30 When the older generation: Douglas N. Harris and Stacy A. Rutledge, “Models and Predictors of Teacher Effectiveness: A Comparison of Research About Teaching and Other Occupations,” Teachers College Record 112, no. 3 (2010): 914–60.
31 Value-added measurement: See William L. Sanders and June C. Rivers, “Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement” (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, November, 1996); S. Paul Wright, Sandra P. Horn, and William L. Sanders, “Teacher and Classroom Context Effects on Student Achievement: Implications for Teacher Evaluation,” Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 11 (1997): 57–67; and Jim Schutze, “Baby, It’s Them,” Dallas Observer, January 29, 1998.
32 A more sensitive early value-added formula: Heather R. Jordan et al., Teacher Effects on Longitudinal Student Achievement (Dallas Public Schools report on research in progress, July 1997).
33 Growth measures that track: For an excellent discussion of the differences between snapshot and growth/value-added measures of student achievement, see Douglas N. Harris, Value-Added Measurements in Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2011).
34 New York City value-added model: Value-Added Research Center at University of Wisconsin–Madison and New York City Department of Education, New York City Data Initiative: Technical Report on the NYC Value-Added Model (2010).
35 Using these methods: An excellent and readable summary of value-added research is Harris, Value-Added Measurements in Education. Also see Douglas N. Harris and Tim R. Sass, “Teacher Training, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement,” Journal of Public Economics 95 (2011). For teacher quality variation within and between schools, see Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff, “Measuring the Impact of Teachers I—II: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates” (working papers 19424 and 19423, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2013). For evidence that black teachers are more effective with students of color, see Eric A. Hanushek et al., “The Market for Teacher Quality” (working paper 11154, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2005). For the effects of teacher training and professional development, see Darling-Hammond, “Teacher Quality and Student Achievement: A Review of State Policy Evidence.”
36 the error rate: Peter Z. Schochet and Hanley S. Chiang, Error Rates in Measuring Teacher and School Performance Based on Student Test Score Gains (Institute of Education Sciences/Mathematica report, 2010).
37 two-thirds of teachers who: Harris, Value-Added Measurements in Education, 122.
38 five “good teachers in a row”: Eric A. Hanushek and Steven B. Rivkin, “How to Improve the Supply of High-Quality Teachers” (Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 2004).
39 In a 2006 paper: Robert Gordon, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger, “Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job” (Hamilton Project paper, Brookings Institution, April 2006).
40 This reality was demonstrated: Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff, “Measuring the Impact of Teachers I—II.”
41 When a separate Department of Education/Mathematica trial: Steven Glazerman, Transfer Incentives for High-Performing Teachers: Final Results From a Multisite Randomized Experiment (U.S. Department of Education/Mathematica Policy Research report, November 2013).
42 In 2007 Gates met: For Bill Gates’s introduction to value-added research and his early work on teacher evaluation, see Steven Brill, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 178–80 and 229–35.
43 An August 2012 Vanity Fair article: Kurt Eichenwald, “Microsoft’s Lost Decade,” Vanity Fair, August 2012.
44 Elsewhere in the corporate world: Greg Anrig, “Chicago Teachers’ Strike: What Do We Want? Better Management Gurus Might Help,” Pacific Standard, September 17, 2012.
45 Even Japanese schools: To learn more about lesson study, which is gaining popularity in the United States, see http://www.lessonresearch.net/.
46 “I am actually really intrigued”: David Herszenhorn, “Test Scores to Be Used to Analyze Schools’ Roles,” The New York Times, June 7, 2005.
47 She agreed to an experiment: Marcus G. Springer and Marcus A. Winters, New York’s School-Wide Bonus Pay Program: Early Evidence from a Randomized Trial (report, National Center of Performance Incentives, Vanderbilt University, April 2009).
48 One of the hottest tickets: Dana Goldstein, “The Democratic Education Divide,” American Prospect, August 25, 2008.
49 As an Illinois state senator: Howard Schulman, “Charter Schools Working,” Providence Journal, August 27, 2004.
50 he spoke at the launch party of Democrats for Education Reform: These scenes are re-created in Brill, Class Warfare, 131–32.
51 he was booed at an NEA event: Ruth Marcus, “From Barack Obama, Two Dangerous Words,” Washington Post, July 11, 2007.
52 “wonderful new superintendent”: Jeff Chu, “Obama and McCain Fight Over a Woman,” Fast Company, October 20, 2008.
53 When it came time: Dana Goldstein, “The Selling of School Reform,” The Nation, June 15, 2009.
54 “the current research base is insufficient”: “The Promise and Peril of Using Value-Added Modeling to Measure Teacher Effectiveness” (RAND Education research brief, Santa Monica, CA, 2004).
55 “Let me be clear”: “Obama Speaks to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,” March 10, 2009. Transcript available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Obama_Hispanic_Chamber_Commerce.html.
56 “There’s got to be a sense of accountability”: Michael A. Fletcher and Nick Anderson, “Obama Angers Union Officials with Remarks in Support of R.I. Teacher Firings,” Washington Post, March 2, 2010.
57 “Only 7 percent of American workers”: Dana Goldstein, “Grading ‘Waiting for Superman,’ ” The Nation, October 11, 2010.
58 A 2013 AFT study: Howard Nelson, Testing More, Teaching Less (American Federation of Teachers report, 2013).
59 “There might be good reason”: Harris, Value-Added Measurements in Education, 181.
60 But in September 2013: Geoff Decker and Philissa Cramer, “Instead of Telling Teachers Apart, New Evals Lump Some Together,” Chalkbeat New York, September 16, 2013.
61 In Florida, Tennessee, and other states: For information on how “shared attribution” works, see Laura Bornfreund, “An Ocean of Unknowns: Risks and Opportunities in Using Student Achievement to Evaluate PreK–3rd Grade Teachers” (New America Foundation study, May 2013). For problems in Alachua County and Kim Cook’s story, see Dan Boyd, “Value-Added Model Has No Value,” Gainesville Sun, December 9, 2012; and Valerie Strauss, “A ‘Value-Added’ Travesty for an Award-Winning Teacher,” Washington Post, December 3, 2012.
62 A 2012 survey of ten thousand American teachers: Primary Sources 2012: American Teachers on the Teaching Profession (poll from Scholastic and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2012); and Terry M. Moe, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), 404–5.
63 A national poll from Gallup: Dinesh Ramde, “Wis. Poll: Walker Law Really About Hurting Unions,” Boston Globe/Associated Press, April 22, 2011; and Judy Keen and Dennis Cauchon, “Poll: Americans Favor Union Bargaining Rights,” USA Today, February 23, 2011.
64 But polls showed the majority of parents: Whet Moser, “Poll Shows Substantial Parent, Racial Divide on Chicago Teachers Strike,” Chicago, September 17, 2012.
65 “a corporate attack”: Jeffrey Brown, “Chicago Board of Education Plans to Shut Down 54 Schools, Move 30,000 Students” (transcript of PBS NewsHour interview with Karen Lewis, March 22, 2013).
66 Teach for America emerged as a flash point: Lauren Fitzpatrick, “CPS Calls Teacher’s Mom to Tell Him He’s Getting Laid Off,” Chicago SunTimes, July 19, 2013; Eric Zorn, “Should Teach for America Pack Its Bags?” Chicago Tribune, July 30, 2013.
67 “
There are still places in the United States”: Author interview with Steve Zimmer, July 22, 2013.
68 Robert Schwartz: Author interview with Robert Schwartz, July 19, 2013.
69 Research from the National Center on Performance Incentives: Reports on merit pay in New York, Nashville, and Austin can be found at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/performanceincentives/research/.
70 In New York City in 2012: Al Baker, “Many New York City Teachers Denied Tenure in Policy Shift,” The New York Times, August 17, 2012.
71 the District of Columbia stuck with its plan: Emma Brown, “98 Teachers Fired for Poor Performance,” Washington Post, August 1, 2012; Bill Turque, “Many Teachers Pass on IMPACT Bonuses,” Washington Post, January 28, 2011; Emma Brown, “D.C. Traditional Public School Teacher Pay Is Higher Than Charters,” Washington Post, August 19, 2013.
72 Was teaching improving in D.C.?: For analysis of teacher evaluation and turnover in District public schools, see Thomas Dee and James Wyckoff, “Incentives, Selection, and Teacher Performance: Evidence from Impact” (working paper 19529, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, October 2013); and Keeping Irreplaceables in D.C. Public Schools (The New Teachers Project report, 2012).
73 a series of exposés: For the first piece on adult cheating in D.C. under Michelle Rhee, with links to follow-ups, see Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, “When Standardized Test Scores Soared in D.C., Were the Gains Real?” USA Today, March 30, 2011.
74 Noyes was not an isolated case: For investigations of adult cheating nationwide, see Greg Toppo et al., “When Test Scores Seem Too Good to Believe,” USA Today, March 17, 2011; and Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff reports, “From Scandal at APS to Suspicious Scores Nationwide,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 30, 2013.
75 On March 29, 2013: For the Atlanta cheating scandal, see Michael Winerip, “Ex-Schools Chief in Atlanta Is Indicted in Testing Scandal,” The New York Times, March 29, 2013; and Olivia Blanchard, “I Quit Teach for America,” The Atlantic, September 23, 2013.
76 “The existence of cheating”: Arne Duncan, “Despite Cheating Scandals, Testing and Teaching Are Not at Odds,” Washington Post, July 19, 2011.
77 a “tiny” rounding error: Author interview with Bill Gates, January 30, 2013.
78 When New York City released: Fernanda Santos and Robert Gebeloff, “Teacher Quality Widely Diffused, Ratings Indicate,” The New York Times, February 24, 2012.
79 Already there is some evidence: Stephen Sawchuck, “Teachers’ Ratings Still High Despite New Measures,” Education Week, February 5, 2013.
80 Colorado state senator Mike Johnston: Dana Goldstein, “The Test Generation,” American Prospect, April 2011.
81 “The majority of [American] teachers”: Eric A. Hanushek, “Teacher Deselection,” in Creating a New Teaching Profession (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 2009), 177.
82 “We all know test scores”: Author interview with Jonah Rockoff, October 8, 2013.
83 But as Arne Duncan has acknowledged: Brill, Class Warfare, 422–23.
84 “I’d seen too many examples”: Michelle Rhee, Radical (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 154.
CHAPTER TEN: “LET ME USE WHAT I KNOW”
1 According to a 2013 poll: Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on Teaching in an Era of Change (poll from Scholastic and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2013).
2 Polls of teachers who leave: Laura Bornfreund, “Do Teachers Care About Pay? Yes, but Not As Much As You’d Think,” Slate, December 7, 2011.
3 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began a massive study: Kane and Staiger, Gathering Feedback for Teaching.
4 A 2011 observation: Stephen B. Plank and Barbara Condliffe, Pressures of the Season: A Descriptive Look at Classroom Quality in Second and Third Grade Classrooms (Baltimore Education Research Consortium report, February 2011).
5 A 2009 review: Pianta and Hamre, “Conceptualization, Measurement, and Improvement of Classroom Processes.”
6 But research shows: See chapters 7, 9, and 10 in Hattie, Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement.
7 There is nothing new: For the history of classroom observation, see Robert J. Marzano et al., “A Brief History of Supervision and Evaluation,” in Effective Supervision (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2011).
8 Danielson wanted to watch teachers work: Charlotte Danielson interview with author, December 30, 2013.
9 a district of more than nine thousand teachers: E-mail correspondence between author and Marcia Vogel, supervisor of special projects, Office of Communications, Montgomery County Public Schools, October 4, 2013.
10 Journalist John Merrow ran the numbers in Toledo: John Merrow, “Ohio School District Uses Unique Peer Evaluations to Grade Teachers,” PBS NewsHour transcript, December 14, 2010.
11 researcher Julia Koppich: Julia Koppich, Toward Improving Teacher Quality: An Evaluation of Peer Assistance and Review in Montgomery County Public Schools (Montgomery County Public Schools report, June 8, 2004).
12 “Maybe the problem”: Author interview with Kati Haycock, October 7, 2013.
13 few principals can offer struggling teachers: For information on principal caseloads, author interview with Garth Harries, August 15, 2013; and Jesse Rothstein, “Effects of Value-Added Policies,” Focus 29, no. 2 (2012). Consultant teacher caseloads in Susan Moore Johnson et al., Teacher to Teacher: Realizing the Potential of Peer Assistance and Review (Center for American Progress report, 2010).
14 Replacing a teacher costs a district: Johnson et al., Teacher to Teacher.
15 “the powers that be in this country”: Elisa Crouch, “National Teachers Union Leader Points to St. Louis as a Model,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 14, 2013.
16 “If all you do is judge teachers by test results”: Theodoric Meyer, “An Evaluation Architect Says Teaching Is Hard, but Assessing It Shouldn’t Be,” The New York Times, February 15, 2012.
17 “Teaching reading is a science”: Author interview with Caryn Henning, October 8, 2013.
18 An initial study of the program: Results provided by the Children’s Literacy Initiative to author via e-mail, February 25, 2014.
19 A 2010 randomized trial: results available at http://www.cli.org/sites/default/files/OMG%20Assessment%20Summary%201.10%20-%20FINAL.pdf.
20 Raj Chetty, Jonah Rockoff, and John Friedman study: Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff, “The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood” (working paper 17699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2011), 4.
21 Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced: Details on how the philanthropic dollars were spent are available at http://foundationfornewarksfuture.org/grants/.
22 “Too much school reform is about blowing up systems”: Author interview with Jen Weikert, October 8, 2013.
23 They urged Congress: Sarah Almy et al., Preparing and Advancing Teachers and School Leaders: A New Approach for Federal Policy (Education Trust report, September 2013).
24 major problems with teacher education in America: Julie Greenberg, Laura Pomerance, and Kate Walsh, Student Teaching in the United States (National Council on Teacher Quality report, July 2011).
25 “Many in the field”: Greenberg, McKee, and Walsh, Teacher Prep Review, 2013.
26 An eight-year study: Matthew Ronfeldt, Susanna Loeb, and James Wyckoff, “How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement,” American Educational Research Journal 50, no. 1 (2013): 4–36.
27 When Thomas Kane, Douglas Staiger, and Robert Gordon: Gordon, Kane, and Staiger, “Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job.”
28 a system developed by Martin Haberman: Martin Haberman, “Selecting and Preparing Urban Teachers” (lecture, February 28, 2005, available on the Web site of National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification Information); and author interview with Christine Brennan Davis of Urban Teacher Residency
United, September 25, 2013.
29 found a mixed record on student achievement: See John R. Papay et al., “Does Practice-Based Teacher Preparation Increase Student Achievement? Early Evidence from the Boston Teacher Residency” (working paper 17646, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, December 2011). Also see http://memphistr.org/2013results/ and http://www.utrunited.org/about-us/research-and-publications.
30 “very problematic”: Morgaen L. Donaldson and Susan Moore Johnson, “TFA Teachers: How Long Do They Teach? Why Do They Leave?” Education Week, October 4, 2011.
31 “A lot of UTRs”: Author interview with Christine Brennan Davis.
32 At Kingsbury High School: Author interview with David Montague of Memphis Teacher Residency, November 4, 2013, and author interview with Marcus Clark, October 9, 2013.
33 Alex Caputo-Pearl: Author interviewed Caputo-Pearl on six occasions between 2010 and 2013. Author visited Crenshaw High School, where she observed teacher professional development, on May 20 and 21, 2011.
34 “leftist crazies”: Erin Aubry Kaplan, “Reviving Education,” LA Weekly, May 12, 2005.
35 it was rooted in solid research: John M. Bridgeland, John J. Dilulio, Jr., and Karen Burke Morison, The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts (Report by Civic Enterprises in association with Peter D. Hart Research Associations for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, March 2006).
36 Donald Boyd’s 2010 study: Donald Boyd et al., “The Role of Teacher Quality in Retention and Hiring: Using Applications-to-Transfer to Uncover Preferences of Teachers and Schools” (working paper 15966, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, May 2010).
37 Nevertheless, at Crenshaw: Statistics on race, classes taught, and years of experience of dismissed teachers collected by Alex Caputo-Pearl and Cathy Garcia, sent to author via e-mail on May 5, 2013.
38 “It is a fundamental right”: Howard Blume and Stephen Caesar, “L.A. Unified to Overhaul Struggling Crenshaw High,” Los Angeles Times, January 16, 2013.
The Teacher Wars Page 37
