On Monday, October 1, 2012, the Davis Vanguard and Davis Media Access (DMA) will be hosting a candidates forum for the Davis School Board candidates, to be held in the Harper Junior High Multipurpose room. The doors open at 6:30 PM and the forum begins at 7:00 PM.The forum will have a unique setup in that candidates will be seated facing each other in a discussion format. Each of the five candidates will ask one question to be answered by themselves and the other candidates and then there will be time at the end for question and answer of the candidates.
5. Do you favor implementing a system which evaluates teacher performance and rewards with bonuses those teachers who receive the highest evaluations? If you favor teacher evaluations, what is the best way to evaluate teacher performance?
SUSAN LOVENBURG: Society’s problems cannot be solved in the classroom alone, but a good teacher can make a world of difference to a child. I support evaluating the performance of all staff. Principal and teacher evaluations should be robust and multi-faceted, include some measure of student learning, and focus on continuous improvement. I’ve seen little evidence that merit pay leads to better student outcomes. Good compensation, however, does attract good talent to the profession.
CLAIRE SHERMAN: School districts need to design teacher evaluation systems that have as their goal to improve the overall quality of teaching. Currently, teachers receive little feedback and are left alone to determine ways to improve. A teacher’s effectiveness may be evaluated via a multifaceted approach: multiple classroom evaluations by experienced and neutral professionals, student and parent feedback, improvement in test scores, and other measures. These facets should then be combined to provide an overall summary of teacher performance. Feedback may then be provided so that each teacher understands his/her strengths and weaknesses with metrics established for gauging improvement. Furthermore, guidance and training should be provided to each teacher so that any weaknesses may be remedied.
NANCY PETERSON: For good reason, this is a national debate. No one has cornered the market on a solution that ensures both top quality teaching and student learning. Achievement-based instruction does not necessarily translate into student learning (concept and application). In order to prepare the current generation for global competition, the focus should be on restoring creativity and love of learning in the classroom. Students are motivated by teachers who believe in and work with them to maximize their potential. We must cultivate teachers who value their profession, engage in professional development, feel appreciated for their work, and genuinely care for the well-being of their students.
JOSE GRANDA: This is an issue in which I have a great deal of expertise. I have been evaluating teaching for many years. As senior faculty at CSUS, I have been a member of the ARTP (Advancement, Retention, Tenure and Promotion) committees. Quality of teaching is not the result of only teaching evaluations, they are only one component of that. Evaluation of teaching is evaluation of the whole person, their performance, the assessment on how students do with a particular teacher. It is not a witch hunt process, but one that has to be done with fairness accuracy and knowledge of what good teaching is. This means, yes evaluations, but examination of class preparations, teaching materials, use of time, peer evaluations, class visits, feedback of teaching etc. There are many tools and the description will take me several pages, but you get the idea how it is done. As far as the rewarding for advancement and good teaching, I am in favor of that. At the same time as a board member we must provide teachers with the tools for good teaching performance and not just demand they do well.
ALAN FERNANDES: I favor implementing a system of teacher evaluation and performance but any such system must be designed with the direct input from our teachers.  However, I am not convinced that such an evaluation must be linked to compensation. There is currently significant research underway regarding this topic and the research indicates that a teacher evaluation system should utilize multiple measures (i.e., not just student test scores) while also providing evidence-based feedback. Â
6. Low SES families in Davis don’t necessarily look the like the classic low income family. Some low SES families are two graduate students raising kids in an apartment who are underinsured and getting Medi Cal and CalFresh (Food Stamps).  What would you do, if elected to break down the stigma of “being poor” in Davis schools and what will you do to understand what it looks like to be “be poor in Davis”?
SUSAN LOVENBURG: I strive to create processes and policies that treat all children equally and provide supports so that all students reach their full potential. For example, as a member of the Board Policy Subcommittee, I helped to re-focus district fundraising policies so that all students have the same opportunity to participate in all activities.
In my service as a member of Yolo CASA, I am an active advocate for the foster youth of Yolo County. I am also a strong supporter of the Davis Bridge Foundation, an afterschool program for low-socioeconomic and English Language Learner students. Understanding the needs of these children helps me to understand the experience of living in poverty.
CLAIRE SHERMAN: Unfortunately, many in society view poverty and low SES as solely a product of individual shortcomings and moral deficiencies rather than societal factors. An empty wallet is not indicative of an incurious mind, lack of intrinsic motivation, or apathy. Needy persons represent a frightening reality to those more fortunate -poverty can happen to almost anyone at any time. Schools should strive to eliminate those conditions that make poorer children the target of ridicule by their peers while at school. For example, currently at Cesar Chavez Elementary, children of migrant farmworkers are provided transportation to school via bus. However, this bus is unreliable in getting the children to school on time. As a result, these children have a number of conspicuous and embarrassing tardies through no fault of their own. The DJUSD must ensure that the bus service provide reliable and guaranteed on-time transportation. Accepting anything less is intolerable. Again, all students should be afforded the same educational opportunities at school so that any differences amongst the children with regard to SES are minimized.
NANCY PETERSON: I have immersed myself in this issue for over a decade through my work with the Davis Bridge Educational Foundation, the District’s Local Education Action Plan Committee and many other efforts aimed at serving those who are low income and at-risk. Low socio-economic status is highly correlated with low academic performance, but while statistics are useful for establishing trends and analyzing data, an individual child is not a statistic. It is a mistake to think that those with low incomes have a common face and that each child at risk shares the same circumstance. This is where the student-teacher connection becomes price-less. It is extremely important for all students that we offer a broad range of curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular opportunities. We need to be sure to tap into each child’s passion for learning. The ultimate goal is to keep each student engaged and excited about learning.
Becoming a trustee would not change my core values:Â No student is less deserving than another. We must treat every child with respect and believe in their ability to succeed. Every child is valuable and worthy of a quality education.
JOSE GRANDA: Well I was a graduate student with children here at UC Davis and I understand the economic constraints. However, I do not agree that a stigma needs to be broken, unless there is specific issues I am not aware of. This is a community where everyone treats each other without looking how the bank account looks like.
ALAN FERNANDES: Regardless of the circumstances, children of low SES families must be provided with the necessary support to enable them to be successful students. Often, many government programs and policies, though well intended, unknowingly draw attention to the economic status of a child or family, which may exacerbate the stigma of being poor that this question references. I believe that I have a keen understanding of these issues as a result of the work I have done in underserved communities and my own life experiences. Accordingly, I will always seek out ways to understand the issues facing all children in our district, including those of low SES families.
7. Does it concern you that a large share of K-6 students who live within walking or bicycling distance from their neighborhood schools are being driven to school in cars on fair weather days? And if it does concern you, what can or should the district do to encourage children to safely walk or bicycle to school and back every day the weather permits?
SUSAN LOVENBURG: Biking or walking to school promotes physical fitness and combats child obesity. My own children bike to school daily. I support the efforts of the Davis Bicycles! School Committee to provide encouragement and incentive for students to walk or bike to school.
CLAIRE SHERMAN: How parents and their children decide to travel to and from school is a personal decision. While I agree that walking and bicycling provide an additional opportunity for exercise, parents may have personal reasons for transporting their children to school. Last year, North Davis Elementary (NDE) piloted the ACTIVE4.ME Scanning Program, which tracks the total mileage students walk or bicycle ride to school from their homes. Most importantly, once a student scans their bar code, the parent is notified via e-mail or text message that their daughter/son arrived safely at school. NDE has also provided incentives to the children participating in this program. The ACTIVE4.ME Scanning Program proved to be quite successful during its pilot period, even on inclement weather days, that NDE has continued the program this school year. If other schools in the district are interested in this program, I would strongly suggest they contact the administration of NDE to determine the best way to implement such a program at their site.
NANCY PETERSON: Davis is a fabulous town for riding a bike and the Safe Routes to School program has helped many parents feel comfortable letting their children ride to school. In addition, various innovative programs established at different school sites and throughout the school community have had a positive impact. The bike-affixed registered barcode that sends a text message to parents about their child’s arrival at school is very reassuring to parents and should be implemented at every elementary site. May Bike Month and local challenges to see how many miles are logged by bike or walking have been extremely popular and positive.
Most mornings, Jonathan Defty, a long-time Davis elementary teacher, engages his class in physical activity before beginning academic work. He believes students are more prepared for their studies after physical exertion. Mr. Defty’s example is something to think about as parents debate whether to ride or drive.
Ultimately, it is the parent’s choice how their child arrives at school. The most important consideration for all is to arrive on time, safe and prepared for the school day.
JOSE GRANDA: I am on the side of how the parents feel on this one. They need to feel what is safer for their children and I respect whatever decision they make, whether to send them by bike of take them in their car. We do not have school buses anymore so it is really a decision for the parents to make. We lived in Switzerland for nine months, where children go to school on public buses and public trains sometimes across town, something that will freak out many parents here. We had to adjust to that system after we found it was safe there with our own children. However, really safety of the children and how parents feel about it comes first rather that what anybody else’s opinion is on this matter.
ALAN FERNANDES: I will always favor policies intended to promote more children walking or biking to school, not only because of the environmental benefits to our community but also because of the health and safety benefits for our children. I believe the work currently being done by the City of Davis and its Safe Route to Schools program is making great progress in this area with the help of grant funding. And, if elected, I will work to establish and strengthen a stronger partnership with the City in this endeavor.
8. Does Davis have a problem with school bullying and if so, what programs would you support as a board member to remedy the problem?
SUSAN LOVENBURG: All schools experience bullying, and Davis is no exception. Board policies setting high expectations for student conduct are already in place. Principals, teachers and staff have an important role to play communicating these expectations to students.  We recently adopted a new policy on Bullying (BP 5131.2) and the district is engaged in extensive training of staff to meet new legal requirements for dealing with bullying.
In addition, DJUSD has had success with peer helping programs at our junior high schools and classroom curriculum focused on the negative impact of bullying.
CLAIRE SHERMAN: The U.S. National School Safety Center has reported that bullying has become the most enduring and underrated problem in American schools. DJUSD is no exception. The district has arranged for experts to come in and talk to students and teachers about bullying. However, bullying is not alleviated with one-time exercises each year. Bullying is a learned behavior that may be unlearned. The approach must be evidence-based, ongoing, and involve all in the community – students, parents, teachers, and the administration. Cornell (2005) provides guidelines for responding to student threats of violence that may be used in instances of bullying.
NANCY PETERSON: Yes, bullying is a problem at every site and grade. Cuts at all levels, especially administrative cuts, have worsened the problem. District-wide staff development is critically important because, while the classic physical bully is easier to spot, the more predominant emotional bully operates under the radar, often undetected. In both instances, staff must be able to identify issues and be proactive.
Prevention and management should be incorporated into our strategic planning and should start early. Every elementary site would benefit from a counselor who is directly responsible for positive school climate. Providing both prevention/intervention programs and services aimed at creating/maintaining a welcoming and safe environment should contain common elements across the district. In this way, when children move to junior high and beyond, all are operating from a similar foundation.
JOSE GRANDA: Yes there are bullying problems in Davis schools. I have zero tolerance for this. An attempt to threaten the physical and/or psychological well being of a child has no place in Davis public schools. If elected I would find out what options and authority we have to legally deal with this issue. Bullying can destroy a child and that can never be OK. I will work for a policy of zero tolerance.
ALAN FERNANDES: Yes, I have been made aware of instances of bullying that have occurred in our Davis schools. Bullying is a problem not just in Davis, but also in our larger society. Indeed, there are recently enacted laws that require schools to address the issue of bullying. Currently, our district is considering the adoption of a district wide bullying policy as a result of these new laws. As this work continues, I believe it is important to consult the students within our district on the development of this policy because it is intended to primarily impact how our students interact with each other. Additionally, I believe the Board must communicate to everyone in our school community that bullying at our schools will not be tolerated.
[b]SUSAN LOVENBURG:[/b] [i]”I’ve seen little evidence that merit pay leads to better student outcomes.”[/i]
Susan must be too busy running for office to have been looking for evidence.
NPR recently reported a very interesting story about a University of Chicago study done in Chicago Heights (IL) on merit pay and how it affects performance ([url]http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161370443/do-scores-go-up-when-teachers-return-bonuses[/url]). The director of the study was John List, an economist.
What List and his colleagues found was that it matters a great deal how the bonus is structured. And he concludes that, when done right, merit pay really does work as intended. Maybe Susan should read some more.
List et al found that the key ingredient is a psychological motivator known as “loss aversion.” This is how they set up the bonus in that case: [quote] The teachers were given a bonus of $4,000 upfront — but it had a catch. If student math performance didn’t improve, teachers had to sign a contract promising to return some or all of the money. … List said the idea of giving some teachers money upfront — with the threat of taking it away later — builds on a well-known psychological principle: “What we tried to capitalize on in this particular study was a concept called loss aversion,” he said. “Once we have something in our possession, we feel it would be really, really painful to have to give it up.”
Loss aversion has been shown to be a powerful motivator in many business settings, but List said this was the first rigorous test of the principle in an educational setting. The idea, he said, was that by giving teachers the money upfront, they might work harder to keep the money at the end of the year than they would if the money had been promised as a traditional bonus.
In line with earlier work, List and his colleagues found that students of teachers who received the traditional bonus performed no better than students of teachers who received no incentive at all. But List found that students of teachers who were given the bonus upfront showed significant improvement in math test scores.
“What we found is strong evidence in favor of loss aversion,” he said. “Teachers who were paid in advance and [were] asked to give the money back if their students did not perform — their [students’] test scores were actually out of the roof: two to three times higher than the gains of the teachers in the traditional bonus group.”
The difference in test scores produced by the incentive system was about the same as that detected in earlier studies that measured differences in student performance when kids were taught by great teachers rather than average teachers. Effectively, List said, [b]the way the incentive was constructed turned average teachers into great teachers.[/b]
List said he thinks that the incentive system motivated teachers to be extra vigilant with underperforming students. If Johnny didn’t get a concept, a teacher stuck with Johnny — and the concept — until the kid got it. [/quote]
Claire Sherman’s answer to Question #5 is spot on. She is clearly an intelligent and sensible person.
Nancy Peterson’s answer to Question 5 is a good answer to a different question. She did not appear to have an answer for this question at all.
Jose Granda’s answer to Question 5 was reasonable and shows his experience in the matter.
[b]ALAN FERNANDES:[/b] [i]”I favor implementing a system of teacher evaluation and performance but any such system must be designed with the direct input from our teachers. However, I am not convinced that such an evaluation must be linked to compensation.”[/i]
Alan has been endorsed by the DTA (along with Lovenburg). This answer makes it clear why the union picked him. Ask yourself this: What business evaluates its employees but then says “I am not convinced that such an evaluation must be linked to compensation.”
If you do not believe that there is any evaluation system which can measure teacher performance, then there is no need for an evaluation system. Alan evidently does not believe that. He favors evaluation. So you find that certain teachers do a better job than others. And you do not think that better teachers deserve to be rewarded for that?
You think a private company would survive if it paid every employee the same amount, regardless of performance?
Regarding the bicycle question: I posed this one because I was hoping for some creative answers. Those who say “it’s up to the parents” are of course right, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have hundreds of kids in Davis who live relatively close to their schools and they are not walking or bicycling, even when the weather is good.
The NDE program sounds like a good idea. I don’t know, though, if it has resulted in more kids walking or riding bikes to school. Davis Bicyles! has some good ideas, so it is heartening that Susan Lovenburg endorses them.
My own idea is this: Kids need to be placed in travel pools of 10 or so children based on where they live at the start of the school year. The kids in each pool then, if their parents allow it, would be able to walk or bike to school as a group, and one or more parents could chaperone the group, if they felt that would improve safety.
I base the travel pool idea on what happened naturally when I was a child in Davis: groups of kids who lived near me would meet up before school (starting in kindergarten) and we would walk or bike together to school each morning. I think the preponderance of kids going in their parents’ cars has played a part in breaking down the natural grouping of neighborhood kids.
And thus a problem we have is that if a family would rather their child walk or bike to school, the kid ends up doing so all alone, while the other kids ride in cars. And being all alone, especially for a child 12 or younger, is seen as a great risk (though, of course, no one considered it a risk back in the 1970s, even though crime was worse then).
After reading two rounds of answers my sense of this race is shaking out like this:
Lovenburg is a no brainer vote for re-election. She obviously is up to speed on the issues.
Granda is absolutely unelectable. Opposing extra funding for schools now that his kids are grown is so distasteful I can’t express enough how deeply I oppose his candidacy.
Of the remaining three Peterson and Fernandes seem to be a bit more reasonable than Sherman. Peterson seems to be better prepared but I think Fernandes will come up to speed quickly. Sherman has some answers that seem a little too pie in the sky like her Il Dulce like concern about the buses running on time. A real issue and students should not be considered tardy if the bus is late but buses need most importantly to be driven safely.
Lovenburg is borderline corrupt… she tried to use her “office” to coerce city staff to recommend a significant expenditure for a bus pull-out and shelter to accommodate less than 20 students on Olive Drive who had to go to MM school because of decisions the Board made to adjust districts. She was vitriolic in this. She will never have my vote.
Rifkin writes, “I base the travel pool idea on what happened naturally when I was a child in Davis: groups of kids who lived near me would meet up before school (starting in kindergarten) and we would walk or bike together to school each morning. I think the preponderance of kids going in their parents’ cars has played a part in breaking down the natural grouping of neighborhood kids.”
When you were a child in Davis, did your parents choose your school? It would appear from your suggestion that you went to your neighborhood school and so did the kids that lived near you. The neighborhood school helps cement the bond of community among neighbors. School choice has resulted in that bond eroding, which leads to parents driving their kids to school (among other issues). What is needed is a radical rethinking of why we send our kids to school where we do and whether the individual choices we make hamper the greater good of the community. I am certain I am reaffirming Mr. Toad’s assessment of “pie in the sky.” But I believe in “dream big or go home.”
Unless more info comes to light, I intend to vote for Granda… he could be the “loyal opposition” to the ‘rubber stamp’ mentality that has pervaded the Board for years… woulod not want 3 persons with his views, but definitely want one. Taylor and Allen have my respect, although I do not always agree with them… Delaidin I have less knowledge of, but her mom was an awesome teacher. Have had little respect for Harris and Lovenburg
“This is a community where everyone treats each other without looking how the bank account looks like.”
Really, Mr. Granda. I would argue otherwise. Maybe this is not hugely pervasive, but I’ve seen this multiple times (and have been on the receiving end of this).
Personally I didn’t care for any of the answers on evaluation. I would suggest that when you hire is the time you want to get the best people. In a town like Davis it should be easy to find and retain good people. The question is how do you find them and then support and retain them so that they can grow to become excellent at their craft. One measure is class ranking. Most teachers in California were not top performing students but with the University of California and Sac State nearby Davis should be able to recruit teachers with higher grade point averages and Basic Skills Test scores.
The next thing you want to look at is how the person performs in a classroom. Teachers should be asked to teach by the hiring committee or asked to submit video of themselves teaching. You should be able to tell pretty quickly if the person has the right demeanor to be a role model for kids.
Additionally, you should ask them to visualize where they want to be professionally in five years and what they need to get there because the best thing you can do, and this is especially important for struggling schools, is empower teachers to develop their strengths and contribute to the school community.
My point is that by hiring the right people and supporting them evaluating them becomes less important.
SHERMAN: [i]”When you were a child in Davis, did your parents choose your school? It would appear from your suggestion that you went to your neighborhood school and so did the kids that lived near you.”[/i]
Your assumptions are correct. There were no magnet schools, then. All kids in Davis went to neighborhood schools*, save the small number who attended St. James, which was then only K-6.
[i]”The neighborhood school helps cement the bond of community among neighbors. School choice has resulted in that bond eroding, which leads to parents driving their kids to school (among other issues).”[/i]
I understand this. However, I tried to be specific in addressing what I think is a problem, kids who DO LIVE near enough their schools to walk or bike but are being driven in cars.
I am sure there are a thousand different reasons why individual families make the “drive Johnny to school” choice. However, I also suspect that the decision to not let children walk or ride bikes is influenced by the larger trend of making childhood a risk-free experience. That is, parents are pressured to act responsibly, and those who would let their kids ride bikes or walk may feel that doing so is endangering their kids.
It is for that reason that I think a formal group walk (“a travel pool”) or a group ride (including a chaperone) would help to alleviate that fear of putting the kids at risk. And the benefits would be that kids would get in the habit of exercising; they would be safe; and families would be burning less gasoline.
*The exception for me was junior high school. From 1977 to 1979 there was only one junior high open in Davis–Holmes. The Emerson on B Street was closed; and the new Emerson on Calaveras Ave. had not yet opened. So even if you lived in West Davis, as I did, you had to bike across town to Holmes. My friends and I did that ride, every day. I don’t think anyone’s parents ever thought that they should drive their kids the 3 or 4 miles to Holmes. Parents were not that way back then.
hpierce: [i]Lovenburg is borderline corrupt… she tried to use her “office” to coerce city staff to recommend a significant expenditure for a bus pull-out and shelter to accommodate less than 20 students on Olive Drive who had to go to MM school because of decisions the Board made to adjust districts. She was vitriolic in this. She will never have my vote.[/i]
Where else would you send those students? MME is the closest school. It is also the only enclave of students, almost all of whom are from lower income families, that has to cross an insterstate highway and railroad line to get to school. I think it was entirely a reasonable accommodation that would also add valuable infrastructure to a lower-income neighborhood.
Can anyone name a profession other than teaching where the claim is made that performance cannot be fairly evaluated and used as a basis for determining compensation and continued employment? While I agree with Mr. Toad that hiring and developing good teachers from the start is critical, so too is evaluating their performance and rewarding those who continue to develop their skills throughout their careers. Time on the job, in and of itself, is rarely a good indicator of quality.
Mark: Can I turn your question around on its head: can anyone name another profession other than teaching where it is so difficult to accurately quantify performance?
David: Every Principal knows who the best and worst teachers are at their school. Every Teacher knows who among them are the best, and who are the deadwood. It is a false precept that teaching is too difficult to evaluate properly and in my opinion any candidate who has bought into that position has abdicated their responsibility to manage the District properly.
Mark: That’s a qualitative evaluation, that’s different from quantitatively determining someone. The problem with qualitative is that it ends up politicizing the decisions. There are some good teachers that are not well liked by the school and their peers and even their principals.
Rifkin: [i]What List and his colleagues found was that it matters a great deal how the bonus is structured. And he concludes that, when done right, merit pay really does work as intended. Maybe Susan should read some more.[/i]
But the underlying premise of the study is that standardized test scores are a worthwhile basis for determining merit pay. I disagree with that.
I’m putting my third kid through grade school now, and for various reasons, my kids performed “proficient or above” about half the time (NCLB mandates that 100% of students must perform proficient or above in math and English by 2014). And I don’t necessarily lay blame with teachers. One had a learning disability, two had late birthdays relative to most of their classmates, two grew up their first few years speaking a language other than English. The two oldest are in college. And I know the Davis schools helped them get there, but statistically they were often a liability to the school district under NCLB mandates. Standardized tests are one nice tool, but I think they are over-rated for determining merit pay and whether a school performing adequately or not.
If there were standardized tests that measured the development of perseverence, patience, discipline, compassion, creativity, and social skills, then I might be with you.
Which skill will likely get a person further along in life? [u]Perseverence[/u] or [u]proficiency in Algebra II[/u]? I go with perseverence, because it is applicable to more real life scenarios. When framed this way, measuring only cognitive skills based on standardized test scores seems silly, but that’s what we do.
But the policy debate in public education has been all about how to raise those test scores by cramming more instruction time in those tested content areas rather than coaching students to develop useful soft skills like perseverence, which may actually be as relevant or more.
You’ve heard of the marshmallow test ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_test[/url])?
I also recommend reading How Children Succeed ([url]http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_12?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=how+kids+succeed&sprefix=how+kids+suc,aps,257[/url]) by Paul Tough.
[quote]Your assumptions are correct. There were no magnet schools, then. All kids in Davis went to neighborhood schools, save the small number who attended St. James, which was then only K-6.
[i]”The neighborhood school helps cement the bond of community among neighbors. School choice has resulted in that bond eroding, which leads to parents driving their kids to school (among other issues).” [/i]
I understand this. However, I tried to be specific in addressing what I think is a problem, kids who DO LIVE near enough their schools to walk or bike but are being driven in cars.
I am sure there are a thousand different reasons why individual families make the “drive Johnny to school” choice. However, I also suspect that the decision to not let children walk or ride bikes is influenced by the larger trend of making childhood a risk-free experience. That is, parents are pressured to act responsibly, and those who would let their kids ride bikes or walk may feel that doing so is endangering their kids.
It is for that reason that I think a formal group walk (“a travel pool”) or a group ride (including a chaperone) would help to alleviate that fear of putting the kids at risk. And the benefits would be that kids would get in the habit of exercising; they would be safe; and families would be burning less gasoline. [/quote]
Great ideas Rich. Designated parents walking with the group of kids will no doubt be good for the health of the walking parents as well. It clearly is a solution that makes a lot of sense. The children will be just as safe walking in a group as they are when their parents are driving them. Some would say a whole lot safer. When was the last time you heard about a “travel pool” accident?
David: “Mark: That’s a qualitative evaluation, that’s different from quantitatively determining someone. The problem with qualitative is that it ends up politicizing the decisions. There are some good teachers that are not well liked by the school and their peers and even their principals.”
How is that different from any other job? Being able to get along with your colleagues and the public are critical aspects of any job where people interact. Why should it be any different with teaching. Job evaluation will always be a combination of objective and subjective criteria. That is true in every profession, and should also be true with teaching.
wdf, isn’t there a whole lot of perseverance involved in getting one’s daily homework done? My sense of my pre-college education was that more than anything else I was learning self-discipline. There was always more homework than there was time to get it all done and I had to learn how to prioritize, focus and persevere. As a bi-product of that prioritization, focus and perseverance, I learned quite a bit about algebra, geometry, logic, writing and even a bit of joy in reading.
My sense is that parents these days push teachers to back off on the amount of homework that is assigned, and in the process do their children considerable harm. A good teacher would recognize the specific characteristics of students like your children and give them assignments that help them bridge challenges that growing up their first few years speaking a language other than English may pose. I’ve always found that multi-lingual children have much more nimble minds than children who only speak a single language. It is up to the teachers to tap into that nimbleness. Learning disabilities are a separate animal, and I would hope that any evaluation system would have targeted programs that tailor both the learning for the students and the evaluation for the teacher in such situations. Malcom Gladwell notwithstanding, I personally think late birthdays relative to most of their classmates is not a factor in learning. Athletics yes. Learning no.
Mark West: [i]Can anyone name a profession other than teaching where the claim is made that performance cannot be fairly evaluated and used as a basis for determining compensation and continued employment?[/i]
Would it be fair to use crime statistics to determine if police officers are doing their jobs? Thus if crime goes up, would it be justified to fire police officers?
DAVE: [i]”That’s a qualitative evaluation; that’s different from quantitatively determining someone. The problem with qualitative is that it ends up politicizing the decisions.”[/i]
That is a risk. However, keep in mind that, with the exception of someone in sales, most evaluations of job performance in the private market are no less “qualitative” than a principal’s evaluation of his teachers. It is also the same thing when it comes to performance evaluation in most other public sector jobs. The chief of police includes a performance evaluation when he decides which officers to promote and which ones not to. The city manager uses “qualitative” metrics to decide which of his subordinates deserves a merit pay raise.
My own view is that the teacher evaluation is crucial, and it should include multiple factors, including the evaluation of other teachers, of parents and especially of principals, and in certain subject areas which are easily quantifiable, the evaluation should in part include a measure of student progress.)
Practical: [i]I personally think late birthdays relative to most of their classmates is not a factor in learning.[/i]
In later grades, I agree with you. In earlier grades, I found it to be a more noticeable factor. Hence you hear discussions of parents trying to decide whether to wait a year or not to put their kid in kindergarten.
[b]Rifkin:[/b] [i]”What List and his colleagues found was that it matters a great deal how the bonus is structured. And he concludes that, when done right, merit pay really does work as intended.”[/i]
[b]WDF:[/b] [i]”But the underlying premise of the study is that standardized test scores are a worthwhile basis for determining merit pay. I disagree with that. “[/i]
The underlying premise should not really be what matters. What should matter is what they found: “the way the incentive was constructed turned average teachers into great teachers.”
Everyone can agree that having great teachers matters. If you can structure a reward to turn average (math) teachers into great ones, you should be doing that.
Of course you are right that not every subject is as easy to measure that with as math is. However, most core subject areas for most elementary aged students (such as math, reading comprehension, writing, grammar, spelling, punctuation, history, geography, etc.) are quite easy to measure performance progress with a good standardized test. So if in each of those areas the proper incentive were used to motivate teachers, we would get better teacher performance.
[i]Thus if crime goes up, would it be justified to fire police officers?[/i]
No, you fire the police chief. Which is why principals usually are the ones held responsible for school performance, and why most evaluation reforms involve the principals doing the evaluations.
It seems that when teacher evaluations come up, common responses involve the subjectivity and complexity of it, as if somehow the teaching profession is unique in requiring certain job skills and outcomes.
wdf1: “[i]Would it be fair to use crime statistics to determine if police officers are doing their jobs? Thus if crime goes up, would it be justified to fire police officers?[/i]”
I don’t know what this has to do with the subject of teacher evaluations unless you are assuming that I believe teachers should be evaluated solely on the basis of their students standardized test scores. Since David is the one arguing for quantitative evaluations maybe he is the one you should address the question to. Like Rich, I believe that several criteria should be used in the evaluation of teachers, with the bulk of the analysis coming from peers and supervisors. I see little value in standardized test scores to start with, so I would never advocate their use in evaluating the quality of an individuals teaching ability.
[quote]In later grades, I agree with you. In earlier grades, I found it to be a more noticeable factor. Hence you hear discussions of parents trying to decide whether to wait a year or not to put their kid in kindergarten.[/quote]
I look at the phenomenon of parents wanting to wait a year to put a kid in kindergarden as one that is about 60% social, 40% athletic and 0% academic. Can you point to any studies that show that the learning ability of children 6-9 months younger than their classmates is impeded? I don’t know of any. The studies have focused on social development and athletic prowess/development. I don’t believe that the ability to learn what numbers are and how they relate to each other isn’t susceptible to differences in age, but rather only to differences in exposure.
Practical: [i]I’ve always found that multi-lingual children have much more nimble minds than children who only speak a single language. It is up to the teachers to tap into that nimbleness.[/i]
Home environment plays a big role, and teachers don’t exactly control that. My kids were not typical ELL students. When they came to this country, I spoke to them almost exclusively in English (after all they’re living in the U.S.), although I would sometimes talk to them in Spanish when they were tired. Within about 3 years, you could not tell from talking to them that they were born elsewhere. It took another 3-4 years before their vocabulary and grammar proficiency were on par with peers. I read to them relentlessly, found every opportunity to encourage them to read, and severely restricted TV and computer games to make it happen.
In most of the ELL population, parents speak a different language at home and are likely not to have very much proficiency in English to help their kids. Also, grade school ELL students are likely to have only limited to no literacy in their home language. Keep in mind that by high school, most students have started into literary analysis; it isn’t unusual for high school ELL students to be receiving further instruction in vocabulary and grammar.
As a bilingual adult, I would agree that multilingualism probably offers some mental nimbleness, but it’s a steeper learning curve to get there. And one can easily feel behind other classmates along the way.
Practical: [i]I look at the phenomenon of parents wanting to wait a year to put a kid in kindergarden as one that is about 60% social, 40% athletic and 0% academic. Can you point to any studies that show that the learning ability of children 6-9 months younger than their classmates is impeded?[/i]
Social maturity plays a role in being able to navigate the learning environment.
Parenting is heavily a subjective matter where often you will not find common agreement — probably one reason why education articles on the Vanguard can provoke lively discussions. I only offer my own experience on the matter. I don’t have the time or inclination to go searching for studies on this particular issue.
K.Smith disagrees with Mr. Granada who said:
“This is a community where everyone treats each other without looking how the bank account looks like.”
K.Smith says:
> Really, Mr. Granda. I would argue otherwise. Maybe
> this is not hugely pervasive, but I’ve seen this
> multiple times (and have been on the receiving end
> of this).
I’m not going to defend Mr. Granada, but I do think that Davis residents care less about money than the residents of most other Northern California communities.
It is easy to think people are treating you differently because you have less (or more) money than they do when they are often treating you differently for another reason (say they found out that you don’t recycle)…
Unless someone comes out and says “we are treating you poorly because you have more/less money in the bank than we do” you will never really know.
“Every Principal knows who the best and worst teachers are at their school. Every Teacher knows who among them are the best, and who are the deadwood.”
I agree with this completely! You could add the kids, parents, school board and staff too. So why the big deal over how someone is evaluated? By hiring good people you reduce the problems and can spend your time making thing even better. As for those that aren’t up to the task most leave after a few years. Sometimes I’ve seen them go after a few weeks. It is really just a handful that fail to get out and remain past their expiration date. Everybody has that teacher they didn’t think was any good but they are fewer than we think. As in anything it is the bad ones that consume a disproportionate amount of our energy.
The problem with emphasizing evaluation is that it assumes that the teacher is the main issue. My personal experience was that I went to work everyday and did the best that I could with whoever came through the door carrying what ever emotional or psychological baggage they brought along and never got a bad evaluation. I did however have bad evaluations of my own on everything including class size, materials, administrators with misplaced priorities, school board members who knew nothing about education, budgets, bond and parcel taxes, coaches trying to work you for their athletes to get unwarranted special treatment, students who underperformed their abilities and parents whose behavior undermined their kids education in one way or another. The emphasis on evaluation rubs me the wrong way because it implies that if we just get the right teacher everything else will take care of itself and in doing so allows us to overlook other serious problems facing society today.
[B]MARK: [/B] [i]”I see little value in standardized test scores to start with, so I would never advocate their use in evaluating the quality of an individuals teaching ability.”[/i]
What David Greenwald stated about ‘politicization’ is why I think [i]measured progress[/i] on test scores should be a part of the mix for evaluating most teachers.
Imagine a scenario where you have a principal of a K-6 school who is set in her ways and does not want anyone rocking the boat. Imagine in that same school you have a like-minded faculty. However, let’s say that the student performance of that school, compared with other schools which have children from the same socio-economic backgrounds, is quite poor.
So to help fix that situation, the district hires a new teacher who is a firebrand and a hard worker and sends her to the school in question. This new teacher is the type who goes the extra mile to make sure every last student in her class masters each subject area. The result is that her kids make much more progress in English, Math, Science, History and Geography than the students in all the other same-grade classes.
But when it comes to evaluating the new teacher, the other teachers feel like she is an upstart and her success is making them look bad. So they grade her poorly. And the set in her ways principal has the same feeling: that the new teacher is rocking the boat and by doing so is making the principal look bad. So he grades her poorly as well.
If test score progress were not a factor in evaluations, the new teacher would have no grounds for appealing the evaluations of her peers and the principal.
Again, I don’t think test score progress should be the entire evaluation. But it is especially helpful when there is a disconnect between the qualitative and the quantitative.
In the hypothetical situation I lay out above, it would also be helpful to include parental evaluations. Maybe in that case the parents would have been highly pleased with the progress their children made, and that would be more evidence that the staff evaluations were faulty in this case.
It’s also possible that you could have a teacher whose students make great progress on the tests, but there are “qualitative” problems with that teacher. For example, maybe she is not a good player. Maybe she has gotten ahead but harmed the emotional needs of her kids. Maybe the progress was a fluke, based on outside factors which caused a few of her children that year to greatly outperform expectations.
For those reasons (and more), I don’t think test score progress should be the only measure. I just think it should be a part of the mix. And in cases where a “loss aversion bonus” motivates average teachers to be great, test score progress ought to be used as a monetary incentive.
“For example, maybe she is not a good player.”
Correction: I intended to write, ‘For example, maybe she is not a good [b]team[/b] player.’
There are a lot of types of examples of where being a good team player in almost any job is an asset. In teaching, one of those is, when a certain experienced teacher has a good method for handling a problem, she will share her method with an inexperienced teacher. That kind of good team player behavior does not show up in the results of the experienced teacher. But it is the sort of thing which a good evaluator will recognize and reward.
Rich wrote:
> I am sure there are a thousand different reasons
> why individual families make the “drive Johnny
> to school” choice. However, I also suspect that
> the decision to not let children walk or ride
> bikes is influenced by the larger trend of making
> childhood a risk-free experience.
I agree with Rich that many parents who drive their kids to school are trying to make childhood “risk-free”. I also suspect that many of the kids who have parents that drive them everywhere are the chubby out of shape kids.
An easy way to get less parents to drive their kids to school would be to have all the out of shape kids who don’t walk or ride their bikes to school head to the gym every lunch break to eat for 10 minutes than do calisthenics until their next class.
“I am certain I am reaffirming Mr. Toad’s assessment of “pie in the sky.” But I believe
in “dream big or go home.’ “
Really Dr. Sherman? Exempting Gate students from leaving isn’t dreaming big. Dreaming big would be Ronald Reagan saying “Mr. Gorbechev tear down that wall.” Not telling people who want out that they can’t leave unless they can pay for it themselves. Dreaming big would be visioning and implementing a Gate program at Montgomery so parents want to send their kids there. Dreaming big is expanding the Spanish Immersion program so the district can meet the ever expanding demand for such a program. Dreaming big is a duel immersion or maybe a Chinese immersion program. Dreaming big is trying to rebuild the Limited English program that was lost in the diaspora of the Valley Oak closure. Dreaming big is figuring out how to attract people to that school not exempting the elite from the restrictions you seek to place on the rest.
I apologize for the tone because I do think you are sincerely interested in helping to make things better in our schools. Still Dr. Sherman, please tell me how exempting Gate kids from leaving while holding others in place helps anyone but the Gate kids, who by the way, at least in Davis, probably need the least help of all?