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Nevada, Nevada Schools, No Child Left Behind, NSHE, Pay for Performance, Reno, schools, standardized tests, student performance, teachers, Washoe County School District, WCSD
Most of the political discussions about America’s failing education system do two things. First, they blame someone, usually the teachers, and second, they seek simple-minded solutions that assume all children are developmentally equal and live in the same socioeconomic environment.
If education were only about what can be scored on a test, then we don’t need teachers, we need mind programmers
No Child Left Behind was based on the belief that a standard test would be the ultimate measure of a student’s success or failure. The assumption was that if student’s scores on a standardized test failed to achieve established goals then we could all blame the teachers and administrative staff, then punish them. The concept assumed that a student’s base level abilities, and parental support was irrelevant. No Child Left Behind was an idea that applied a corporate-like measurement system, which often fails in a business environment, and forced public schools to leave education behind in pursuit of goals that reduced students to do or die numbers.
The failure of No Child Left Behind is so spectacular that after a decade the program began, over two-thirds of the States are ranked at a “D” or “F” in the quality of education by StudentsFirst.org Report Card.
Standardized tests assume that every child is an X, but in reality they can be A to Z
One of the major failures of the program was the institutionalizing of testing standards that encouraged teachers to focus on teaching their students how to successfully take the tests, but not to understand the material. The program ultimately forced out many excellent teachers that rejected the absurdity of No Child Left Behind, which is ironic because the goal was to force out less effective teachers. The result has been that school after school has failed to produce the results desired leaving America with a generation of students who are even less prepared for adult life.
Nevada’s Washoe County School District (WCSD) is typical of many school districts across the United States. For the 2010-11 school year the standardized tests indicated that an average of 85% of the high school students (9th-12th grades) met or exceeded the established standards for reading, writing, and math. Those scores would indicate that 85% of the students are prepared to move on from high school.
However, of the 1,600 Washoe County School District graduates that attended Nevada state-run universities, almost half (48%) of them required remedial classes to bring them up to college entrance-level work. The standardized tests are designed to measure competency; however, even though the scores indicate the students are prepared, almost 1 out of 2 need to take classes to address educational deficiencies.
Some might say this just confirms the inadequacy of public schools; however, if that were true the standardized tests should reflect those failures and they do not. It is the inadequacy of the standardized test to measure educational performance or lack of performance.
Standardized tests can be an effective tool in education, but they are just one tool. If we truly want to improve the educational performance of America’s students we must stop holding a knife to the throat of teachers and schools and stop using simple-minded measurements of academic performance to determine whether they live or die. A teacher can’t be held accountable for a parent that doesn’t believe in homework, therefore causing the student to be behind the rest of her/his class. It’s time we began supporting the teachers who have years of training and experience in education, rather than applying failed business models that destroy public education.
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What is the alternative? How would you suggest an evaluation of a teacher’s work output be made without looking to the performance of the students? I cannot imagine that a brief, subjective, snapshot review by a supervisor (principal?) from the back row of the classroom will reveal which teachers are not teaching. How else can we measure performance and eliminate those who cannot or will not perform? Do you not think this is an important function for us to perform to provide the best for Nevada’s children?
The first thing to remember is that teachers have more education than pilots, flight attendants, many politicians and many other professions where people have the power of life and death over us everyday, so the idea that ‘we’ have a better idea of what teachers should be doing to educate our children is wrong from the outset. Most people’s impression of the quality of a teacher’s work is based on the experience of their child and how many children love to go to school?
The fact is that a teacher cannot be expected to help students master skills when parents take the attitude that education ends at the school fence. Homework is designed to help students master the skills that were introduced in the classroom. When a parent doesn’t support the work of the teacher, then their child is going to fail, not the teacher. I know many parents who don’t even know the name of their teacher. In one recent situation, the parent didn’t even know the name of the school that their child attended.
Politicians, especially Brian Sandoval, love to blame the teacher because they are easy targets. That has to stop. It is immoral that a politician pander for votes by attempting to destroy the educational system just because it is easy. How about standing up for, and respecting the American educational system? That is not politically easy, but it is morally the right thing to do. Trying to tell parents they have no responsibility to support their school, and in fact, telling parents the government will give them money to not support their school is wrong.
I helped design pay-for-performance programs for hospitals and I have continued to follow the issue for years. The simple fact is that pay-for-performance programs don’t work, despite the fact that businesses still use them. The best person to create work standards is the person who actually does the job, and they are biased. The next best person is the supervisor, but they are biased in the opposite direction. In the end, the best evaluation system starts with training the manager to be the consultant, leader, cheerleader. The manager who is looking for something they can crank a number out in order to evaluate a worker is a failure even before the worker arrives on the job.
If Brian Sandoval’s position is to create the best for Nevada’s children, then he shouldn’t be the one trying to tear education apart with ‘his’ idea of education. That is best left up to the people who received a degree to teach. If he wants to do something, then do something to make sure parents are engaged, not to oversee teachers, but to support them. That’s what I said in this article: http://paulkiser.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/is-it-time-for-a-two-tiered-school-system/
I am seeing plenty of criticism of any form of measurement of performance, but I really don’t see you proposing any kind of alternative. The Governor should get parents engaged and not establish standards for the teachers to aspire to and exceed? I don’t know where in Nevada you live and work, Paul, but I don’t see the Governor working that kind of magic in our society, no matter what he might do (and you leave that completely open for question).
So, it is wrong for the government to oversee government operated schools and the employees within them? Is that because you perceive that in corporate America the corporations do not properly manage their employees, so it surely won’t work with government employees, either? How, then, are we to separate good teachers from bad teachers?
Honestly, it appears to me that you have a completely biased view of the process of evaluating a teacher. You seem to conclude that all teachers know more about teaching than anyone who might evaluate their performance, so nobody could possibly do such an evaluation. Have you no plan for holding them accountable for doing their job? Do you not believe that there is a single teacher who is not performing up to whatever standard might be considered?
I agree it is crass and insensitive to analogize a teacher’s job to someone working on an assembly line and look at the finished “product” to judge the performance of the worker. The reality is, though, there must be some sort of objective gauging of their work in order to get rid of those workers who cannot or will not do the job. Surely you will admit there are some teachers who do not teach. Our children would benefit from them being removed from the job and encouraged to pursue another vocational choice.
The workplaces of the world will judge a student and, consequently, the performance of his/her teachers, parents, mentors and anyone else who had influence over that young life when that person enters the work arena. Do we really want that to be the very first time that anyone in the individual’s life ever is held accountable for a “proper upbringing?”
I agree that the parents must be held most profoundly responsible and many will refuse to bear that burden. As for a grounding in the basics of the 3 R’s (that are tested in the standardized evaluations), there is nobody more directly accountable than the teachers with whom that child comes in contact. One bad one can taint a child’s attitude toward education and self-improvement of all varieties for life; one exceptional once can serve as inspiration for a lifetime pursuit of excellence and self reliance and fulfillment that cannot be found anywhere else.
Rickerwill:
I delayed answering your comment because it demands more than a hurried response while on vacation. I now have time to give your comment the attention it deserves.
First, regarding your slam that I’m all talk and no solution, while I have not put down a point by point plan of action, I have written extensively to identify the issues regarding K-12 education. If you want a ‘Step 1’, then it is simply get politicians out of the debate. They typically don’t know what they are talking about and they come up with crowd pleasing solutions that treat highly trained and experienced professional educators like they are fish in a barrel. Their solutions involve encouraging everyone to take a shot at educators for fun.
Brian Sandoval’s discussion of teachers in his 2011 State of the State speech he stated:
“Eliminate costly programs that reward longevity and advanced degree attainment”
That says two things: 1) Experienced teachers are bad, and 2) smarter teachers are bad.
How can anyone say something that is so stupid? His justification was to cite other people who cited unnamed studies that indicated experience and teachers with advanced degrees didn’t correlate to better student scores. Sandoval wants to ax experienced and better educated teachers based on studies he couldn’t directly cite. He doesn’t cite the studies by name because they are trying to link a ‘dependent’ variable that can’t be directly associated with the independent variable. In layperson’s terms. Factor X has no relationship to Factor Y, but that doesn’t mean that Factor X isn’t important.
For example, a teacher getting her master’s degree may not result in a student in her class getting a 20% increase in tomorrow’s math test, but a better educated teacher may have a deeper understanding of the complex issues preventing that student from focusing on his studies, and that might keep that student in school, rather than dropping out,
Second, it is not Brian Sandoval’s job to micromanage what goes on in the classroom. His job as Governor is not to bypass the layers of highly qualified educators who know and understand how to effectively design teaching techniques for individual students.
He is using schools as his whipping post because they are easy targets. Note that Nevada was #1 in violent crime per capita in 2009 and 2010.
Still, do we see Brian Sandoval demanding pay-for-performance on law enforcement? Why not? Certainly, there is a bottom line in law enforcement and reducing violent crime should rank high on the list of priorities, but yet Brian Sandoval is 100% silent on the issue.
The statement that government should ‘oversee’ a government entity is a ridiculous statement. Of course government ‘oversees’ every government entity, but that doesn’t mean the County Sheriff should oversee Miss Tobban’s 5th grade class.
A Governor facilitates, not dictates. That is the basic failure of conservative leadership. That is the basic failure of Brian Sandoval.
Third, your assumption is that the schools are filled with ‘bad’ teachers, and if we can only come up with a simple test we can expose all the bad teachers and education will improve AND cost less. This is the basic premise of the No Child Left Behind program and it is a decade long failure. It’s time we accepted that the ‘bad’ teacher concept is a myth.
Yes, there are a few bad teachers, but no, there are not as many as you think, and they certainly are not the reason that Nevada ranks at the bottom of almost every educational category. More importantly, like any industry, there are systems already in place to identify those who are not succeeding, and they are either improving or on the way out. The idea that there are thousands of teachers who are bringing the educational system down is stupid and has NO factual support.
The teacher has a responsibility to evaluate the student and not the other way around. A student’s success or failure is dependent on much more than what a teacher can provide in the classroom for 5 1/2 hours a day. Yes, a good teacher can facilitate learning, but a parent is the model for the student on what priority learning has the in student’s life.
Finally, you’re a fan of pay for performance programs. The ultimate goal of performance standards is that everybody in the organization should be judged by the same standards. Since you feel that Government should ‘oversee’ the rest of government, the standards set by the Governor for schools should be the standards set for the Governor. If they don’t succeed, then neither should he.
So you want actionable steps:
Step 1: Stop political, conservative attempts to destroy schools by micromanaging them with stupid ideas like standardized tests. Give schools back to the professionals that have college degrees in education.
Step 2: End the lies that the teachers are mostly bad and that is the source of Nevada’s failing schools.
Step 3: If you want every teacher to be a superstar then pay them superstar salaries, not bonuses, but real salaries that keep great teachers in the education.
Step 4: Pay teachers to do inservices for parents. Help parents understand what they can and should be doing at home to encourage and support the professionals in the schools.
Step 5: Fund school building replacement on a 20 year cycle. No building is to be more than 20 years old.
Step 6: End any public funding of mythology based schools. Schools are to teach facts, not beliefs.
That’s enough to start turning things around. Next you’ll ask how I plan to fund this and I have an answer…for another time.