keep salaries parallel to the cost of those goods and services that we use our salaries to purchase. The absence of a COLA, also by definition, is a salary decrease; there’s no other way to conceptualize it.

When voters passed I-732 fourteen years ago, critics were complaining that we were passing a spending bill without a corresponding mechanism to pay for it. Maybe not, but consider this: in a state that’s essentially financed by sales tax revenue, the sales tax is effectively that mechanism. As the cost of goods and services rises, so too does the sales tax. Since teacher salaries are financed by sales tax, increased revenue should correspond to increased expenditure.

Another point that bears mentioning is that the workload of teachers in recent years has greatly increased coincidental to an actual decrease in salary. We’re doing more work for less money. The new teacher evaluation system requires, in my estimation, at least 40 hours per year of hard, thoughtful work by every teacher in the state. Although some of this work has been incorporated into our in-service calendar, not all of it has, and even those hours that are part of our paid time have effectively displaced other, necessary tasks, so that the net result has been an additional 40 hours of work time.

In addition to the increased workload resulting from the new evaluation system, our class sizes have also gone up. Fifteen years ago I was used to classes to 23 or 24. Now it’s more like 28 to 30. Every new kid in my room means more time planning lessons and more time evaluating and scoring student work. As a fourth grade teacher, I can feel the difference in my workload when my class size goes up by five percent; I can only imagine what it’s like for my high school colleagues, especially those charged with reading and grading extended student writing samples.

I sympathize with our lawmakers. They’re on the hot seat. They have a lot of programs to fund and not enough money to fund them. That’s a tough job. But remember, that’s the job they were begging us for. Remember all those yards signs and TV ads? Our legislators not only knew what they were getting into, they couldn’t wait to start doing it. So do it. Teachers have gone too long without a COLA. That has to end.

More work for less money isn’t fair.

Why I support SB 6082

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Education, Education Policy, Elementary

ImagesBy Tom

One of the ironies of my job is how lonely it sometimes feels. I’m surrounded by kids all day long, yet I seldom get to talk to the teacher who works right next to me in the hallway. That irony was brought home last week when I noticed some of her kids working in the hall on a social studies project involving Native Americans. As it happened, my class was also studying Northwest Tribes, and both classes would have undoubtedly benefitted had the two of us planned that unit together, instead of in total isolation.

But unless Olympia does something, it’s only going to get worse.

Currently, students have to receive 1000 hours of instruction per year. But this only has to be a district average, which means some kids have more than a thousand, some less. According to legislation passed last year, next year’s students are supposed to have six hours of instruction per day, 180 days per year. That works out to 1080 hours. That’s for secondary students; for elementary students the total has to be 1000 hours.

Teachers, for the most part, will probably not notice the increase in hours. What they will notice, however, is the DECREASE in collaborative time. Take my district, for example. We have a waiver from the state to convert five of those 180 days into professional development days, which are divided into district-wide PD, building time, collaborative time and individual time. The thinking is that the decrease in instructional time is offset by the benefits gained through the professional development of the teachers. Up until now, the state has agreed with that thinking and granted our district a waiver, year in and year out.

Last year the Legislature changed the law. But this is the same Legislature that passed TPEP, which includes a mandate for teachers to collaborate. Districts like mine, therefore, are stuck in the position of mandating that teachers work together, yet will be unable to provide time for that to happen.

Enter SB 6082, sponsored by Senators McAuliffe and McCoy. This bill simply includes language that allows teacher collaboration to count as part of those 1000 or 1080 hours. (By the way; recess, passing time and parent-teacher conferences are already counted.) This doesn’t address the issue of district time, building time and individual time, but it does allow teachers to work collaboratively.

There are other ways to increase collaborative time, of course, but they involve money. And it’s looking more and more like the Legislature is holding tight to the purse-strings. Which is why SB 6082 was introduced.

It makes total sense. If we value teacher collaboration – and we apparently do, since it’s mandated by law – then we should include it in the school day.

And maybe I’ll be a little less lonely.

At least there’s one school that won’t be wasting time on test-prep this year

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Elementary

Wasting-timeBy Tom

In years past, February marks the beginning of “Test-Prep Season” in my classroom. It isn’t all we do, of course, but I try to weave activities and practice assessments into my plans, gradually increasing the intensity throughout the late winter and early spring until mid-April, when it’s basically an all-out siege.

But not this year.

This year I’m not doing of that. This year I’m teaching, and my students are learning, all year long; including the second half of April.

And here’s why: this year our school board decided that each school in our district (Edmonds) could decide how they wanted to transition from the MSP to the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Option one was to take both. Option two was to take only the MSP. Option three was to field test the SBA and not take the MSP. We chose option three, in the most lopsided vote we’ve ever had, even though the results of the SBA would not be released.

I voted with the majority on this one; in fact I was a leading voice in the discussion that preceded the vote. Option one, taking both tests, seemed ridiculous. Our faculty is trying to become familiar with the CCSS, and that takes time. Getting the students ramped up for another round of MSPs also takes time, and time is the scarcest resource we have. It also takes time for students to become familiar with the new standards, which is what they’re doing this year. Taking two tests on two different sets of standards seemed like a bad idea.

Option two, taking only the MSP, was another non-starter. In order for our students and staff to get a handle on the new standards, it seemed imperative that we get a chance to see the new assessment this year. Besides that, the new tests are all on-line, and piloting the tests will give us a chance to see if our technology can handle the demand. Furthermore, we wanted to have our students’ scores become part of the pilot pool. We have a relatively high-need population; when it comes time to set the benchmarks, it’s good to have a broad student base.

But the most important reason for me was the simplest one. I love to teach and I love to watch my students learn. Test-prep is not teaching and taking practice tests is not really learning. And when you’re in a classroom and you’re not teaching or you’re not learning, you’re wasting your time.

I hate wasting time.

Thirty Million Words

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Elementary, Parent Involvment, Social Issues

LogoBy Tom

There’s a kid in my class who I’ll call Arthur. Although he’s in fourth grade, he started the year reading at about the first grade level and his math skills were even lower. He wrote nothing. When we discussed his situation during a September Child Study meeting we decided to “pull out all the stops.” And so we did. Arthur gets pulled out for one-on-one phonics lessons every day from 9:30 to 10:00. He goes directly from there to his small-group reading lesson with our special ed teacher. From 11:30 to noon he receives in-class support for writing and organization skills. At 2:15 he gets an hour of math support.

That’s pretty much “all the stops.” Fortunately, he has started to making progress; if you were to draw a line representing his academic growth since September, it would have an upwards trajectory. But if that line were a ski slope, you would not tremble at the top. And as far behind as he was four months ago, he is even farther behind now; his classmates, after all, have also made progress, but at a faster rate.

It didn’t have to come to this. A famous study by Betty Hart and Todd Risley resulted in the Thirty Million Words Initiative. Simply put, they found that parent-child communication has an enormous impact on a child’s development and academic success. The name of the initiative reflects the optimal number of words a child should hear from his parents before entering school.

I have never met Arthur’s dad, and apparently neither has he. I have met his mother, though, on several occasions. She is very quiet, somewhat sullen, with the air of a person who looked at the low hand she was dealt and folded pretty early in the game. Which was about when Arthur was born.

Arthur is exactly the kind of student that TMW wants to prevent. Had his mother known how important it was to simply talk to her child, perhaps he wouldn’t be in his current circumstances. Perhaps I’d feel a little more certain that he’ll be in fifth grade next year. Perhaps his ski slope would be a little scarier.

We’ll never know. But I do know this: The most important thing non-teaching education stakeholders can do to support education in this country is to help parents help their children. And Thirty Million Words is an example of how simple that support can be. Talk, after all, is cheap. But apparently it’s pretty important, especially early in a child’s life.

Because sadly, fourth grade is a little bit too late.

OSPI, KUOW and the Seattle Times

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Triangulation-methodBy Tom

By now you’ve probably heard that Washington State’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has agreed to provide the Seattle Times with a large amount of data concerning student test scores, attendance records, discipline records and demographics. They will also provide the newspaper with staff data. To be clear, this is data that is not already available to the public.

It seems clear why the Seattle Times wants this data. They are in the business of selling information. If they can get a better understanding of what’s happening in our state’s schools, they can package that information into news articles and sell it to the public. That seems obvious. What isn’t clear – at least to me – is why OSPI has entered this agreement. I honestly don’t see what they stand to gain by providing The Times with data that isn’t already released.

This bothers me at two levels. As a parent, I’m not crazy about my sons’ scholastic information being sifted through in some newspaper office by a bunch of reporters who are essentially looking for a story. It’s not that our family has anything to hide, but it’s still our information, and it should be our decision on who gets to look at it. The Times has tried to assuage those concerns by maintaining that the information will be “de-identified,” but as KUOW pointed out, it wouldn’t take much effort to use all the data to triangulate which student earned which test score or which student was suspended for which offence. That bothers me.

I’m also bothered as a teacher. It seems clear to me that The Times will have the capacity to report test scores aggregated at the individual classroom level. If you’ll remember, The Los Angeles Times did this a few years ago, and the fallout was disasterous. Whether the Seattle Times is planning this or not, we’re not sure; but it sure looks like they’ll be able to.

The problem is that when a specific teacher’s student test scores are published, they’re devoid of context, because that context would breach confidentiality. Here’s an example: two boys in our school recently lost their stepfather. He was killed violently while in the process of committing a felony. This had an adverse effect, not only on those two boys, but their teachers and their classmates. And when I say “adverse effect” I mean an effect that will probably show up in student test score data. Statisticians call this “noise,” which refers to random happenstances that push or pull data either up or down. They call it noise, because when you aggregate data, positive and negative noise tends to balance out, and the aggregated data isn’t affected. The negative effect of a homicide, for example, could be balanced by the positive effect of another family in the same school whose father got a huge promotion and raise.

But that doesn’t work so well when you drill down to the classroom level, where what remains of our privacy protections prohibit us from providing the context of our students’ test scores. Consider my classroom. I voluntarily took all eight IEP kids in our school’s fourth grade. This was a decision that worked well at the school level; by placing all eight of those kiddos in one class, I could more easily collaborate with the reading resource teacher. Instead of pulling out two or three kids from three different classrooms, each of which is at a different place in the curriculum, she can pull her whole group out from one classroom and focus on the specific skill that they’ve been working on. It works great at the school level, but it’s not going to look so great (for me) if and when my students’ test scores are published in The Times.

It’s great that the Seattle Times is taking such a keen interest in education. They don’t always get it right, but sometimes they do. And obviously, the more information they have to work with, the better. But it seems to me like this agreement gives them access to more information than they can be trusted with.

And that bothers me.

Snow Days

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Snow-DayBy Tom

Snow Days are literally, if not figuratively, a gift from above. They usually come with some warning, and frequently don’t come despite warning, which is why they always come as a surprise.

Snow Days, of course, aren’t much of a gift. They’re more like a bad loan. We trade a day with inclement weather and 8 hours of daylight for a day with 16 hours of daylight and 70 degree weather. That’s a horrible deal.

And as much as we might think we need a day off now, that need will be far greater in mid-June. Trust me.

But of course Snow Days are neither a gift nor a loan. They’re a response to nature. Moisture blows in off the ocean over a mass of cold air and precipitation falls in the form of snow. Snow makes it hard for vehicles to get around, so schools close for the day. And everyone sleeps in.

And for me, the beauty of a Snow Day is that act of yielding to nature. They remind us that we are not fully in charge here. We can predict snow, we can hope for it, we can even pray for it, but we can’t order it. It either happens or it doesn’t.

And when it does happen, it makes no sense to wish that it didn’t happen or worry about the plans we made that won’t reach fruition.

Just let it happen.

And enjoy it.

Let’s Build a Waiver Loophole

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Elementary

LoopholeBy Tom

Twelve years ago, George Bush signed “No Child Left Behind” into law. Among other things, the law requires that by the end of this school year every student in America has to meet standard. That level of success will never happen, of course, not even in Finland, but no one has bothered to change that part of the law. Instead, the Obama Administration has used that law as leverage to advance their own educational agenda, which includes expanded school choice, adoption of the Common Core State Standards and tougher teacher evaluation laws. They’ve done this by granting waivers from the law's punitive aspects to states that adopt certain policies.

Washington State received one of those waivers, along with 31 other states. And for the most part, we’ve toed the line. We now allow charter schools, we’re transitioning to the CCSS, and we have a brand-new Teacher and Principal Evaluation Project. (TPEP)

But there’s a problem. As written, TPEP allows state assessment scores to be used for teacher evaluation. The feds want TPEP to require that they be used. The feds have recently notified our state, warning us that we risk losing our waiver unless TPEP is changed so that it mandates the use of state assessment data. 

As a teacher, I can see no possible way in which state test scores can be used as a valid basis for my evaluation. I teach fourth grade; my students took a state test last year and they’ll take another one this year. But it’s not the same test. Last year they took a third grade test and this year they’ll take a fourth grade test. The smart kids in my class passed their test last year and they’ll probably pass their test this year. The kids who are struggling this year didn’t pass their test last year and they’ll have a tough time passing this year’s test.

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How do you deal with Helicopter Parents?

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ApacheBy Tom

I was reading the Seattle Times the other day when I came across an editorial by the venerable Lynn K. Varner. In it, she describes an essay written by a guy named Ron Clark who quit his principal job because he was fed up with dealing with over-involved parents.

That’s too bad. It sounds like Ron Clark was a good principal, and it’s unfortunate that he was essentially run out of town by people who actually love him. He’s not alone, of course; the education world is awash with tales of helicopter parents who badger their children’s teachers and principals with complaints, questions and comments. They want to know more about a grade on a test. They want to suggest the next field trip. They want to know why their child is sitting in the back of the room. They wonder why their daughter is always picked fifth in kickball.

What they don’t realize is that in a typical elementary school there are 26 kids per class, and twenty classrooms in the school. A teacher deals with fifty parents each year; a principal deals with about a thousand. If every parent contacts their child’s teacher twice a week, either by voice or email, that teacher has to produce one hundred responses. If each response takes three minutes to compose and send, that’s five hours. That’s a lot. Nothing, though, compared to the principal. If she gets only one message per parent per month, that’s 250 responses per week. Her responses, of course, take much longer, since she probably has to find out exactly what happened in whatever classroom the child is in. If this takes ten minutes per message, then…well, you get the idea.

My point is this: teachers and principals in some schools spend an incredible amount of time dealing with parents. Granted, some of this time is well spent. Dealing with parents is an important part of our job. Parents have every right to advocate for their children and we have the responsibility to address their concerns. And there are legitimate concerns that do need to be addressed.

But this should even out across schools. There’s no reason to think that parents in school A, in the affluent, well-connected suburbs, should have more legitimate concerns than parents in school B, twelve miles away, in the high-risk low-income area. (If anything, they should have less) Yet, it seems that wealthy, connected parents have more concerns – and send more messages – than parents in less affluent areas.

In fact, educators in high-needs schools seem to have the opposite problem. They can’t seem to get parents involved at all with their kid’s education. They have low turnout for events, fund raising efforts are futile and permission slips go unsigned.

Then there’s my school. Right there in the sweet spot. Our parents are generally supportive, yet generally hands-off. Permission slips get signed, but emails go unsent. There are well-packed lunch boxes in every backpack, but no helicopters in the hallway.

And that’s just fine with me. When I tell my district colleagues from the rich side of town that I get about two parent emails per month, they ask if we have any openings. I get the same response from teachers in the other end of town when I tell them that I don’t have to buy any coats or shoes for my students.

Life in the sweet pot. And for that I’m thankful.

How about you? Which side of the sweet spot is your school? And how are you coping with it?

Congratulations, New NBCTs!

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DownloadBy Tom

The National Board recently released the scores to last year’s candidates. If you’re one of those who received some good news, I have a few things to tell you.

First of all, congratulations! You did something incredibly difficult, and you did it successfully. You should celebrate. And I mean a real celebration, not a six pack and a thing of Oreos. This is why they make champagne. This is why they sell “surf and turf.” This is why they let certain bottles of bourbon sit there for ten years. Have fun! If not you, who? If not now, when?

So after your party – and the inevitable hangover – you’ll begin to wonder “What next?” The first thing you need to do is thank those who supported you. Start close to home. Then branch out. Your colleagues. Your cohort facilitator. Your cohort. Your Jump Start trainers. The students who endured your mood swings. Yes, you worked your butt off last year, but you probably weren’t alone. Thank those who helped.

And then think about giving back. Those of us on whose shoulders you now stand worked very hard to build a strong support system in Washington State for National Board Certification. We created Jump Start. We created a system of facilitated cohorts. Most importantly, we pushed for legislation to provide bonuses for NBCTs. You need to know that when we pushed for this legislation, we sold it as an investment. Lawmakers were convinced that the state would get more back than what they spent on the bonuses. We convinced them they would get better instruction and leadership from NBCTs. What that means for you is that you now have to live up to that portfolio you wrote. It also means that you should give thought to taking on a leadership position or two. That shouldn’t be too hard. Most teachers, especially NBCTs, have more opportunities than time. If you’re the rare teacher who has to actually seek out leadership opportunities, please consider your local association. For two reasons: they need your expertise and they, more than anyone, were instrumental in getting the bonus legislation through the legislature. And by the way, you’ve no doubt noticed that the state also has an additional bonus for those teachers who choose to take their expertise to a high-needs school. If you decide to do that, you are truly awesome.

So after the party, the hangover, the thank yous and the committee-joining spree, then what? The next step is to head over to the National Board website and download the renewal materials. So soon? Yes! The renewal process is essentially a continuation of the initial process. You basically have to document what you’ve done since certification to impact student learning. It’s not nearly as difficult as the first time around, but here’s the thing: if you look through the documents now, you can use them as a blueprint for organizing and planning your professional development over the next eight years. If you don’t, you’ll basically be playing a game of backfill; choosing things you did that kinda-sorta meet the requirements of the renewal process. Trust me on this.

A word of warning: don’t fall into the trap of perseverating on those aspects of your results that didn’t measure up. Yes, it was a ten-part assessment, and no, you probably didn’t hit 275 on every single assessment. Neither did I. But let it go. In the world of National Board Certification, no one cares what your final score was. And no one cares whether you passed every one of the ten assessments. It’s about as meaningful as your middle school GPA. There are no mitigating factors or caveats when it comes to certification. It’s only certify or not certify. The only exception is those teachers who certified on their second or third attempt. Those people are in a class by themselves. A higher class. Those people have the perseverance, determination and grit that the rest of us can only envy.

Again, congratulations. And welcome to the community. Now get busy.