Tag Archive for 'accountability'

A Contract Hit

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 18, 2008 in Education Leadership. 0 Comments

Fordham FoundationA new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation looks at the ostensibly black and white world of accountability vs. union contracts, and finds a surprising amount of grey area. The ultimate responsibility for student achievement tends to fall to principals. But do they have the power to run their buildings like true managers? The Leadership Limbo: Teacher Labor Agreements in America’s Fifty Largest School Districts looked at labor contracts in three areas—compensation, personnel policies, and work rules—and concluded that more than half of the districts studied have labor contracts that are ambiguous. “The collective bargaining agreements and the formal board policies in these districts appear to grant leaders substantial leeway to manage assertively, should they so choose,” the report concludes. Only 15 of the 50 contracts studied are deemed “restrictive or highly restrictive.”

“Districts with high concentrations of poor and minority students tend to have more restrictive contracts than other districts, the report notes. “Another alarming indication of inequity along racial and class lines.”

In Fordham’s Education Gadfly, Checker Finn and Michael Petrilli opine that they tend to see the situation “as more good than bad, for it means, at least in the short run, that aggressive superintendents and principals could push the envelope and claim authority for any management prerogative not barred outright by the labor agreements. And it means that, for a majority of big districts, the depiction of The Contract as an all-powerful, insurmountable barrier to reform may be overstated.”

Stay tuned.

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The Big Picture?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 12, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Education Practice. 0 Comments

The Baton Rouge AdvocateGreat instruction and a strong curriculum is the best test prep, right? And research shows “drill and kill” doesn’t work? But look inside a struggling school and you see, well, lots of test prep. “Schools Turn Focus to the Big Picture,” an article from the Baton Rouge Advocate, looks uncritically at Roseland Elementary, which includes “some of Tangipahoa Parish’s poorest students and is one of its lowest performing schools on state accountability measures.” Note that no attempt is made to downplay or hide the big test prep push that’s going on. Indeed, the piece seems to assume that this is what schools are supposed to do. Perhaps school officials do too, since the “big picture” of the title refers to the school’s strenuous test prep effort—the announced “40 Days of Focus,” described as “an intense time of preparation for the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program tests for fourth- and eighth-graders and other tests given in March.”

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Ed Schools: Undermining Accountability?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 11, 2008 in Education Theory, Educational Policy, Research and Reports and Teacher Training. 1 Comment

ednews.orgGeorge Cunningham throws down a gauntlet at the feet of state policy makers in an interview with Michael F. Shaughnessy of ednews.org, noting that ed schools are effectively thwarting standards-based education and accountability.

A former professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University of Louisville, Cunningham, recently issued a paper critical of teacher training at education schools in North Carolina and nationwide. While the public and policy-makers demand greater accountability, ed schools “do not think that academic achievement is an important purpose for schools,” he says. “They are committed to the achievement of a set of non-academic goals such as diversity, technology, critical thinking skills, and social justice.”

In plain but powerful terms Cunningham describes the disconnect between the accountability message being preached by the public and policy-makers and what new teachers are bringing to their jobs. “Newly minted teachers come out of education schools either with no awareness of the importance of academic achievement tests or with an acquired hostility towards them,” he notes, calling the situation “unsustainable.”

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Just Win, Baby!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 11, 2008 in Education Leadership. 0 Comments

Back in the day, the key to being a successful principal was to be a successful politician. Now, says Nelson Coulter, principal of Hendrickson High School in Pflugerville, Texas they’re like coaches. “You have to win,” he says.

Austin American StatesmanThe insightful quote is from a Austin American-Statesman piece on principal turnover. School districts nationwide are finding it harder to hold on to principals as standards get tougher and the list of demands from the state and federal governments gets longer. In Texas, the paper reports, “about 61 percent of high school principals leave their schools or the field within three years; by the fifth year, that figure increases to 76 percent.”

“We know that school reform takes time — much more than one year’s time,” says Ed Fuller, associate director of the University Council for Educational Administration at the University of Texas. “If a principal leaves within three to five years, the principal’s vision for reform is left incomplete. Over time, teachers become jaded and simply ignore the reform effort….Teachers believe the principal will leave and all of their efforts will be wasted.”

Plus, while principals put pressure on teachers to deliver accountability outcomes, teachers rarely lose their jobs over low accountability ratings, Fuller notes. “Principals do.”

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Denver Announces Growth Model Accountability System

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 8, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Educational Policy and School News. 0 Comments

Rocky Mountain NewsThe city of Denver has announced a growth-model accountability system to measure school performance. The inititative is backed by $4.75 million raised from the Dell and Broad Foundations.

According to the Rocky Mountain News, the most innovative piece “compares Denver Public School students with students statewide who have similar performance histories on state exams. With the Colorado Department of Education, the district will track how DPS pupils do compared to those peers and judge their schools based on jumps or drops in performance.”

Non-academic factors such as “whether families are returning to the same schools from one year to the next” will be weighed. “DPS schools will receive an overall rating, based on up to 42 indicators, but [DPS Superintendent Michael] Bennet said those rating names have yet to be determined. It’s also unclear exactly when parents will see the new report cards, though it likely will be before the end of this school year,” the paper reports.

The paper also reports the system could go statewide, potentially great news for Core Knowledge advocates, since the state has more CK schools than any other.

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Wonk vs. Wonk

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 7, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, Educational Policy, Opinion and Teaching. 1 Comment

I have been watching the renewed hostilities between Eduwonk and Eduwonkette this week over the issue of No Child Left Behind’s impact on curriculum. I feel honor-bound to weigh in, since I inadvertently started the fight. A few thoughts on their posts:

The issue of whether testing has crowded science and social studies off the curriculum is beyond dispute, and I’m not swayed by the argument that if 44% of schools report a narrowing of the curriculum under NCLB, then the legislation is not the culprit, since 56% report no deleterious impact. If 44% of patients reported an adverse reaction to a medication, it would be off the shelves before the sun set. So it’s a problem.

Eduwonk is absolutely correct, however, in noting that good schools focus on curriculum and instruction. “While low-capacity schools may have spent time on social studies pre-NCLB,” he writes, “it’s a safe bet that many of them were not teaching it very well.” But the opposite is also true: most good schools were good schools without any external accountability measures whatsoever, so that’s not where our focus belongs. If the functional structures are in place — strong leadership, good teachers, active oversight, engaged parents who are informed consumers of education, etc. — there are multiple levels of quality control to assure good outcomes. NCLB is all about making bad schools act more like good ones in the absence of those self-policing mechanisms.

Continue reading ‘Wonk vs. Wonk’

Any Portfolio In A Storm

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 31, 2008 in Education Practice. 0 Comments

There are two essential survival skills a bad teacher needs in order to mask his or her incompetence. The first is how to put up a great bulletin board. The second is how to compile a portfolio of student work. Get these two dog-and-pony show moves down pat, add some decent classroom management skills, and you’ll have your job until the sun goes out.

ASCDKeep that in mind as you watch The Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University kill a mosquito with a howitzer, the mosquito being a “research report” from the conservative Lexington Institute titled Portfolios: A Backward Step in School Accountability. As a summary in ASCD’s Educational Leadership notes, “the review concludes that policymakers would do well to engage in a broader exploration of multiple measures, which would be a step forward—not backward—in school accountability.”

Maybe so. I’m not going to defend the Lexington scholarship or criticize Arizona’s review. However, the messenger and the message deserve to be uncoupled. Having seen hastily compiled portfolios used to justify promoting students who failed state tests, I can’t imagine using them as the basis for any legitimate accountability system.

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Backdoor National Standards

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 18, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

ED in ‘08 / Strong American SchoolsHow do we achieve national standards without making it a top-down demand from Washington? Edin08’s Roy Romer argues for a group of states drafting a set of common standards, benchmarking the standards against high-performing nations, and in what sounds like the highway-aid-for-21-drinking age playbook, giving the states “incentives to adopt the model standards, such as free use of assessments designed to measure performance against the standards, or a new deal under NCLB with different timelines and accountability provisions to support meeting the higher standards.”

So Romer ostensibly says in an interview with this web site.

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Who Do You Believe? Me or Your Lying Eyes?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 18, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum and Opinion. 0 Comments

Education SectorI respect and admire eduwonk, but I have to strenuously disagree with his characterization of the impact of testing and No Child Left Behind as “hysterics.” I wholeheartedly support accountability, and I don’t have a problem with standardized tests. Really, I don’t. But one cannot blithely dismiss the narrowing of the curriculum that has occurred in schools — especially struggling inner city schools — in order to beef up test scores. It’s literacy, math and not much else, despite compelling evidence that content knowledge is the key to reading comprehension. We’re serving students in our most challenged schools a thin gruel that doesn’t meet any reasonable standard for an education. We simply have to do better, not dismiss the critics. The NY Times highlighted a few schools that are aiming higher, but to suggest that this shows testing concerns are overblown is a curious conclusion.

It bothers me to hear a well-respected policy analyst take such a stance, for I fear it could invite other less serious observers to downplay the deleterious impact of testing culture, rather than do the hard work of creating and implementing an accountability strategy that resists being gamed, dumbed-down, or measures only the thinnest slices of school performance. “All that test prep isn’t that bad,” it will be argued. “At least they’re learning something.” Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Make no mistake. There are classrooms where students go weeks, months, an entire school year without social studies, science, art and music. I’ve seen them, been in them, and worked with teachers who, despite great misgivings, felt pressured to run them. It’s neither hysterics nor hyperbole. It’s a legitimate issue that left unaddressed or blithely dismissed, could ultimately stop reform dead in its tracks. The very worst thing that can occur is if people believe the accountability cure is worse than the disease. “Drill and kill” is not the issue. It’s kids who can decode, but can’t comprehend. It’s kids who get to high school and college without the functional knowledge they need to succeed in higher education and as full participants in society. It’s complacency that kids who score on grade level are being educated, when all they’re doing is stepping over a hurdle that is conveniently lowered year after year.

Dismiss it at your peril. It’s real. I’ve seen it, lived it. I’ll introduce you to the students who’ve been damaged by it. Accountability was designed to help them, not do further harm. Good enough is not good enough.

Oh, my. I’m having a Hillary moment….I just don’t want to see us fall backwards.

Update: The redoubtable eduwonk thinks I doth protest too much. Perhaps so. But why use two words when ten will do?

Update II: eduwonkette has my back.

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Content Knowledge Matters for Teachers Too

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 3, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Detroit NewsThe first step to solving a problem is admitting there is a problem and the Fordham Foundation’s Liam Julian says ed schools could use a good long look in the mirror. His op-ed in the Detroit News, says ed schools are “rife with courses about child psychology and development, and with courses about how to best educate students from different socioeconomic or racial backgrounds. What’s missing is the content.” Without content knowledge and a belief that all children can learn, writes Julian, “the education system will remain incapable of developing better teachers.”

The prize for Best New Year’s Resolution goes to Patrick Riccards, aka eduflack, who promises among other things to blog for national standards, “even if it is as unpopular as a skunk at a garden party these days.” Huh? Even the New York Times likes national standards!

Speaking of unpopular ideas, here’s today’s analogy, class: Texas teacher Susan Creighton is to faculty lounge as WHAT is to picnic? I suspect the correct answer is “ants,” if her colleagues have read her piece in the Dallas Morning News. The brave English teacher has fingered an unlikely culprit for low teacher salaries: teachers. “It’s our fault because somewhere along the line, we’ve settled for security over accountability,” she writes.

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