Comments on: A union leader calls for better teacher evaluations and less “glacial” due process

By: Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:04:57 +0000

US-B points out one problem with merit pay in #24, how do you compare classes which start out with widely different scores. A second problem relates to the fact that the tests we now use were never developed to fairly measure year-to-year progress. Fourth and seventh grade California Standards tests have always had a higher distribution of scores than the grade levels before and after them, so using the tests to measure teacher effect (the basis for merit pay schemes) would give an unfair advantage to fourth and seventh grade teachers, while penalizing third, fifth, sixth, and eighth grade teachers.
Merit pay plans that have not been based primarily on test scores have tended to result in almost all teachers qualifying for the merit pay. Given the poor performance of any merit pay system to date, it seems wasteful to expend so much energy pushing this idea.
In answer to Nextset’s question in #21, in my experience about 1/3 of standardized test scores (which would include reading tests) are off by a significant amount (one standard deviation). If you have two scores for a student that are reasonably close from separate tests measuring the same skills, you have a much better chance of being accurate.

By: Union Supporter-But

Union Supporter-But — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:16:22 +0000

My question on merit pay is this: Suppose I am a fifth grade teacher – and for this discussion I am working in a school in which 90% of the students are of color and qualify for free or reduced price lunch and fewer than 10% live in two parent families. I have 10 students who are working at FAR BELOW Basic in Language Arts, Mathematics and Writing. I have 10 students who are working at BELOW Basic in Language Arts, Mathematics and Writing. I have 10 students who are working at BASIC in Language Arts, Mathematics and Writing. And I have 2 students are proficient.

I do I measure up if at the end of the year I still have 10 students at the BASIC level and 20 students at proficient with 2 students advanced?

Compare that to the teacher in a hills school who started with 22 students advanced in Language Arts, Mathematics and Reading and 10 students who are working at Proficient levels in Language Arts, Mathematics and Writing. Then I as a teacher end the year with 2 Advanced students and 20 Proficient students?

It would seem to me that the first teacher was FAR more effective than the second teacher yet the first teacher still has one third of the students at the BASIC level.

By: Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:16:08 +0000

Thank you, Bruce.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:54:09 +0000

I’m only a sporadic visitor to this blog, but every time I see Steve Weinberg post it has always been well worth reading. Thank you, Steve, for your insights based on your years of teaching and the civil way in which you state and support your points.

By: Nextset

Nextset — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:55:45 +0000

It would be useful for discussion to have a definition of 8th grade reading level we can agree on. I seem to remember when I reviewed high school transcripts for a college scholarship program there were test scores posted on the transcripts that set the candidate’s reading level at X grade. Was it a SRA test or some such reference? I asked about it at the time I was told it’s a national reference level.

The racial differences between the candidates on both the math and verbal and the ratio of one to the other was striking. Profiles emerged.

Does anyone know of transcript entries denoting the students math and verbal level? How reliable are they?

By: Katy Murphy

Katy Murphy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:57:43 +0000

It’s a seemingly simple question, and one to which I should have a ready answer. I’ve consulted a couple of researchers (who might have been out today) to get one.

Here’s what I do know: At data-related conferences for education reporters, researchers have advised us not to use the term “grade-level” interchangeably with “proficiency” on state tests, as the two are not aligned (at least in California).

By: Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:08:27 +0000

Gordon Danning asks an excellent question: what does reading at the eighth grade level mean? Lots of people use the phrase, but they don’t have any exact meaning for it. The State of California has produced a list of suggested readings for California schools from K-8 grades, so one could assume that an able 8th grade reader would be able to read any of the books on that list http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/ll/documents/k8list1996.doc, but even that list uses grade ranges (6-8) and not specific grade levels.
Talking about grade specific reading levels may make some sense in lower grades. An elementary school teacher probably has little difficulty telling the difference between and 1st and 3rd grade reader, but it becomes very difficult at middle school. Reading experts cannot even agree on how to assess the difficulty of a given text. They use different formulas based on the length of sentences, length of words, and complexity of vocabulary to assign the reading levels. No formula can accurately measure the complexity of the ideas being expressed, so no formula is completely accurate.
Some people use 8th grade reading level to mean that on a certain test a student scored exactly at the same score that the median student in a control group scored. If you call all the students who score less than that “below grade level” you don’t have a very useful category, since some would be one point below and others 20 or 30 points below. You could say that those whose scores were closer to the median score for 8th graders than they were to median score for 7th or 9th graders were “at grade level,” which would help some, but would only be true of their performance on a given day on one reading test.
Matters become even worse when people start to say that all students who fail to score Proficient on the California Standards Language Arts Test are “below grade level.” It is true that they are below where the state would like them to be, but that goal was set by calculating what two-thirds of the students in the state could NOT do, and saying that is what we want all students to be able to do. It seems unfair to say that 8th grade level is what only the highest third of 8th graders were able to do.
Furthermore, the CST Language Arts Test is not just a reading test. It includes many questions on Language Arts terminology, writing strategies, and grammar. I have seen students with very high reading scores (on reading tests, such as the Scholastic Reading Inventory) do poorly on the CST, and I have seen the reverse.

By: Gordon Danning

Gordon Danning — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:07:25 +0000

Here’s a question for Katy: Nextset makes reference to students reading at the 8th grade level. We all have heard similar terminology. But, what does it mean? Does it mean that the the average 8th grader should be able to read a given text? If so, then by definition, 1/2 of 8th graders cannot read the text. Does it mean that every 8th grader above 1 standard deviation below the mean should be able to read it? 2 standard deviations? I tried to find out the answer to this question years ago, but was completely unsuccessful.

By: Gordon Danning

Gordon Danning — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:01:44 +0000

Teacher:

Again, I am not an advocate of merit pay, because I think the extra money it requires can best be used in other ways, but if students are pretested and post-tested, the problem you allude to should disappear. In fact, teachers in low-API schools should end up with more merit pay, because there is more room for improvement when students are behind. In contrast, if I have a roomful of kids who come in at the 98th percentile, I cant move them up much.

By: Nextset

Nextset — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:17:07 +0000

Walton Barnaby: You are living in a fantasy world.

No teacher union will permit a pay cut disguised as “merit pay” tied to how many black and brown students you (don’t) get or can get rid of. And that’s what these schemes are.

Pasadena Unified had a hilarious episode where a teacher named Scott Phelps wrote a memo to fellow teachers showing how an influx of black & brown students which he could track from the elementary school stats guarantee the decline of the reading/writing test scores of the high school in the near future when the white population would be reduced. The district had a hissy fit over truth being told and suspended him for political incorrectness. Of course the uproar focused the teachers on the stats and the “Merit pay” scheme was exposed for the scam it is. Phelps was reinstated of course before he could sue.

Watch what happens to political correctness when teacher pay is on the line.

As far as losing 75% of the students at OUSD if we ever required high school students to be able to read and write at 8th grade level to begin high school – is that a problem? Not if you want to have a real school instead of ghetto Romper Room. The stupid kids – and that’s what they are – need to be out of the academic programs and on another (Voc Ed & Remedial Ed and Tech Ed) campus where their needs would actually be met. The reason so many of them wind up destitute is that the schools refuse to teach them what they need which sure isn’t algebra.

Brave New World!

OK – Stupid is harsh. They are only stupid in comparison. Properly coached and trained they can be very good at suitable occupations. They cannot get that coaching and training when they sit beside the other 25% that are college or Jr College bound. Your lessons and materials go to one group or the other. We trash the left side of the bell curve pretending they are the same and the smaller right side (It’s smaller because OUSD has more dulls by number than the brights). OUSD refuses to work the left side, perferring to pretend that since all are equal the dulls must take college prep or be flogged as being bad people.

They are not bad. They are people who have needs not being met. When those needs are unfilled they have bad results in the Cold Hard World that could have been trained out of them. For one thing, employablilty.