Hey, how about we don't do this

 5 'good' AI use cases that are bad for students

...and frankly, this is still too positive about possible uses. We need students to develop these skills, which they manifestly are not doing if they're outsourcing it! 

December Board of Ed: accountability survey results

Curtin: we did commit to surveying the field at the new accountability system
"last look back at this year...then transition into looking forward"
Commissioner interested in where improvements can be made
survey sent to superintendents, stakeholders in field
439 responses
different types of questions
Sagan: how many sent to?
there's some math going on here...
Sagan: we didn't hear from the majority: "are these the happy ones, the unhappy ones?...did we learn anything more from this?"
Curtin: in any survey you get some who feel strongly one way or the other, and some in the middle
West: it was not anonymous
small majority either satisfied or very satisfied
majority in every category either understood well or most
higher on district level, lower on school level
numbers on satisfied were lower for charter school respondents and higher for regional vo-techs
how did understanding impact satisfaction? Not much
"kind of gives me a bit of feeling that people have a defined feeling about accountability systems, potentially regardless of understanding"
two-thirds of respondents said the normative (comparing districts/schools) is valuable or very valuable
(the regional vo-techs like it the most)
smaller number saying satisfield or very satisfied for criteron-referenced (compare against yourself), but still a majority
lowest performing students, lowest performing subgroups found valuable
chronic absentee rate majority did not find valuable
about the weighing: around half on each says to keep it the same
note coming in that the high schools are all doing pretty well on MCAS, so keeping the same or increasing
"the problem here is we only have a hundred percent"
Peyser: did you look at where the answers were coming from?
Curtin: yes, around achievement and growth; generally those wanting more on growth, were not doing as well around achievement
Peyser: did you ask about better/worse than prior system?
Curtin: in hindsight, I wish I had; we didn't
non-high school suggested additions (only had 130 responses): most were "no" some on climate, access to art, educator attendance, suspension, school spending, K-2 schools
high school suggested additions: broader definition of advanced coursework, postsecondary enrollment, extracurricular participation, 9th grade success
and anything else?
small size issues and participation; chronic absenteeism; use of standardized testing; high-performing districts "are penalized" because they still have to move forward; call for consistency; need for state funding

Moriarty: can't be thinking of chronic absenteeism and excused and unexcused
"that really does say there's a disconnect in the field around knowledge level"
Curtin agrees, when a student can be counted in attendance isn't necessarily understood
"we need to make sure on the reporting side that the definitions are understood"
I don't think that's a misunderstanding, to be honest.

December Board of Ed: receivership schools

bit of a backup here: note that this is their regular check-in; there's no decision or recommendations here

Look...and listen

Regarding the new accountability release...let's start with a word, or rather a song, from Mr. Rogers:

Fair enough: I knew it was coming. I've been warning for months (is it years?) that when the new accountability results were released, there was going to be a real temptation to jump straight to MCAS results and entirely miss a lot of other important information that was also included.
And sure enough, here we are, with MCAS ranking lists and headlines that enshrine single digit changes in results.

Board of Ed: Accountability

I have downloaded the presentation here
Curtin: four meeting timeline on discussion of accountability
last month, this month, either February/March for regulations to go out, either May/June to vote regulations
weighting of indicators
"this can get a little in the weeds"

Talking about student growth

I want to give some more thought to this before opining, but I thought others might be interested in this New York Times piece in "The Upshot" on student growth scores, and the research from which it comes. The Times article has a "gosh, the poor kids can be learning faster; whodathunk?" tone, but the bit where you can add a district is interesting (Worcester essentially gets kids to and keeps them at grade level), and it at least turns us away from the still-too-often measurements in which learning tracks with wealth.

Evening meeting of the Board of Ed

coming in a bit late here to the presentation; I'll see if I can pick up what I missed later

.@MASchoolsK12 Jeff Wulfson on #MCAS: Students did work they've been doing all along. What's changed is standard is more rigorous. #maedu pic.twitter.com/qmOIpLx32Y

— JC Considine (@ConsidineJC) October 23, 2017

New Board of Ed members

As I mentioned Tuesday, there were two new members of the Board of Ed sworn in before the meeting. The Governor's press release went out later that day and says the following:

About Martin West:
Martin West is an associate professor of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also deputy director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Education Policy and Governance and executive editor of Education Next, a journal of opinion and research on education policy. He studies the politics of K-12 education in the United States and how education policies affect student learning and non-cognitive development. In 2014-15, he worked as senior education policy advisor to the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He previously taught at Brown University and was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he is now a nonresident senior fellow. He received his Ph.D. in Government and Social Policy from Harvard in 2006 and his master’s in economic and social history from Oxford University in 2000.

About Amanda Fernandez:
In 2016, Amanda Fernandez, co-founded Latinos for Education, a non-profit dedicated to developing, placing, and connecting essential Latino leadership in the education sector. She was previously a vice president of Latino Community Partnerships at Teach For America, where she engaged with the Latino community for recruitment, development and advancement of staff and alumni. She led multiple efforts to highlight the need for Latino leadership in the education sector. While at Teach For America, she launched national summits focused on professional development for Latino staff, and boosted participation from 40 people to more than 300 participants and speakers. She also led the launch of a CEO sponsored Latino Advisory Committee, which fostered leadership and community building within the Latino population at Teach for America. Earlier in her career, she worked as director of organizational consulting at The Bridgespan Group, an organization that helps nonprofit and philanthropic organizations develop strategies and build their organizations. She received her bachelor of arts’ degree from Western Illinois University and a master’s degree from Fordham University.

So what do we need to know?
West is serving out the rest of Roland Fryer's term (which goes through June of 2020). West by far has the larger online footprint. Beyond his work at Harvard, he's easiest to find as the editor of Education Next, which is on the ed-reformy end of things. You can see some of his thinking in the conversation he had this spring on the "Building Excellent Schools," a training organization for charter school leadership. For example:

“For those, like me, who think that the expansion of school choice is a promising way to improve outcomes for American students, charter schooling has proven to be politically more successful, more palatable, and able to benefit from bipartisan support,” he says, pragmatic as ever. “I think it has demonstrated that when the right conditions are in place it can really produce dramatic improvement for students who have been poorly served by traditional school districts.”

His most recent research (that's been discussed popularly) was something over the summer on students not seeing long term negative impact in being held back in school; this is of course in contrast to four decades of research that found that students are harmed by being held back. He also formed the joint research project of Boston charters and MIT and Harvard researchers on character education, funded by the Walton Foundation. You can find his appearances on CSPAN here. Among them are his testimony before the HELP Committee as they considered the revisions to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That largely focuses on testing and its impacts; he believes testing is efficacious, as it is reflective of long-term earning ability. Frankly, his testimony is a bit more nuanced than I expected, conceding, for example:

t some evidence suggests that heavy handed test-based accountability policies can promote rote, teacher-directed instruction and encourage schools to focus narrowly on test-preparation skills rather than ensuring that students are exposed to a curriculum rich in academic content. These tendencies may be strongest in schools with high minority and low-income populations, which typically face the strongest pressure to improve (Diamond and Spillane 2005).

and likewise:

the level at which students perform at a given point of time is a poor indicator of school quality, as student achievement is heavily influenced by factors outside of a school’s control. Measures based on the amount students learn from one year to the next can provide a more accurate gauge of schools’ contribution to student learning (Deming 2014).

...which is why he favored testing multiple times in elementary school. That's an argument, note, in favor of measurement of student growth. In the same testimony, he also argued in favor of moving much authority back to the states.
In terms of his political history, he was an advisor to Mitt Romney in his campaign for president, and he worked for Senator Lamar Alexander. He was among those who more than once said he had no interest in working in the Trump administration, however.

Fernandez, who has been appointed to a full five year term, prior to founding Latinos for Education, was the Vice-President for Diversity and Inclusiveness at Teach for America. Prior to that, she worked for Bridgespan in recruiting, which I know will raise concern in some quarters. Latinos for Education describes itself as:

Our mission is to develop, place and connect essential Latino leaders in the education sector. We are building an ecosystem of Latino advocates by infusing Latino talent into positions of influence.
We believe that Latino leaders should be at the forefront of creating an equitable education for Latino students. Latinos for Education prepares nuestra comunidad to break down barriers to educational opportunity for the next generation of Latino students.

Her other local education connection is a seat on the KIPP Massachusetts (charter) advisory board. She was the speaker at the Boston University School of Education convocation this spring, where she spoke of the importance of valuing your identity, working with passion on the struggle, and rising together.

Board of Ed: report on Level 5 schools

You can find the backup here
Pia Durkin of New Bedford is here to talk about the Parker School
Chester says he sees her as turning around the district as well
Durkin: a gift to be able to serve as their receiver

Student impact rating: Board of Ed

Backup is here
Sagan: "I come to this thinking...we have to evidence of student learning, the job that's being done in the classroom..."
voting will be to send it out to public comment
Chester: teachers have demonstrated time and again "their ability to impact student learning"
"I've just seen so many of the Massachusetts educators be strong in terms of influencing student achievement, student academic learning...I feel very strongly that if we're not smart about building into our rating cycle...we've missed the boat"
building into the rating the impact of teachers and schools
"if we don't build that into the rating cycle...we're doing our teachers a disservice"
"I feel quite strongly about that"
heard from unions in the spring; "I appreciate that conversation"
separate and discrete impact on student learning; distraction of that far outweighed the benefit of that
have folded impact of student learning into overall rating
concern that it would drive more testing; change would support 'on the fly' assessment "that schools are doing anyway"
"provides greater flexibility, perhaps, than the system that exists now"
clear signal from superintendents and principals that support
teachers' unions do not

The Board of Ed meets next week

The Massachusetts Board of Education meets next week on Monday night and Tuesday morning. You can find the agenda here.
On Monday night, the state plans to release preliminary results of last spring's testing. Important note about that:

This year's assessment choices, however, were distributed in such a way that makes it difficult to create a valid representative sample. Approximately 72% of students took PARCC tests in 2016; the remaining 28% took MCAS tests. As a result, ESE will not report aggregate results at the state level for grades 3-8 ELA and mathematics in 2016.

That should make it tricky for headline writers.
Likewise the new school and district accountability levels will be released at that meeting.

On Monday, after the usual round of comments, the Board will elect a new vice-chair and recap Monday night's meeting.
The Board then is getting an update on the state's plans regarding ESSA. Note the following from the updated for September stakeholder outreach plan:

We will work through similar mechanisms in the fall listening phase. We also plan to add several regional listening forums where stakeholders can gather to share input publicly on our plans, as well as to hear from one another about their priorities and concerns.

So, keep an eye out for more to come on that! 
Note also the attachment of suggested indicators of student success or school quality. At first glance, if DESE is really thinking about adding some of this, that would be a very different accountability system. 
They'll also be discussing educator evaluation, specifically the student impact rating. There is significant citation of stakeholder testimony, summed up in:

These stakeholder comments all point to a solution to the concerns of implementation: eliminate the separate student impact rating from the Framework while continuing to use evidence from common assessments in order to provide educators with feedback on the extent to which they are promoting student learning and achievement as well as to incorporate this evidence into each educator's rating.

It looks as though there will be more work to come on that, as the laws will have to be revised if that is to go.

There are updates on the review of the ELA and math standards, as well as the history/social studies standards.

There is an update on the MCAS, including notice that the Commissioner will be recommending that the current test be extended as a graduation requirement through the class of 2020. That backup also includes to-be-explored questions moving forwarding, including those around competency determination (that is, readiness for graduation).
And there's an initial bit on the FY18 (yes 18!) budget.

I will be there to liveblog the Tuesday morning meeting. 

What's cracking me up this morning

This tweet from Michael Petrelli:

Come on MA you can do better! @LindaMNoonan @MassStand https://t.co/RfGthfHFAd

— Michael Petrilli (@MichaelPetrilli) September 6, 2016

...linking to their report giving two stars out of four on how Massachusetts deals with gifted students.
Naturally, I was interested in what we were getting dinged for, so I checked their rating system. Note that all of this is based on our accountability system, and specifically is based on our testing within our accountability system.

A state gets one star if districts get more credit for students achieving advanced.
A state gets one star if "progress of all students" counts.
Those two we get.

A state gets a star if "gifted students" are a subgroup.
Nope, we don't do that.
And a state gets a star if student growth counts for at least 50% of their district rating.
Nope. We use student growth in rating districts, but not for that much. In Massachusetts, student growth counts for 25% of accountability, and we've had to fight the ed reformers to get that far!

Cast your mind back to June 2014: the Board of Education adopted a new measurement for district accountability, which included that 25% of student growth. There had been pressure for as much as 30%. (Their rating system seems to think it counts for 40%; it doesn't. uses the individual school rating system, which uses growth for 2 out of 5; the district rating system weighs growth at 25%. It's not entirely clear to me what they actually want to change here. The Commissioner's memo on this from June 2014 is here.) 
And here's the real kicker on this: this is the system that determines the lowest 10% of districts, and, in term, determines where charter schools can really expand. Let's pause to realize that these numbers can thus be changed, and thus "lowest 10%" isn't at all a hard and fast set of districts; this is even demonstrated by our weighing growth differently for schools and for districts. Also, know that the big battle in Massachusetts behind the scenes in 2014 was the precise amount that student growth would count for. If student growth counts for "too much," Boston leaves the list of lowest performing districts.
And that would severely curtail the rampant charter growth in Boston.

It's one of the big secrets in Massachusetts public education: it's some of our urban districts that are getting the highest rates of student growth.

Be careful what you wish for, there, ed reformers!

h/t to Rob for the clarification! 

Professor Jack Schneider, professor at Holy Cross, "Measuring School Quality Beyond Test Scores"

Posting these now as I couldn't get on Blogger in Medford High. All notes mine, and Prof. Schneider has the distinction of being one of the few people I've run into who talk faster than I can type. The below is my best:

Jack Schneider, presentation to MASC Division IX

Measuring School Quality Beyond Test Scores

“let’s start with what we have: state data and where most people get it” on the DESE website

limitations for policy and governance

clear quantifiable aim for, for example, raising SGP

don’t have the same information for, for example, educating the whole child

not same easy access to data

sends a message: if you don’t measure what you care about, you’ll start caring about what you measure

at most basic level, poorly designed interface

most people engage through Globe’s ranking ordering of MCAS performance

has more to do with family education and socio-economic

sends message of some schools are good, some are not

sends message of false precision: that we know what the number one and two schools are

which we don’t

“Dreamschool finder” reaction to Globe’s “Dreamtown finder”

“catagory called ‘hipster’ which if you ranked really high, you naturally have to live in Somerville”

if you ranked education really high, his hometown didn’t come up

“as long as schools were highly valued, you couldn’t get to Somerville”

if you dropped schools, you could get there

they were using SATs scores and another variable

whomever at the Globe was savvy about dealing with people, offloaded it all onto me

looked at the available data, have to work with that

some of the available data doesn’t stink: college aspiration data, survey of students about plans to attend college

can have a lot of low income students and still convince them that college is an aim

looked at available data: six categories

I wanted to use “the less bad use of available data” but became “Dreamschool finder”

tried to be a little fairer

did not rank order schools: had to input values

“good schools are about good fit as much as they are about a generic high-quality performance”

eventually talked about what other people should do in Somerville: put out RFP

was convinced that “it was going to be some huckster” who would do it

put together a team to propose starting with a blank slate

“What do people actually care about?”

a lot of polls used to build a draft framework to reflect what we believe a good school does

Somerville “pretty representative” of the US as a whole

began holding focus groups to amend the draft framework of what people care about in schools

made fewer and fewer changes over time until we got to a place where more and more people were looking at the framework and agreeing that those are their values in schools

“why we think the things we do about schools”

interesting to see teachers, administrators, parents, community members look at it and agreeing, common ground

Two large divisions: essential inputs and key outcomes

inputs: teachers and teaching environment, school culture, resources

outcomes: indicators of learning and character and well-being outcomes

for academic outcomes: using only growth and developing portfolio assessments

“there are ways to ask teachers questions to ensure an honest response: ensuring anonymity and collating at the school level”

School Culture: safety, relationships, academic orientation

every category is made up of subcategories and every subcategories has multiple measures

cannot presume precision

bring thirty measures to the task assuming that some will fall short, but eventually will get to answer

“don’t just want absence of bullying, want trust between students”

lots of questions to ask: absence rate, on time graduation rate, academic press questions of students: how much does this teacher encourage you to do your best? when you feel like giving up, how likely is it that your teacher will encourage you to keep trying?

have some measures of asking teachers: what do you see in the hallways? how much support do you have?

when asking questions of teachers and students, dozens of scales of measure

Data collection: all students grades 4-12

all teacher surveys (developed a sped survey specifically to be sure those students weren’t missed)

district data (teacher turnover)

state data (SGP)

data compilation and visualization:

web tool for School Committee and district leaders: secure portal just for them

able to attach measures to things schools and district care about

web tool for the public, as well: to be able to say that public can make more informed decisions and would strengthen the schools

many parents are desperate to advocate for their schools but don’t have the language: too often dismissed or that they themselves dismiss as it’s non-expert (in language) knowledge

imagine if they could say “this is what we care about”

“we’re hearing from parents that this is what they want to change at their school”

“the vision that parents have is the vision that matters: the schools belong to us”

urban schools are so badmouthed, so pilloried

wasn’t always that way, people clamored to get into urban schools, as those were the place to be

“very powerful stereotype of urban schools, that is then reinforced by that data we have” from MCAS rankings

“of course if you talk to the parents whose children have gone there, they seem pretty happy”

“if you’re in a school during off-hours and there are kids in the hallways and they’re working and they’re happy: that’s a good school”

currency of the realm is data: that’s the language people are talking now

question about equity: measurement of resources

enough measurements tell you where there are issues: and thus what can be fixed or needs to be fixed

“we’ve got a great principal, great teachers..the problem is resources...you can then activate” those who want to improve their schools and give them direction on energy

“public schools don’t market themselves” ad on T for charter schools or private schools

“exact opposite of what happens with public schools...slick version of reality” that’s being sold

“public schools aren’t even in control of the version of themselves that’s being presented to the world”

only a benefit that she was exposed to one more kind of thing

public schools aren’t even in control of the version of themselves that’s being presented to the world

“I believe a lot of our problems are solved if our kids go to school together, but our kids don’t go to school together, because parents have had the bejeezus scared out of them”

parents told this story that they can’t stay in cities, or, if they stay in cities, they have to send their kids to other schools

Q on ensuring all kids are paid attention: disaggregation of data, producing snapshots of all subgroups

“absolutely something that needs to be done”

school “fit is as important as whatever the generic good qualities of a school are”

parents need to figure out “who’s my kid, and how do make sure that” a school is right for my kid

Q measuring family background of kids in schools not accounted for within data

also levels of ELL and levels of special ed

charters taking least disadvantaged of disadvantaged: parental engagement...and “let’s look at the correlation of parent engagement and higher test scores”

Belsen: huge battle over what the purpose of a public schools: creating those for a job market. If you believe it’s more comprehensive than that, then you get a different picture.

Globe is pushing civics education: “well, who in the heck pushed it out?”

broader picture of what we want school to do

colleague refers to the “learnification” of schools: implies that everything in schools are something that can be measured

“the way to counter that is with the voices of the American people”

have evidence that this is what people want in their schools

“if all you do is measure two subject areas narrowly” then that’s all that’s going to get done

Q special education: if kids with particular needs don’t test well, and results bear that out

how to be more persuasive?

Schneider: focus group with special ed teachers: what Qs don’t apply to your students, what Qs aren’t here that should be on here to give us a picture of what your students are doing in the classroom

“every one of my kids has a personal goal, and when they meet that, it’s the best thing that happens to them all year”

gave students cell phones and texted them questions: have an 80% response rate on questions

building with real-time data: helping teachers use data to improve what they’re doing in the classroom

professional development site driven by what is known about (for example) around school climate

“and guess what? Suddenly you’re treating educators like professionals”

might make a difference and might also turnaround this slide on job satisfaction for teachers

“we’re better at our work when we are satisfied in our work” and are more likely to stay around

“and guess what? There’s data to show that” teachers who are in the classroom longer DO know more

Q on implementation: capacity? and how to continue? Much work is done and can be a starting point for other districts

thinking of starting a non-profit so “we could pay some people to come in and do the work” to create the framework specific to community

doesn’t take a lot in money: people have a lot of good systems and processes

creating a group so that this is self-sustaining with someone working quarter time to sustain it

in interest of urban superintendents, in particular, to ensure that measures are done in a more broad way

Q something that could be instead of the more corporate planning process: strengths, weaknesses, coming up with goals that are measurable...simplified process that could be done at the school council level for school improvement plans which are too driven by test scores; parents want to talk about school climate, rather

Schneider: easy first approach from broad categories of inputs and outcomes

want this to be an educational device: want parents and community members to learn more about each measure

something like “hallways are dark and dingy” when it’s backed up by the same data being used by system

“felt sense of things real and important” but set up against quantifiable; falsely set up against each other

Q found that student surveys are one of the most consistently reliable sources of information on teachers

questions put in words that are meaningful to students: test Qs with students, then take responses to teachers…”long iterative process”

Schneider: set up “so we can give everything away”

support schools as low cost as possible

student data currently being tested against other data across the country: going to be tested for strong correlation along with other student data

Q open sources would be useful, anything developed put back into open source; thinking of trying to have anyone who uses inputs data for aggregated data to start to understand across districts

interesting Q, not going to answer...don’t want to require entering data that requires student responses

at same time does empower communication and transparency

Q (this from a sped teacher) “comments about rigor, which is a word that I’ve really come to despise”

in grade 2, I give eight standardized tests a year

when people come in and give a snapshot look, not looking at everything that’s going on

students persevering in a task, sitting a chair “that’s important”

“we’re trying to teach in spite of everything they’re telling us to do”

Schneider: comment that parents support you

parents feel that standardized tests tell them the LEAST about teacher conferences of all the information available to them

tests don’t even aim among their aim of what a successful school does

Schneider: PARCC and MCAS are like a blood pressure test or a temperature

sometimes a high temperature is really bad, but some people’s temperatures run a little high

“when a good doctor says, ‘hey, you don’t look so good’ what is that even based on?”

Comment that this is a grassroots activism, start proving workable

Schneider: willing to work with districts in whatever way we can; want to be able to part of ongoing conversation

once we build it, we can give it to you

some basic texting thing, small costs involved

Comment (Belsen) sustainability of some of these gains on MCAS and so forth: don’t go on and complete college in same numbers, SATs, jobs long term

“inability that the gains that are leading the charge for this expansion are not sustainable and don’t really produce real gains long term”

fighting against a juggernaut that tells us what is

Sen. Jehlen: “you have more power than you realize”

bunch of bills in the Legislature: people will say ‘there’s nothing we can do; we need the information’ Now you have something to say.”

“Don’t underestimate how powerful you can be as the voices of your community.”

Friday afternoon puzzler

You may remember that part of the new Massachusetts teacher evaluation system is a "Student Impact Rating," which, while based on multiple measures, by state law (enacted due to Race to the Top) includes student test scores.
But which scores? From which test?
Addressing this issue--I'm not sure I'd say 'answering this questsion'--is this memo from Commissioner Chester.
They're going to use two years of data: 2014-15 and 2015-16. If I'm understanding the memo correctly, if the 2014-15 PARCC scores (should your district be using them) don't agree with the 2013-14 MCAS scores and 2015-16 scores of whatever test we're using at that time, they'll throw those out (or rather, have the districts do so, because the state isn't doing this work), and they'll use the 2013-14 MCAS scores.
There are several statements in this memo about all of this aligning being a "strong indicator of student learning." No, no, it's not. Student growth percentiles is not a legitmate way to evaluate teachers (it's actually worse than value added). Please allow me to direct you to Bruce Baker on why not.
Also, this is based not on one, but on two entirely different tests (possibly! We don't actually even know what we're using for the second of these years!), which makes this all that much more crazy in asserting that these are meaningful comparisons that should have real value.
I am sure that there will be more on this to come, as this information starts to get around.

The insanity in push on evaluating teacher training programs

A telling couple of paragraphs from today's Politico article:

A recent study funded by the Education Department found that value-added measures may fluctuate significantly due to factors beyond the teachers’ control, including random events such as a dog barking loudly outside a classroom window, distracting students during their standardized test. A 2010 study, also funded by the Education Department, found the models misidentify as many as 50 percent of teachers — pegging them as average when they’re actually better or worse than their peers, or singling them out for praise or condemnation when they’re actually average.

Yet another challenge: Calculating scores for educators who do not teach subjects or grades assessed with standardized exams. Nationally, some 70 percent of teachers — including most high school and early elementary teachers, plus art, music and physical education teachers — fall into that category.

Despite such complications, Muñoz made clear in a call with reporters on Thursday that Obama wants student test scores, or other measures of student growth, to figure heavily into states’ evaluations of teacher prep programs.

“This is something the president has a real sense of urgency about,” she said. “What happens in the classroom matters. It doesn’t just matter — it’s the whole ballgame.” So using student outcomes to evaluate teacher preparation programs “is really fundamental to making sure we’re successful,” Muñoz said. “We believe that’s a concept … whose time has come.”

Thus:

• it's junk science
• the Administration knows it's junk science, because one of its own departments is saying so.
• we're going to do it anyway because it's "time has come."

This. Is. Insane.
(h/t to Perdido Street School for the link)

Testimony on charter regs

Senator Pat Jehlen
Testimony on charter regs
13 senators and 11 representatives sent a letter urging an expanded use of growth
achievement essentially a matter of income rather than effectiveness
"reject that schools should be judged by what they teach rather than where they come from"
"when schools are labelled 'underperforming' they don't just lose money"
they lose community standing
should not stigmatize schools which are allowing for growth
"the label comes with disruption"
"as long as achievement outweighs growth, Boston will always be at the bottom"
but 2/3ths growth means Boston is no longer in the bottom 10%

And my testimony is here

Two things on the change in charter regs

this one's coming from me

• adding student growth as part of the calculation of the lowest ten percent is GOOD, but it should count as more than a quarter of the calculation
• there's no mention funding of charter schools in the regs here. We can't keep having the Board of Ed expand the number of charter schools and have the Legislature level fund the reimbursement of charter schools

passes unanimously

I'll then comment as such at the March 25 Board of Ed

Saturday morning ICYMI* (edited)

Links from things you may have missed this week:

• The Burncoat Robotics team, the Green Reapers, are doing these alumni profiles, which are excellent to read. 
• This post, from Momastery, about teaching as connection, has been all over social media this week, but if it somehow hasn't crossed your screen, give it a read.
• A thoughtful post here about the Common Core purported emphasis on close reading and what we're really looking for. 
• Some states are now ditching the "Common Core" as a name...but not the standards themselves.
• An analysis of how much snow it takes to cancel school across the U.S. (but do read the notes!)
• The Mass Board of Ed voted this week to postpone including student data in the teacher evaluation (this came through on the Commissioner's weekly update, which doesn't appear to be posted online yet); if you're wondering why, go see Bruce Baker on the lousy understanding of what Student Growth Percentile can and cannot show. EDIT: They didn't. They did this in December. Apologies for the confusion.
• And if you know of anyone who has a child struggling with addiction to heroin or other drugs, please let them know about Learn to Cope. 

*In Case You Missed It

presentation on MCAS by Maureen Kavanaugh

While Ms. Kavanaugh's presentation is not currently up online, she said she'd put it there. Once she does, I will link to it.
...who starts with what MCAS is and where it came from (or at least its intent)
individual student reports include performance on individual items, score overall, and score level

Value-added and Student Growth models still a mess

I haven't posted in some time about the new teacher evaluation method we're rolling out. While the goal setting and classroom observation pieces are happening now, Massachusetts has not yet moved to the linking of teacher evaluation to student test scores.

That's still scheduled to happen, though, which is why I'd urge you to read Bruce Baker on what a mess these methods are. 

The argument I've repeatedly heard in Massachusetts--including from the floor of our own School Committee--is that we're not doing value-added measurement, we're doing student growth measurement. Essentially, that means that we see where a kid is at the beginning of the year and see how far that kid has come over the course of the time with the teacher. While this sounds nice and clean, it turns out that it's even more of a mess than value-added.

But don't believe me: go read Professor Baker:

At this point, I’m increasingly of the opinion that even if there was a possible reasonable use of value-added and growth data for better understanding variations in schooling and classroom effects on measured learning, I no longer have any confidence that these reasonable uses can occur in the  current policy environment.