In just over two weeks, the Davis Vanguard will host its first ever official candidate’s forum at Harper Junior High Multipurpose room. The doors open at 6:30 and the forum begins at 7.
In advance of that we sent out written questions to the candidates, that we will publish early next week. We say this every year, and perhaps it is the truth, but this is a crucial election for education in Davis – not only do we have five candidates with a broad range of ideas of how to improve our education system, particularly in the wake of consistent and persistent budget crises, but also we have a parcel tax measure on the ballot which means the voters will decide how much in the way of resources the members get to work with.
Education has been in crisis not only in this state, which has seen funding slashed, but across the nation. This crisis has perhaps been punctuated by the Chicago Teachers Strike.
One of the key issues is school reform and teacher evaluations. In theory, I think everyone is in favor of finding ways to improve education. We all know the bad teachers when we have seen them – burned, disinterested, disengaged. But the world does not work with such simple metrics.
The problem with teacher evaluations is measuring teacher performance in an objective way that accounts for not only performance in the absolute sense, but in the subjective sense and relative sense.
There is a fear, and not an unrealistic one, that once you introduce subjective evaluations which will be necessary to augment the objective ones, you introduce politics into the mix, both in the real world sense and the internal.
The problem of evaluating teachers bleeds directly into the problem that teachers face.
One observer writes, “Every job should have an evaluation and the mayor is correct in his wish list. However, it is difficult in this day and time for a teacher to be evaluated.”
They point out that teachers have had to become far more than just teachers. “They are surrogate parents, social workers and disciplinarians. Teachers have one of the toughest professional jobs and they are not appropriately rewarded.”
They continue further: “If the teachers are to be evaluated, the parents should be evaluated too. Is little Johnny fed, and does he have glasses and a book? Does Johnny live in a comfortable home and are his parents making sure that he does his homework. Is Johnny in a gang, or is he being threatened by a gang? Is he safe to come to school? Does the teacher feel safe standing in front of the classroom? These are ‘evaluation’ factors that may not be put on the form. This is today’s real world.”
Nicholas Kristof probably shook a few boats this week, when the liberal columnist called on evaluations.
“Inner-city urban schools today echo the ‘separate but equal’ system of the early 1950s. In the Chicago Public Schools where teachers are now on strike, 86 percent of children are black or Hispanic, and 87 percent come from low-income families,” he writes. “Those students often don’t get a solid education, any more than blacks received in their separate schools before Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago’s high school graduation rates have been improving but are still about 60 percent. Just 3 percent of black boys in the ninth grade end up earning a degree from a four-year college, according to the Consortium on Chicago School Research.”
“America’s education system has become less a ladder of opportunity than a structure to transmit inequity from one generation to the next,” he continues. “That’s why school reform is so critical. This is an issue of equality, opportunity and national conscience.”
While he is critical of the teachers’ motivations here, he adds, “In fairness, it’s true that the main reason inner-city schools do poorly isn’t teachers unions, but poverty. Southern states without strong teachers unions have schools at least as lousy as those in union states. The single most important step we could take has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with providing early-childhood education to at-risk kids.”
However, at this point he parts ways, arguing, “Some Chicago teachers seem to think they shouldn’t be held accountable until poverty is solved.”
And he adds, “There’s now solid evidence that there are huge differences in the effectiveness of teachers, even within high-poverty schools.”
This is not a conservative anti-union basher who sees breaking the unions as the way to electoral gain.
In theory I agree with him. In practice, I think it’s easier said than done.
Mr. Kristoff, however, marshals an interesting study to back up his point: “The gold standard study, by Harvard and Columbia University scholars and released in December by the National Bureau of Economic Research, took data from a major urban school district and found that even in the context of poverty, teachers consistently had a huge positive or negative impact.”
“Get a bottom 1 percent teacher, and the effect is the same as if a child misses 40 percent of the school year. Get a teacher from the top 20 percent, and it’s as if a child has gone to school for an extra month or two,” he writes. “The study found that strong teachers in the fourth through eighth grades raise the game of their students in ways that would last for decades. Just having a strong teacher for one elementary year left pupils a bit less likely to become mothers as teenagers, a bit more likely to go to college, and earning more money at age 28.”
“Removing the bottom 5 percent of teachers would have a huge impact. Students in a single classroom with an average teacher, rather than one from the bottom 5 percent, collectively will earn an additional $1.4 million over their careers, the study found,” he further writes.
The economic crisis has distracted us from some of the critical problems facing students in this district. Even in affluent Davis, there is a tremendous gap in performance between whites and Asians on the one hand, and African-Americans and Hispanics on the other.
It is absolutely critical to understand three key points here.
First, there is a socio-economic component to these data. More affluent students do markedly better than less affluent students. Children of college-educated people do better than children of parents who only graduated from high school.
Second, the racial component dwarfs the socio-economic component. Control for income, control for parental education, and African-American and Latino students do more poorly than their counterparts.
A child of a college-educated African-American professor will perform significantly less well than the child of a college-educated Anglo professor. How does one begin to explain that?
The problem, for the most part, for those who want to argue that it is teacher quality, is the students are largely taking the same classes from the same teachers – at least up until sixth grade. Does the achievement gap explode after Junior High?
The study that Kristof cites is important, but the problem that even he acknowledges is that we are looking at the margins. The biggest problem we face is not in the schools, but rather in our homes and neighborhoods. Unless we treat that problem – even in Davis – we will not make as much headway as we need to.
However, what I think that the study Kristof cites does mean is that for vulnerable students, it might be even more important to make sure they get the best teachers.
This leads me to another question – do the best teachers in Davis teach the honors courses or the remedial ones? Something to ponder.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
What is the evaluation system for teachers here in Davis? Who creates the instrument, who administers it, how often and what is done with it?
Anyone who has been a teacher or knows a relative or close friend knows the extraordinary amount if work it takes early on, the drop out rate of new teachers, and the enthusiasm most all of them have early on and many of them have later on.
My son has finally gotten a full time teaching job in an urban HS after 2prior yrs of part time, He is working very hard as all new teachers do, and there are great days and there are lousy days. When they are great, he tells me, there’s nothing better and the hard work and little free time is worth it.
“A child of a college educated African-American professor will perform significantly less well than the child of a college educated Anglo professor. How does one begin to explain that?”
Really? What evidence do you have to support this stereotypical assertion? In Davis, I know African American kids on track to take Calculus before graduating high school. In fact, I heard Henry Lois Gates years ago, in a lecture at Freeborn Hall, talk about how his kids needed less support academically than many kids that were not African American.
What we know is that kids that have one good role model in their lives do better. We also know that the educational level of the parents, particularly of the mother, has a huge impact in determining the educational success of the student. For kids that have limited English backgrounds we know that those that are re-designated as english proficient under CELDT guidelines do better than those that aren’t, although we are not sure exactly why this is true. We also know that good nutrition is important. In Finland, where schools are of the highest quality in the world, poor students can get three meals a day. As you point out the teacher makes a huge difference too.
“Really? What evidence do you have to support this stereotypical assertion?”
t’s not an assertion therefore and it’s not stereotypical, it’s actually data driven. You’ll have to look at one of the previous articles on the achievement gap. If you look at the data and control for parental education, you see this effect. You can specifically look at the score difference at a specific level of education and you see the effect that is describes. I
“This leads me to another question – do the best teachers in Davis teach the honors courses or the remedial ones? Something to ponder.”
This assumes that the same person would do well in both settings, something that isn’t always going to be true. The most important thing in education of children, assuming the teacher knows the material, is the relationship between the teacher and the student. As one principal would tell his teachers ” Students won’t care to learn until you learn to care.” What is important is that teachers are placed in a setting where they can thrive and bring passion and humanity to the teaching that goes on in their classroom. Whether that is in an AP course or Special Ed or anything in between.
Let teachers teach what they are best at teaching and what they love to teach so that they can bring passion to their work. Let them teach students who want to learn. Teach them how to earn the respect of their students so that their students will allow themselves to be taught. I have always tried to remember the words from Kalil Gabran’s The Prophet on the topic of work as his words are more true for teachers than anyone:
“When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and a labor, a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.
You have been told also life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”
But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.”
Judge me on whether I brought the passion of Kalil Gabran to my work as a teacher not on some standardized test scores. Judge me as hard as I judged myself everyday rehashing in my mind every interaction, decision or question not on whether I got to every state standard. Judge me as to if I know why I am teaching what I am teaching. Do I have a good answer for the student who asks “Why do I need to know this?”
“t’s not an assertion therefore and it’s not stereotypical, it’s actually data driven.”
Data is not destiny.
“This assumes that the same person would do well in both settings”
I made no such assumption, I simply asked a question.
“Data is not destiny. “
Who said it was? I’m sure you know enough about statistics that you can’t generalize from aggregate to individual level data.
[quote]Data is not destiny.[/quote]
Agreed. Data is not destiny. However, data is a reflection of where we are at any given time. As such it is of value in assessing our strengths, our weaknesses and in providing clues about where we should be placing our time and efforts. Medicine is a highly data driven area and as such I value data greatly and would love to see the same data driven decision making applied to other areas of endeavor. I have seen the improvement in outcomes as we have moved from a more subjective, less data driven model of care to one based on evidence. I suspect we would see much the same if we were willing to develop data sets and use them in much the same manner as we have in medicine. This would not be used to penalize teachers or students, but rather to identify and disseminate best practices.
“A child of a college educated African-American professor will perform significantly less well than the child of a college educated Anglo professor. How does one begin to explain that?”
Statistically this may be a reasonable conclusion based on the data. However I thought of individuals I know for whom the statement is both untrue and insulting. Without the “statistically” qualifier your statement helps perpetuate a stereotype that may be true in some cases but may also not be our greatest problem in tackling the achievement gap.
[i]”How does one begin to explain that?”[i/]
I think it is possible that a child bombarded with the continuing media-enflamed racism template would be more inclinded to stop trying when life’s inevitable struggles occur. It is that slippery slope of victimhood that traps some people, IMO.
“It is that slippery slope of victimhood that traps some people, IMO.”
Maybe, but what about the rest.
Teachers aren’t auto mechanics or carpenters. The “worst” teachers I can remember are very few. Like most professions, people do not invest the time and money unless there is some basic interest. For those who become teachers, there is an interest in people and the process of learning and making a difference in people’s lives. Teacher evaluation, if it could ever be done on some kind of objective basis, will best be done by other teachers or people who have taught for many years. It cannot be done by test scores or by administrators who have not been in the classroom for many years themselves.
Noble prize winning economist Milton Friedman explained how our government has designed a system to trap the poor, so evil that it couldn’t have been designed to do more harm.
First we take away their chance for a good education by giving them no option but to go to a local public school, which is typically of abysmal quality, unsafe, etc. Then we take away their opportunity to learn on the job by imposing minimum wage laws that make it prohibitive for businesses to train them on the job.
What I don’t understand is how so many well meaning people can in good conscience, now that the appalling quality of inner city public schools is evident and not disputed, continue to oppose efforts to change these conditions.
J.R., you are referring to Davis public schools?
[quote]I heard Henry Lois Gates years ago, in a lecture at Freeborn Hall, talk about how his kids needed less support academically than many kids that were not African American.[/quote] FWIW, Henry Louis Gates, who has hosted an excellent PBS series called Finding Your Roots discovered on that show that a majority of his own ancestry is European, not African.
[quote]What I don’t understand is how so many well meaning people can in good conscience, now that the appalling quality of inner city public schools is evident and not disputed, continue to oppose efforts to change these conditions.[/quote]
And, another question, who are you referring to as the well meaning people who continue to oppose efforts to change these conditions ? I am unaware of any well meaning people who do not want to change conditions, just many who do not agree on the best way to proceed.
[i]”A child of a college educated African-American professor will perform significantly less well than the child of a college educated Anglo professor. How does one begin to explain that?”[/i]
It seems to me that a study needs to hold a lot more “equal” than simply being college-educated professors. It’s likely that the black group includes a lot more ‘professors’ who do not teach at prestigious universities or who themselves were educated at less prestigious institutions. It’s also possible that Affirmative Action has in some cases advanced some blacks into the college-educated professor pool, and that brings down the average talent in that pool.
While most psychologists who study IQ say that genetic inheritance is not 100% of IQ–I think they say it is around 70%–I’d be willing to bet if you took 500 African-American scholars whose average IQ was 120 and you took 500 white scholars whose average IQ was 120, you would find that their children will perform equally well in terms of standardized tests and academic achievement. It’s likely that you would find the same thing if you compared the children of 500 African-American medical doctors whose average IQ was 120 with 500 white medical doctors whose average IQ was 120.
Again, the problem of repeating the story David likes to repeat–“that the kids of black profs perform less well than the kids of white profs”–is that it most likely does not control the two groups well enough to make them more-less equal.
RR: [i]”While most psychologists who study IQ say that genetic inheritance is not 100% of IQ–I think they say it is around 70% …”[/i]
I Googled this topic and found that this is not a settled question. It seems like there is a debate and that the answer may be from 40% to 80%. Yet I found this number in a New York Times piece called “After the Bell Curve” ([url]http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/magazine/23wwln_idealab.html?_r=1&ei=5090&en=2c93740d624fe47f&ex=1311307200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all[/url]), which makes it sound definitive: [quote]A century’s worth of quantitative-genetics literature concludes that a person’s I.Q. is remarkably stable and that [b]about three-quarters[/b] of I.Q. differences between individuals are attributable to heredity.[/quote] A more interesting quote came a little later in the same article: [quote]A new generation of studies shows that genes and environment don’t occupy separate spheres — that much of what is labeled “hereditary” becomes meaningful only in the context of experience. “It doesn’t really matter whether the heritability of I.Q. is this particular figure or that one,” says Sir Michael Rutter of the University of London. “Changing the environment can still make an enormous difference.” [b]If heredity defines the limits of intelligence, the research shows, experience largely determines whether those limits will be reached.[/b] And if this is so, the prospects for remedying social inequalities may be better than we thought. [/quote]
[quote]This leads me to another question – do the best teachers in Davis teach the honors courses or the remedial ones? Something to ponder.[/quote]
I entered the teacher profession under a emergency credential in an urban district (not in Davis). I taught algebra. I had never taken an education class, but I was placed with lowest performing students and given more “preps” than most of the exerienced teachers, as well. Until I figured out what was happening, all the other teachers transferred their problem students into my classes. After several were transferred in, I found out I didn’t have to accept them. The experienced teachers got to pick the classes they taught, in order of their seniority. Without exception they chose motivated high acheiving students.
Without exception they chose the motivated high acheiving students first.
As a highly-motivated high-achiever that could not earn A’s in many classes no matter how hard I worked… and someone that has had to evaluate and interview and analyze human capability and capacity in my professional life… I can absolutely, 100%, without a doubt say that that kind of intelligence increasingly valued and tested by our education system is largely biologoical and genetic.
Unless we are fortunate enough to be blessed with these IQ gifts, there should no problem admitting that they exist. We all know that the biologocal children of high IQ people tend to have it easier getting better grades. That does not mean that the rest of us cannot get good grades. But just like the fact that a gifted athlete will have an easier time earning a starting position on the team, the rest of us will be at a competitive disadvantage if we lack the same gifts.
What happens when a child is academically gifted is that he gets early teacher feedback that advances his self confidence and feeling that he is special. He also gets more confidence-boosting feedback from his parents that he is meeting and exceeding their expectations.
Many teachers tend to focus their attention on the students that display these gifts. They also focus on the kids at the bottom with significant learing challenges. What gets missed is the children in the middle. For those kids – many that are blessed with other types of high intelligence (e.g., creative intelligence) – they are starved of feedback that reinforces their self confidence.
Now throw in the social issue like the decline of the American family and the media-perpetuated racism template and the picture becomes very clear.
The solution is complete education reform.
We need choice; not a one size-fits-all system that continues to benefit a smaller and smaller population of students… and alienates a larger and larger population of students. We need a system that focuses on maximizing the earning potential of all students by helping them to recognize and exploit their natural gifts.
When a student does poorly, we frequently hear from teachers that the student did not do the work. This response is an indication of the wrong-headedness that exists in the business of public education. Teachers work for the students. When the student fails to learn or drops out, it is a failure of the teacher and the education system.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation embarked on a project in 2009 to determine measures of effective teaching, known at the MET Project. “The MET project is a partnership between 3,000 teacher volunteers and dozens of independent research teams. The project aims to help teachers and schools understand what great teaching looks like. The study will identify multiple measures and tools that – taken together – can provide an accurate and reliable picture of teaching effectiveness. By understanding what great teachers do and by improving the ways teachers gain insight into their practice, we can help more teachers achieve success for their students.” The final report is due to be released Fall 2012. If you would like to know more about the MET Project, the URL is as follows: http://www.metproject.org/index.php. The MET Project preliminary findings are fascinating and I look forward to seeing the final synthesis.
Please excuse my spelling problems above… I forgot that I was on the iPad and didn’t remeber to edit my post.
Sherman, I am familiar with the MET project. There ARE some fascinating findings. There is also some great work being done with other private organization working to revolutionize education. See here: [url]http://amplify.com/[/url]
[quote]It seems to me that a study needs to hold a lot more “equal” than simply being college-educated professors. It’s likely that the black group includes a lot more ‘professors’ who do not teach at prestigious universities or who themselves were educated at less prestigious institutions[/quote]
Rich: These are Davis students. Most of the professors we are talking about are UCD professors.
“When a student does poorly, we frequently hear from teachers that the student did not do the work. This response is an indication of the wrong-headedness that exists in the business of public education. Teachers work for the students. When the student fails to learn or drops out, it is a failure of the teacher and the education system.”
I find this an interesting point of view coming from someone who usually puts forward the point of view that the individuals success or failure is dependent solely on the individual’s own merits and effort. So if it is true that student failure is solely the responsibility of the teacher and school system, would not the same be true for the successful student. What about the student who simply does choose not to do the work? You really believe this is the fault of the teacher ?
This argument completely ignores the complexities of motivation and drive. In your desire to “blow up” what you perceive as the current “crappy” system, you seem to have thrown out personal and familial responsibility entirely. A strange position for you to take in my opinion.
[quote]What about the student who simply does choose not to do the work?[/quote]
I don’t think you can really know this about another person. Given their reasoning abilities, I don’t think children “choose.” I’ve observed that it works better when teachers develop the skills and approaches that assume a child does want to learn.
medwoman: [i]”you seem to have thrown out personal and familial responsibility entirely. A strange position for you to take in my opinion.”[/i]
My points about personal responsibility are directed at adults. The behavior patterns of personal responsibility, hard work and self determination first have to be developed in children. Once these children reach adulthood after developing behavior patterns of a defeated victim, it becomes exceedingly difficult to break those patterns.
In terms of family issues… this is our new normal, not an excuse for crappy teachers and crappy schools. We are stuck in a downward spiral of crappy schools cranking out crappy parents that do a crappy job with their kids who again attend a crappy school. The obvious improvement opportunity is to fix the school.
Here is a quote that I think nails this point. It is from Jenny Magiera. Chicago Public Schools named her Tech Innovator of the Year… before they all went on strike to protect their crappy status:
[quote]I believe the classroom should reflect the world for which we are preparing our students,” Jennie writes on her blog. “If we are asking them to create, innovate and be outstanding as graduates, then our classrooms should be creative, innovative and outstanding places to learn.[/quote]
Technology is a big part of the solution here. More specifically, it is the enabler of the type of reform we need.
[url]http://www.amplify.com/article/enhancing-family-school-partnerships-digital-age[/url]
[i]”Rich: These are Davis students. Most of the professors we are talking about are UCD professors.”[/i]
Again, it does not mean that the educational and intellectual background of these two groups is equal, even if the children are all from Davis. I would be very surprised if the study you point to–do you have a link?–made sure the intellectual background of the parents was on par.
My belief holds that if you take a substantial size of African American families and an equally large group of non-black families and you hold equal the IQs and educational achievement of the parents, the kids from each group will have rougly equal intelligence and educational outcomes and test scores, etc. And if you find one group outpaces the other, it is very likely that you failed to control for the intellect of the parents.
An anecdote along these lines: When I was a student at Davis High (Class of 1982), a disproportionate percentage of our smartest (not just high-achieving) kids were Asians. I don’t think Asian children at that time, however, were more likely than whites to have been the offspring of professors or lawyers or doctors. I think they were about equallly as likely (all around 50 percent). But that doesn’t mean that the Asian dads (rarely moms back then) who were profs had equal IQs with the non-Asians. The Asians were all in the academic fields which required higher IQs (principally medicine and the hard sciences and math). The white profs were more spread out and included many in the liberal and visual arts. … The point is that being a “professor” does not make one equal with another in terms of IQ. Some groups are higher than others in that respect, and the result is that their kids will generally have higher IQs, too.
“… the kids from each group will have [b]rougly[/b] equal intelligence …”
Correction: roughly.
“When the student fails to learn or drops out, it is a failure of the teacher and the education system.”
I actually agree with this statement to a certain degree. There have been a number of times that I felt that a students failure was my failure as well. There is something called the affective filter. It means that when a student says I can’t learn from you they actually can’t learn from you. When you find that going on, you need to ask yourself why did you fail with that student, so, you don’t make that mistake again. You also need to change the student’s perception of you or change the students educational setting. Of course this also depends on the question of is it you, is it the kid or is it the school.
One day, many years ago, a student came up to me with his progress report in hand. He gave it to me and said “I think you made a mistake on my progress report.” His progress report showed he had five marks of A or A- and a D in my class.
I looked at it and calmly replied “Well let me check.” Looking in the grade book I found that I had read the wrong line when I did his grade so I wrote his parents a note citing my error and apologizing.
What if I hadn’t made an error on his grade and he had 5 A’s and a D from me? That situation requires much more analysis. When a teacher has a problem with a student that nobody else has it very well might be the teacher who has the problem. Teachers who have a high frequency of such cases might need a reality check. it could be that they are the only one’s not caving to some other pressure or it might be that they are doing a poor job, so, more analysis is needed. If the student is doing badly in many or all classes it is likely that a change in educational setting is in order and it is difficult to blame the teacher. At that point it may be the school’s fault or it may be the kid’s fault. It doesn’t really matter who is to blame what matters is that the student gets the help needed to turn it around or is placed in a different setting where success is possible. Sometimes you can repeatedly change the learning environment and never find one that works.
Mr. Toad – It sounds like you are a good teacher.
My sons have had numerous grading errors like you mentioned: both in their K-12 lives (grades 8-12 mostly) and in their college lives. They also have had numerous problems not knowing where they stand because the teachers are behind grading papers. Then they take the final and discover that their final grade is below what they expected. I watched what this did contributing to the destruction of their love of education… not good. I am sure that they both have received grades lower than they should have because teachers failed to give them the credit they deserved for the work they did. In one case, a teacher marked a critical paper incomplete and it resulted in a C grade for the class. When we talked to our son about it he said “I thought I did better in the class, but I guess I didn’t”. It wasn’t until well into the next semester as we was starting to pay attention to his GPA that he told us that the C he received caused him to stop trying as hard. That prompted us to ask more about it and contact the teacher. Long story short… we discovered that he was given a C by mistake because the teacher lost a report that my son had turned in before the deadline… a report that accounted for 30% of his grade. Luckily the report was still on the computer. It raised his grade to a B+. I’m still pissed off about this and other similar “little mistakes” by teachers and the crappy system. For a paper that was 30% of the grade, don’t you think the teacher should have talked to the students that did not turn one in… especially those that did well enough on the rest of the assignments? Where is the accountability for this level of crappy teacher performance?
For me, the grading errors and delayed grading were just examples that reinforced my growing opinion that the entire system was broken and in need of a complete overhaul. Feedback on performance should be as near instantaneous as possible. Delayed feedback and poor performance assessment surprises are known to destroy motivation. It is Management Science 1A. Yet, it is very common in the business of public education.
@Jeff:
This expectation of near “instantaneous feedback” and constant need for affirmation becomes very problematic at the university level. Speaking from experience having taught at UCD and one other major state university, students are coming to expect this level of response and affirmation more and more, and a lot of these expectations are unreasonable.
A couple of examples: Students clamoring for graded papers two days after turning them in (in a class of anywhere from 30 to 150 students); Students expecting instructors to be at their beck and call literally 24/7 (I have had more than one student email me at midnight or later, and then again at 6:00-8:00 AM or so, at which time they express frustration that I have not yet responded to their original email 6 hours earlier).
My standard return timeline for papers (and my papers were anywhere from 6-12 pages, depending on the class) was one week. Perhaps in other classes it would be reasonable for a faster turnaround time, and certainly on shorter assignments that I gave my students, I would get feedback to them much faster.
Students have to understand, though, that for the more complex assignments (like papers), reading and providing -helpful- comments is a process (much like writing the paper to begin with) that takes time. I am not willing to sell my students short by breezing through their papers and slapping on a few comments. I take my duties to them very seriously, and give each paper the attention it deserves, plus prolific comments on their work and how they might approach a revision.
The types of requests and behaviors I’ve cited a few examples of above are, IMO, the direct result of so much “helicopter parenting” that is prolific now (especially in places like Davis). And that cultural trend is, in itself, an outgrowth of the “everyone’s a winner, give everyone a trophy” self-esteem movement of the 1980s or so (which, by itself, was a good thing but in many ways went reallyreally wrong).
As a result, by the time they get to college a lot of students greatly overestimate their capabilities–or really don’t have a good assessment of where their strengths and weaknesses lie. I can’t tell you how many times a student has said, “But I was in AP English…Why did I get a B on this paper?”
I also blame part of this on grade inflation (both at the high school and university level).
By the time they get to college, they should have been largely weaned from their need to have constant affirmation, and should be much more responsible for their own learning. Short-circuiting this at the lower-grades and at the high school level (especially!) does them a grave disservice.
[i]By the time they get to college, they should have been largely weaned from their need to have constant affirmation, and should be much more responsible for their own learning.[/i]
K. Smith; while I support some of what you are saying here, I think you outline a teacher mindset that is actually part of the problem. I am not talking about constant affirmation; I am talking about consistent and instant feedback.
Now… I do get your point about grading reports. It takes time. The problems I wrote about were the longer delays… delays that actually prevented the student from even benefitting from the grading and notes. And, the problem with lost papers or inaccurate record keeping that impacted grades.
How can a student “be responsible for his own learning if he does not know where he stands and does not get his papers back in a timely fashion?
In our modern time of service expectations, and high-tech tools, it is unacceptable that we would have any problems like these.
I also think that we can remove more of the subjectivity in grading. Certainly papers need to be reviewed by an expert; but for many of these subjects we can train a graduate student intern to grade based on an inventory of key points that are required.
However, by using technology for the subjects that work well for it, we can free up teaching human resources to help with the subjects that require more human teaching and grading labor.
The longer it takes to deliver performance feedback, the less valuable it becomes. So, anything we can do to speed it up – assuming we maintain quality – will improve the education experience for the student.
DJUSD administration will tell you that they have a program called Zangle with “Student Connect” and “Parent Connect” portals for prompt teacher feedback and communication. At the secondary level, with one exception, our experience has been that teachers update Zangle at the quarter and semester. I do not know the program’s license conditions, its cost, tech support requirements, or the amount of training required to use it.
re Zangle: I have had two kids go through Davis HS. One graduated in 2009, the second in 2011. I noticed greater use of Parent Connect when the second one went through. So I presume that it is becoming more widely used over time.
medwoman: [i]Agreed. Data is not destiny. However, data is a reflection of where we are at any given time. As such it is of value in assessing our strengths, our weaknesses and in providing clues about where we should be placing our time and efforts. [/i]
I have problems with how we use data to measure educational outcomes. Right now two key pieces of data for each student that are used to determine whether a school is successful or not under NCLB are standardized test scores for reading and math. I agree that information can be important, but it reflects only a small portion of what is worthwhile in education. How do you measure the ability to work together with peers, to come up with solutions in a setting in which there can be more than one right answer, the ability to communicate effectively in public, artistic and esthetic sensibilities, leadership, exercising best practices in health, to understand team & organizational commitment, and citizenship, for starters. These are some of the things that get ignored when the focus is on those test scores. A school can fall short in reading and math scores, but have respectable outcomes in other areas; such a school is a failure. Another school can have adequate reading and math scores, but not much else and such a school is considered acceptable.
If health outcomes were measured only by body temperature and blood pressure, there would be a lot missing missing from the picture: a person’s mental and emotional well-being, and a spectrum of other qualitative evaluations, blood work, heart rate, weight/BMI. A healthy person has a certain mix of measures and qualifiers that aren’t necessarily consistent from one person to the next. It might depend on age, gender, body type and prior history…or other things I haven’t thought of at the moment.
Although it would be nice if all students could qualify as “proficient or above” in reading and math, non-qualifying students have not necessarily been failed by the system. Kobe Bryant, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, and George W. Bush have all been successful and have benefited from their education. But I don’t think their successes could be measured on the same scale of educational outcomes.
@Jeff:
I’m sure HS teachers and university professors could do better on their timeliness, but I still maintain that “instant” feedback is an unreasonable expectation.
I’m glad you excluded writing instruction, specifically, from your idea of “removing the subjectivity of grading.” The idea of having a “graduate student intern” checking off on an “inventory of key points” defeats the whole purpose of substantive, helpful feedback that students need on essays and papers.
@Hmmmmmm….
My daughter attends Da Vinci Jr. High, and they get updates posted on Zangle daily. They receive comments on their work, kudos from other students in their work groups, and comments to parents. Perhaps since Da Vinci is very tech-oriented, Zangle is updated more frequently than the other schools in the District.
JB: [i]We need choice; not a one size-fits-all system that continues to benefit a smaller and smaller population of students… and alienates a larger and larger population of students. We need a system that focuses on maximizing the earning potential of all students by helping them to recognize and exploit their natural gifts.[/i]
We have discussed this before.
With respect to Davis, what we need more of is information about the options available. You often use the disappointments of your sons’ experiences as a jumping off point for your views of what’s wrong with education. But it is clear that you were unaware of all the options that were available to you, or that you could change up programs/classes/teachers if something wasn’t working.
I support Measure E and Prop. 30 because it allows schools to optimize options available to students. Not passing them will continue to consolidate the system into a one-size-fits all template.
Measure E and prop. 30 is just propping up the status quo. A status quo that allows affluent districts to mask the inadequacies with trappings of a richer offering of subjects and programs.