Elizabeth Green's Front Page Sunday Mag Article on Teachers - I'll Hold My Congratulations

I've only read a third of the article, Building a Better Teacher, but I'm heading for the treadmill at the gym to finish it. So far I am not happy based on who is quoted - Klein, Rhee, Gates and Hanushek. It's all about the teacher. All other factors disappear in a sea of data. I saw so many things in the first 2 pages to criticize I could not go on.

This quote should get some people riled:

"A new generation of economists devised statistical methods to measure 'value-added' to a student's performance by almost every factor imaginable: class size versus per-pupil funding versus curriculum. When researchers ran the numbers in dozens of different studies, every factor under a school's control produced just a tiny impact, except fro one: which teacher the student had been assigned to."

Elizabeth's homework is to read the first week of posts from Eduwonkette, which dealt with the issue of teacher quality in depth. After I finish reading Elizabeth's article we'll decide if we should add Elizabeth the kick line.

EDUWONKETTE (JENNIFER JENNINGS)
Sunday, September 23, 2007

The Teacher Effectiveness Kickline

From Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg to George Miller and Checker Finn, we’re awash in chatter about measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness. This week I’ll consider some of the problems with these proposals. What’s missing from this discussion, I argue, is a full exploration of their potential consequences for students, teachers, and schools.

Let me note that I am not opposed to measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness in principle. But it’s more complicated than most commentators would like to acknowledge, and I hope this week’s postings will help us think about that complexity.

Monday: Tunnel vision syndrome - The teacher effectiveness debate focuses only on a narrow set of the goals of public education, which may endanger other important goals we have for our schools.

Tuesday: No teacher is an island - The teacher effectiveness debate ignores that teachers play many roles in a school. Experienced teachers often serve as anchoring forces in addition to teaching students in their own classrooms. If we don’t acknowledge this interdependence, we may destabilize schools altogether.

Wednesday: Ignoring the great sorting machine - If students were randomly assigned to classrooms and schools, measuring teacher effects would be a much more straightforward enterprise. But when Mrs. Jones is assigned the lowest achievers, and Mrs. Scott’s kids are in the gifted and talented program, matters are complicated immeasurably.

Thursday: Overlooking the oops factor - Everything in the world is measured with error, and the best research on teacher effectiveness takes this very seriously. Yet many of those hailing teacher effectiveness proposals missed out on Statistics 101.

Friday: Disregarding labor market effects - The nature of evaluation affects not only current teachers, but who chooses to join the profession in the future and where they are willing to teach. If we don’t acknowledge that kids that are further behind are harder to pull up, we risk creating yet another incentive for teachers to avoid the toughest schools.

Here we are at mile 26 of the teacher effectiveness marathon - the previous posts are all archived here.

One of the summer’s highlights was a talk at AEI by Chicago labor economist Derek Neal. (Footnote: AEI talks generally make me want to impale myself on a Powerpoint projector, but this one was exceptional.) For those who weren’t there, you can watch the video here.

Neal found that low-performing kids in Chicago got shafted when the Chicago accountability system went into place, and again after NCLB was implemented. His talk wasn’t about teacher labor markets, but he made a critical point in this area. If the measurement of teacher effectiveness doesn’t take into account that some kids start off further behind that others and I am labeled a bad teacher as a result, why would I teach in a low-performing school? We have a hard enough time staffing these schools to begin with, in part because of salary differentials but also because of working conditions. If these teachers feel disrespected as professionals because the measurement system doesn’t acknowledge that they have a tougher job, I predict that we’re going to have a harder time recruiting and retaining teachers in these schools. This is conjecture, I know – we really have very little evidence about such a system because no one has implemented a comprehensive teacher effectiveness plan yet. (If you know of any studies on this issue, please email them to me.)

The best part, I thought, was towards the end of the discussion, where Doug Mesecar (Asst. Secretary at Ed) and Neal go back and forth in response to Mesecar’s question, “Are you saying our teachers are not professionals?”, i.e. that they're not good enough to get everyone to proficiency no matter how far behind they start. Most folks back down when challenged with the “soft bigotry of low expectations” rhetoric, but Neal was having none of it.

That’s it for teacher effectiveness, folks – I hope that this week has made you think through some of the issues we don’t hear much about in this debate.

(Kickline roster (from left to right): Eli Broad (Broad Foundation), Kati Haycock (Ed Trust), Michael Bloomberg (NYC), Michael Petrilli and Checker Finn (Fordham).)


That's it for my blast from Eduwonkette past. Elizabeth Green is assigned to write each post 20 times on the blackboard. Or in Powerpoint.

UFT Partner Bill Gates at it again

Gates Foundation gives $335 million to raise teacher effectiveness

Frizzle Sizzle had this comment on ICE-Mail:
"...in my last chapter elections I was the first at my school to expose the fact that Bill Gates' goal is to privatize our school system AND now tinker and alter tenure in our contract."

Well of course the chapter wouldn't know about Gates and the privatization movement if they read anything the UFT puts out. Gates is their partner. Their collaborator. Some Vichyssoise, anyone?

The UFT could be the great educator of the membership and the public. But the leadership purposely doesn't connect the dots. Some people think they are stupid. Or bamboozled. Not so. They know exactly what they are doing. Collaborating in letting the air out of the teacher labor movement. Not that they like doing it. But they have no choice. No strategy for fighting off the data testing. Or the charters. Or the merit pay. No strategy at all. And no prospect for developing a strategy. So they are left with nothing more than a holding action and the bet they can hold onto power and get what they can out of using their control over the membership to get what they need for the top oligarchy.

Susan O has an article from WAPO and a comment:

Ohanian Comment:
schools. This agenda includes For teacher "effectiveness," read "test scores." This is one more step in the Gates use of venture philanthropy, marching lockstep in the neoliberal agenda to corporatizedeprofessionalizing teachers. Under the neoliberals, control of schools shifts from teachers, parents, and communities to private foundations, corporations, and investors. Under neoliberals, public schools are a business, students are consumers. Teachers? They are lackeys operating at the will of the system stocked by principals who must become entrepreneurs. This money is dirty, buying the soul of a school and eating it alive.

Here are some excerpts from the WAPO article:

For the [Gates] foundation, a central player in school reform, the initiative reflects an evolution in strategy. Several years ago, it concentrated on breaking large high schools into smaller, more personal academic communities. That effort had mixed results. In a conference call, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the foundation, said she and Microsoft founder Bill Gates had discovered that innovation takes long-term commitment because school systems are often "entrenched" in their ways and teachers "siloed in their classrooms." "We have been in this work for almost a decade" she said. "We've learned a lot about what works. . . . Let's focus on the thing that actually matters the most, which is the teacher." (Gates serves on the board of the Washington Post Co.)


If you watched the Sat nite live opening where the Chinese Pres asks Obama to kiss him. "I like being kissed when someone is screwing me," he says as he bends over and assumes the position.

Can Mulgrew and the Unity leadership crew kiss a 100,000 or so working UFT members without getting chapped lips?

Updated: Skoolboy Savages Kristof

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLE TEACHERS?
CLOSE THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP BY PUTTING JESUS IN EVERY CLASSROOM.

UPDATED:

Horn and Bacey at Schools Matter and Diane Ravitch on The Miracle Teacher Revisited

I tend to believe things I read. And I would usually believe Kristof. But when you actually know something about something and see a guy getting it so wrong, I wonder why I should take anything he writes seriously. Word to the wise: Don't write glowing reports about the education reform movement or about how important a good teacher is until you have a real clue. If all it takes are 4 years to erase the achievement gap by having excellent teachers, try an experiment in a bunch of places. But since you are only measuring teacher quality by test score results (rather than things like ability to control kids and nourish them) you can only use teachers who get high test scores.

At Gotham Schools

Nix on Nick Kristof’s Claims

by Aaron Pallas (alias Skoolboy)

Excerpt:

Breathlessly, Kristof reports in Sunday’s New York Times that teachers are “astonishingly important.” “It turns out that having a great teacher is far more important than being in a small class, or going to a good school with a mediocre teacher,” he writes. “A Los Angeles study suggested that four consecutive years of having a teacher from the top 25 percent of the pool would erase the black-white testing gap.”

Wow, erasing the black-white testing gap in four years sounds like a pretty good deal. And just from being taught by some really great teachers! There must be some evidence of this for it to show up in the New York Times, wouldn’t you think? Some study somewhere that actually showed that black students exposed to teachers in the top quarter of the teacher effectiveness distribution for four years in a row can routinely move from the 16th percentile in the test score distribution (roughly the black average) to the 50th percentile (roughly the white average)?

Emily LaGates Says - "Never Mind!"

It's really worth noting what was happening in Seattle at the Gates Foundation shindig where reporter extraordinaire Elizabeth Green gives us the full scoop. An awful lot of what Gates had to say was pure poop.

He said that while the investments created some noteworthy successes, which he said proved an important lesson — “that all students can succeed” — the overall goal of scaling up successful models was a disappointment.

“Largely, this has not happened,” he said.

Many of the 8% of schools did not succeed: Their test scores were actually lower than the average scores of schools in their school district, and their college-attending rates climbed painfully slowly, up only 2.5 percentage points over five years. A main strategy of the schools, breaking large high schools into smaller units, on its own guaranteed no overall success, Gates said.

He said the New York City small schools were an example of successes in raising high school graduation rates — but a disappointment in that their graduates were no likelier than any city student to be prepared to go onto college.

Ya mean Bill that you helped destroy entire swaths of the NYC school system and now it's "Never Mind?" Oops!

Green goes on:

Perhaps the most sensitive project will be investments to study a seemingly innocuous subject: teacher effectiveness. The touchy part is that the foundation is signaling that it will urge school districts to find ways to fire teachers judged ineffective.

“If their students keep falling behind, they’re in the wrong line of work, and they need to move on,” Bill Gates...

Following this same line of reasoning, Gates will soon announce he is closing down Microsoft for foisting the Windows Operating system on the world despite it's being a vastly inferior product to the Apple Macintosh OS. "If we keep falling behind Apple, we're in the wrong line of work and need to move on," Gates said. Microsoft will produce hair brushes from now on.

New Microsoft line of products

Skoolboy over at Eduwonkette laughed uncontrollably - Bill Gates, U.S. Superintendent of Schools at this line from Green's report

As part of its new approach, the Gates Foundation will advocate for the politically thorny goal of national standards — and will aim to write its own standards and its own national test.

I have an idea for a national standard:

Ability to use Windows computers and all Microsoft products to the exclusion of anything resembling Apples, even if they want to serve them for lunch.

(Sidenote: I was in NYC school tech when BloomKlein took over. Think there was any favoritism towards Microsoft, which made millions?)

Skoolboy says, "Read it again, slowly: The Gates Foundation will develop its own national standards and its own national test. Does anybody else think this is a really, really bad idea? I'm delighted that the Gates Foundation has realized that throwing money at small schools didn't work, but I'm not prepared to turn over the public's interest in what is to be taught and learned to a private philanthropy, no matter how civic-minded it may be.

Hey Skoolboy, isn't Bill Gates allowed to make a few mistakes? Check out this idiot comment from CodyPT:

How do you manage to pass judgement so quickly when you haven't read the first syllable of the Gates Foundation effort? It's the same old story. No one outside the hallowed confines of the educational "establishment" is allowed to put an oar into the education lake (puddle?) without immediate howling from the education "experts."

Ah, yes CodyPT. What we need are non-experts. I hope you get one of those the next time you go to a doctor

Mike Klonsky also has some thoughts- Gates' unveils '3 pillars' and here on the subject.

Teachers Measured on Test Scores: UFT Gives Away the Rest of the Store

See follow-up postings

I am practically rendered speechless at the joint announcement by KleinGarten that the UFT and Tweed have agreed on a plan to measure teachers by the standardized test scores of their students. But don't you see, it is for the teachers' own benefits so they can improve. It will NEVER be used against them Randi maintains. It "once and for all closes the door on using student test score data to evaluate teacher performance." Huh? But you see, Randi really feels there is too much testing but agrees to merit pay and now this program that, guess what? Puts even more emphasis on testing. Does she have 3 sides of her mouth to speak out of?

Let's see now. Jennifer Medina reports in the NY Times:

In introducing the pilot program, Mr. Cerf said it would be a “powerful step forward” to have the teacher measurements made public, arguing, “If you know as a parent what’s the deal, I think that whole aspect will change behavior.” But this week, he said that for now the reports will be treated as personnel records not subject to public-records laws.

And this goody:

Principals interviewing prospective teachers from other schools would be permitted to ask candidates for their reports, but the candidates would not have to provide them.

Well, teachers, in particular ATR's looking for a job, when a prospective employer asks you for your report: JUST SAY NO! That ought to get you the job.

Here are some goodies from Randi's letter to UFT District Reps:

Although the teacher is the most important factor in student learning, there are many other influencing variables that are outside the teachers’ control, many of which cannot be precisely measured. [You see teachers, I just sold you down the tubes but I am really sympathetic.] That’s why we have opposed the use of student test score data sorted by individual teachers for high-stakes decisions such as tenure, evaluation or pay. [Let's see now. They'll fire you before you get tenure by saying it wasn't your students' performance but you wore the wrong color shirt. And evaluate you on this basis? Nahhhh!]

Now this Randiism is even better:

In our agreement, which is spelled out in a joint letter appearing in this week’s Principals’ Weekly that is being issued this evening (reprinted below), the DOE makes it clear to principals that the results of these analyses must not be used for evaluation purposes. Instead, they should be used to help teachers strengthen their instruction and to help the school plan instructional and professional development strategies. In addition, the data is available only to the principal and the individual teacher, unless that teacher decides to share it.

Like many other types of data and other professional tools, this information can be a powerful instructional tool if teachers have the access, understanding and time to use it properly to assess and address their own strengths and weaknesses. But used improperly, it can be seen as a tool of intimidation and punishment. The chancellor and I issued the joint statement in order to ensure the most productive and positive use of these reports.

The commitments expressed in this joint letter should reassure members that the data will not be used against them. However, we must at the same time be prepared to respond to any violations of this understanding. Chapter leaders who believe that the letter or spirit of the agreement is not being followed should alert their district reps immediately.

Really, I can't go on. So I'll post Marjorie Stamberg's comments this morning on ICE-mail. You can read the full texts of Randi's letter to Dist. Reps (who must be holding their sides laughing). the joint letter, and the full NY Times article on Norms Notes. Note- the teacher portal URL in the joint statement is http://schools.nyc.gov/Teachers/default.htm.

Marjorie Stamberg Comments:

Now the District Reps are being asked to tell us that the joint Klein-Weingarten letter linking teacher performance to student test scores is some kind of victory for teachers! Weingarten insists it won't be used to deny tenure or for annual teaching rating. Not going to be used punitively?! This has about as much credibility as Treasury Secretary Paulson's assurances up until two weeks ago that the economy was fine. Can I interest you in a bridge that's up for sale?

The union should "just say no" to the whole idea of linking test scores to teacher performance. Instead, they buy into it, with a caveat on how it supposedly "won't be used." But it's just plain WRONG, by all measures of pedagogy as well as basic union principles.

First off, what this will be used for is for teacher bashing--in the New York Post, Daily News, Times, and the rest of the mainstream media who for years have blamed teachers for the failures of a public education system run by people who are dead set opposed to public education.

The fact that Randi has a joint letter with Joel Klein on something like this speaks volumes about the union's failure to combat head-on the assault on public education and on teachers and students by these educational counter-reformers. This whole exercise is based on this battery of endless standardized tests which has grievously distorted public education, leading to the wholesale elimination of music and arts programs to slashing social studies, science and in a number of cases eliminating sports programs and recess.

The joint letter makes much of how providing the information about the performance of each student on standardized tests will supposedly help the teachers to improve his or her educational technique by knowing more about their students' progress or lack thereof. The fact of the matter is, the information on a student-by-student basis, on different area studies (ELA, math, etc) is already available to schools and teachers on ATS.

The only thing this program will do is provide a listing of such scores that will convey no new educational information and can only be used for "evaluating a teacher." The joint letter claims that this will not be used for determining tenure or annual ratings. This is a transparent fiction--the principle will sit there with this information staring them in the face and ignore it?

Furthermore, there's a long history of using what are intended as diagnostic tests for purposes of "evaluation and exclusion." At the City University, the old WAT test was supposed to be used to determine which areas an incoming student needed remedial help. But then in the late 1990s, the Giuliani regime through it's agent Herman Bedillo turned this into a prerequisite for graduation and was used to exclude students from graduating.

Here we have Unity Caucus once again greasing the skids for Bloomberg/Klein's union busting!

--Marjorie

Which Comes First- Class Size Reduction or Teacher Quality?

There has been no more persistent theme of Ed Notes throughout our 12 years that teacher quality or effectiveness or whatever they are calling it today is affected by the number of children in a class. Of course to the "outcome" oriented gang, the sole judge is the test score, ignoring about 75% of what teachers do, from nurturing the whole child to scrubbing dirty desks.

Here's a nice video at AfterEd TV with Leonie Haimson, the NY Sun's Elizabeth Green, Columbia's Doug Ready (make sure to check out Leonie's comment if you hit the link.)

They talk about the study in California that showed that despite having to hire 3 times as many teachers due to class size reduction, the "quality" of all these teachers hired was about the same. But what do they mean by quality? Again it comes down to scores and I don't believe that is the relevant factor. Maybe we should use "number of kids that contact the teacher over a 5 year period after they graduate." It's as good a judge as any other factor. Lots more with Ready making some great points. I was at his presentation at Columbia a few months ago and his research is dynamite -it blows up the regressive ed reformers who push gimmicks like merit pay and ignore the class size issue.

Hunting Down Bad Teachers

The nationwide focus on quality teaching is curious when compared to lack of focus on quality of physicians, where mistakes lead to people dying. At Friday's ICE meeting, Michael Fiorillo raised a very valid point in comparing the way the US health care and education systems are perceived. He surmised that in reality, the US education system compares rather favorably internationally in comparison to the health care system, where US infant mortality rates are somewhat shameful, among a bunch of other negative stats. Let's say that in poor areas, they are no worse than comparable to each other. Yet, why isn't the Mayor finding a million dollars to root out bad doctors? (I won't even get into the legal profession here.)

I understand the focus on the desire to get rid of “ineffective” teachers but I would love to get people to tell me how to define that. I know plenty of teachers who ended up at private schools and are are considered to be good teachers because the NYC system spit them out due to large class sizes and unruly kids. “Effectiveness” is a relative term. In my first year if I kept the kids from swinging from the lights I was considered effective.

I was part of a group mentoring Teaching Fellows and stories abound of some of them floundering in one school but flourishing in another.

Look at your own schools and from what you can see, what is the % of lousy teachers? Try rating your colleagues in order of effectiveness. Would that list match the administrators’ list? The parents and students’ lists? (I was in Spain 2 years ago at a school where the principal was elected by teachers, parents and kids.) Most bad teachers find a way to migrate out of the classroom, all too often to supervisor’s chair.

There will always be a bell curve of teacher quality no matter what is done and everyone will have some teachers who are great, average and poor. The way to improve quality is to make conditions as ripe as possible for good teaching to take place. But what is occurring is a quota system where principals have to show results in getting rid of some teachers and they often pick on the most vulnerable personality wise, often loners without popular support in the school. In other cases, they pick on teachers who might be good teaching a whole class but struggle in the workshop model. Many have found this to occur when they were slow to adapt to the major changes Diana Lam and Carmen Farina forced down people's throats.

With so many 20-year plus veteran teachers under attack we have to ask, what if they get rid of them all and replace them with first year newbies of unknown quality, many of whom may be worse than the people they are replacing? Are the kids better off?

After the meeting Loretta Prisco sent this item.

A Third of New York’s Worst Repeat Offender Doctors
Continue to Practice Without Licensing Consequences

Statement of Laura MacCleery, Director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division

Nov. 16, 2007

We are shocked – but not surprised – by recent revelations that a New York doctor risked exposing more than 600 people to deadly diseases due to a terrible hygiene practice.

While state health officials delayed public release of the information to patients, the state’s medical board also has let this avoidable public health disaster go utterly unaddressed, incredibly finding no evidence of wrongdoing by the anesthesiologist, Dr. Harvey Finkelstein of Plainview, N.Y.

We immediately took another look at the National Practitioner Data Bank, a record of medical malpractice payments. We found that from 1990 to 2007, only a scant third of doctors with 10 or more medical malpractice payouts had a reportable licensure disciplinary action.

That shoddy record of discipline for the worst offenders deserves a close look by state lawmakers. The “I’ll scratch your back” culture in medicine, in which doctors have claimed they are competent to police themselves, must end before more people are killed by criminal negligence.

To add this insult to patients’ injuries, rather than moving swiftly to address the problem with a subpoena, the state health department took months to negotiate a voluntary agreement from Finkelstein to release patients’ names. Health officials must change their lax attitude and adopt an enforcement mentality, particularly when lives are at stake.

Rate of Discipline Among New York Doctors Who Have Made Medical Malpractice Payments

Number of Payment Reports	Number of Doctors Who Made Payments	Sum of These Payments	Subset of Number of Doctors who had One or More Reportable Licensure Actions	Pct. of Doctors Who Made Payments Who had One or More Reportable Licensure Actions	Pct. of Total Dollars Paid Out Statewide
Total	15624	$8,801,597,900	920	5.9	100.0
1	9435	$2,547,679,350	393	4.2	28.9
2 or more	6189	$6,253,918,550	527	8.5	71.1
3 or more	3057	$4,369,937,700	332	10.9	49.6
4 or more	1631	$3,032,795,700	213	13.1	34.5
5 or more	960	$2,173,580,200	141	14.7	24.7
10 or more	127	$482,470,250	40	31.5	5.5

Source: National Practitioner Data Bank

[The data above reflects information from entire period reported in the NPDB database, and includes payments (both settlements and jury verdicts) reported from September 1, 1990 through June 30, 2007, according to the NPDB Public Use Data File Format Specifications File (http://www.npdb-hipdb.hrsa.gov/pubs/stats/Public_Use_Data_File.pdf).]

Eduwonkette on Teacher Effectiveness

For the past few months I've been using my 2-minute speaking time to "educate" the members of BloomKlein's Panel for Educational Policy (the rubber stamp replacement for the old Board of Education) on the concept of what makes for a quality teacher.

I will continue those attempts tonight. Of course, it all falls on deaf ears (except for Manhattan rep Patrick Sullivan), but why not at least point up the contradictions in basing an entire body of educational policy on the concept that the quality of a teacher has more impact than any other item - class size, socio-economic conditions, etc. I raised some of these issues in a Teacher Quality, Part 1 post. A key point is that all the forces - Broad, Klein, Weingarten, the Clintons - are aligned on the same page without any clear understanding, or interest, in the research on the issue.

Along comes a brand new blog by eduwonkette, clearly someone with a research-based finger on the trigger of many of these push-button issues. (I intend to raise many of these points as I can at the PEP.) Expect insights galore from this blog.

(Kickline roster (from left to right): Eli Broad (Broad Foundation), Kati Haycock (Ed Trust), Michael Bloomberg (NYC), Michael Petrilli and Checker Finn (Fordham).)

This week, eduwonkette will post a daily article on teacher effectiveness, touching on issues that all members of the kickline, which should include Weingarten and Bill Clinton (any photoshop people out there, feel free) have been ignoring.


Introducing eduwonkette
http://www.eduwonkette.com

The Teacher Effectiveness Kickline
From Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg to George Miller and Checker Finn, we’re awash in chatter about measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness. This week I’ll consider some of the problems with these proposals. What’s missing from this discussion, I argue, is a full exploration of their potential consequences for students, teachers, and schools.

Let me note that I am not opposed to measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness in principle. But it’s more complicated than most commentators would like to acknowledge, and I hope this week’s postings will help us think about that complexity.

Monday: Acute tunnel vision syndrome - The teacher effectiveness debate focuses only on a narrow set of the goals of public education, which may endanger other important goals we have for our schools.

Tuesday: Neglecting the school as organism - The teacher effectiveness debate ignores that teachers play many roles in a school. Experienced teachers often serve as anchoring forces in addition to teaching students in their own classrooms. If we don’t acknowledge this interdependence, we may destabilize schools altogether.

Wednesday: Ignoring the great sorting machine - If students were randomly assigned to classrooms and schools, measuring teacher effects would be a much more straightforward enterprise. But when Mrs. Jones is assigned the lowest achievers, and Mrs. Scott’s kids are in the gifted and talented program, matters are complicated immeasurably.

Thursday: Overlooking the oops factor - Everything in the world is measured with error, and the best research on teacher effectiveness takes this very seriously. Yet many of those hailing teacher effectiveness proposals missed out on Statistics 101.

Friday: Disregarding labor market effects - The nature of evaluation affects not only current teachers, but who chooses to join the profession in the future and where they are willing to teach. If we don’t acknowledge that kids that are further behind are harder to pull up, we risk creating yet another incentive for teachers to avoid the toughest schools.