1. There are many policies and life choices that directly responsible for the problems we face(liberals mistakenly believe that we can shape peoples habits tendencies and lives given the resources)always remember that over 50% of the 99% survive through other peoples(less than 50% of the 99%) hard work.

2. The root causes of those problems are not dealt with in any substantive way(teen pregnancy,juvenile crime, welfare dependency and on and on)except to keep on propagating it through policy.

If people desire good metrics for teacher accountability how about just worrying about the inferior ones first:

Those that have historically,repeatedly and habitually taken inordinate amounts of time off. Those that cannot or will not follow(even loosely)the curriculum and pacing guides, and instead choose to teach whatever and whenever they see fit. It is far easier to take care of the worst teachers first, and then move on.

Likewise for the families, where there is even less accountability.

I agree with the principle of effective community schools, and surrounding poorer families with basic services. But ONLY if this is done with foundation & grant money to pay for such services, & maybe some degree of Facilities Bond money, as long as it’s not taking away from the education and Facilities Bond money of Middle Income kids (who generally also don’t have enough money to go to Private School).

That’s the middle ground Tony Smith has to thread. To do it OUSD & Oakland need to both maintain the Middle Class AND publicize the foundation/grant money so taxpayers know they’re not the only ones paying for it while getting comparatively little advantage (the reason so many of us are forced to move).

To date the media has only reported on, I believe, one Foundation Grant supporting Dr. Smith’s Full Service Community Schools. Is that accurate? If there have been more, what are they?

& back to scores and standards, let’s come up with both a way to accurately account for good teaching AND active family support that is fair to all. It is possible to improve, but only through critical thinking (which teachers like to so often post about on this blog).

No testing vs. testing that only holds teachers accountable are not the only two options. The challenge is to accurately disect the shades of grey…

Critical thinking = linking education to the lessons of the Vietnam war and concluding test data and scores are wrong based on that war?

We are truly living in bizarro liberal land. For a moderate like myself what is frustrating with this line of discussion is I agree with some elements of both Jim and JR’s talking points. But rather than this discussion turning to finding either the accurate elements of each, or practical solutions, the discussion veers totally off course into an entirely different topic. If we continue that thread I have no doubt it will veer off again before any conclusions or progress is made.

Welcome to Oakland, where nothing ever gets accomplished and progress is never made. (Good time to discuss the other meaning of “progressive”…).

You may agree or not agree that the body count metric lead to continuing a policy that was unwise in Viet Nam. My point was not to compare student low test scores with the thousands of dead soldiers from both sides and civilians killed.

My point is that I believe management by body count, and management by test data are bad management policy during Viet Nam and bad management policy today.

I am not comparing humans with test scores but the management by objectives mentality evident in the conduct of the war in Viet Nam to education reforms of today that want to link test scores of students to teacher and school evaluations.

It isn’t that management by objective doesn’t work but that it works too well with decisions being driven by data that distort management decision making.

Perhaps some will agree with me that body count data in Viet Nam lengthened our stay. Some may also agree with me that it has also been documented that the Viet Nam body count data was often inflated.

I argue that it is reliance on body counts as high stakes data that contributed to the decision to escalate the Viet Nam war and prolonged our stay.

Management by objective gained much of its military, governmental, and education management, popularity with Robert Strange McNamara, Secretary of Defense (1961-68) during the Viet Nam War. I remember 61-63, as I was an enlisted man in the Air Force when management by objective, and the computer wizards employed by Defense Secretary McNamara, brought in their management changes to the Air Force base I was assigned. After being discharged and finishing college with the help of the G.I. Bill, I was teaching in Oakland in the late 60s when the paper work associated with management by objectives became part of California teacher evaluation under what was called the Stull Bill. I connected the Stull Bill to the management by objectives that came into the military management systems introduced by Secretary McNamara.
Viet Nam could have been fought without a body count metric and it is my speculation that it contributed to lengthening the war. But, those of us that found that war a bad decision, its body count metric can be viewed as a dehumanizing element of a management system that encouraged killing to provide evidence for continuing that war.

I believe test data like body counts leads management to poor decision making.

Jim Mordecai

Your comment below in opposition to using test scores as the “primary method of evaluating public or charter schools” makes so much sense.

“I oppose the use of test scores as the primary method of evaluating either charter or regular public schools. The API is primarily a measure of the skills students already had before entering a school, not what they learned at that school. The standards that California Charter Schools Association are suggesting would result in the closure of any charter school that aimed at helping those students most in need, and it would encourage more charter schools to target only the most able students.”

Yet, your common sense statement flies in the face of the intent of the people that wrote California’s charter school law. The charter school law requires for petitioners creating charter schools to accept a bargain: in exchange for being freed from the dictates of the education code, deregulate charter schools agree to be evaluated based on their students’ performance. The charter schools existence, in theory, is test scored based–perform or perish.

The authors of California charter school law were trying to create an independent education system that competes with the public school system so the competition will make both systems better. The method of evaluation of public and charter schools was intended to be primarily test score based. The lobbying to make test scores primarily the method of evaluation fits with the belief in a market system the authors of charter school law held from the beginning.

A market system does not function without a metric such as test scores. In Viet Nam the metric wasn’t test scores, but body counts. And, decisions based on that metric ended in America’s defeat.

Perhaps Viet Nam is a cautionary tale for creating a metric when not appropriate. However, I believe NCLB requirement of using test data to label schools, teachers, and students, may in the long run, be a metric more damaging than the body count from the Viet Nam war.

Jim Mordecai

Thank you for making my point of disagreement. For using the metric of subtraction of student scores on first blush is a no brainer, a “yawn”; but, evaluation of teachers by the metric of student test scores, for purpose of accurately identifying the teacher that is “bad”, is not simple or a yawn.

There are all kinds of reasons for not being able to keep teacher evaluation, or school evaluation, as simple as pre and post testing of student scores. This reductionist approach suffers from NOT having tests that reliably identify the bad teacher. Teachers identified by student test scores bad one year are good the next and vice versa. And, because the reductionist approach to the problem of evaluation appears to be a cheap way to evaluate schools and teachers, cost becomes a driver of the method of evaluation rather than any, and all other, community valued education outcomes. Also, the current testing emphasis has resulted in a narrowing of curriculum to what is easiest to test and purpose of education has become defined as test score improvement.

Jim Mordecai

genreally, lousy schools garner lousy test scores. i agree with JR that the current system is failing kids and it’s not changing and it reinforces the status-quo of a system that favors adult union rights over poor kids’ futures.

charter schools should be able to get great test results. if they don’t shut them down.

you guys are splitting hairs. good teachers can even teach poor kids. they teach them very well and it shows in test scores and in classroom observations. this is such a tired conversation because the answer is so obvious. if the school or teacher is bad, move on to a school teacher that is good. c’mon!