Ed Reform at 17: Questions

(note that the intial round of questions came from WEC Director Jennifer Davis Carey)

Questions (note that these are coming from the Collaborative, not the audience):
a credible way of evaluating teachers that will improve teacher performance: to Reville
"total inadequate support on the front lines of urban education"
"we gotta do better at that...no young teacher should come into this and not get regular support and evaluation"
"try to strike a balance...look at a number of factors"
"developing a much more vigorous classroom evaluation process"

to O'Sullivan: students make more choices..has ed reform advanced that aim
"I think so. As I look around at what I'm doing now...explosion of people who want to be here and their children are being educated here"
"a lot of indications that we are changing the status quo"
supportive of people who want to be here and want to contribute
Reville points out that we lead (or close to it) the world in science and technology, but points to gap among groups, and that we have lower than the national average interest among students heading to college in wanting to go into science

to DelPrete: what one or two areas do we need to focus on for improvement?
teachers and teaching have been a pretty marginalized subject in ed reform
"refocus the subject on teaching and learning"
"working on the whole continuum of teacher development...how teachers get socialized into the profession...depends on a capacity for teamwork"
"inspiration gap, collaboration gap"
"kids' social capital...kids don't have access to social capital or wider opportunities for learning..we are their social capital..even if we build their education, if we don't build their capacity...they instinctively follow other paths"
"what concretely...how do we get kids to understand the opportunities" out there, where their education might lead?

to Baehr: AYP not a great measure: is this accurate? Is there more that we ought to be using as a measure?
Yes.
"we've seen the limitations of" AYP
"doesn't take into account mobility"
state has "deemphasized" AYP: at Level 3 and 4, we're not limited to AYP
Level 3, built on MCAS and on high school graduation and dropout
20% of lowest achieving will be Level 3 (once 2010 MCAS comes out); priority for assistance
"abandoning AYP for that purpose"
and it wasn't a factor in identifying Level 4 or 5 schools

to Boone: how can the reams of data be used to improve education
"not use data as a negative"
"I think we have to go back to what I refer to as data mining: what can we learn from the data?"
"when we frame and look at data around a set of key questions, we can grow from it"
"more extensive cultures in our schools..in discussing data...through a sense that it is not a negative"
"use data as a tool to drive decisions...that's the premise behind an accountability system in Worcester"
"align resources based on data"
"we have to own the way we've taken data down a negative pathway"
"at the end of the day, do we continue to drive a car...we keep bringing it back with the same malfunction...somebody has to figure out what's going on" (that was an analogy with teacher evaluation being measured by student test scores)
Baehr jumps in: MCAS "equate year to year score"
"a smart, reliable, accurate, valid way to relate MCAS scores year to year"
one kid, year to year, how he did against his peers
between 40 and 60% is typical growth; growth of over 60% is a "school that's really adding value"
"use of potent data can help change practice"
"many have describe MCAS as an autospy...need something more like temperature taking"
quarterly assessment using real MCAS test questions from previous years (yes, folks, that would be four times a year...)