Comments on: What’s Yours Is Mine

By: javabeanboy

javabeanboy — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:11:11 +0000

+1 John Thompson.
I think we’re asking the wrong question here. Yes this is totally corrupt, but it’s a corruption within an economic context. It’s like a police chief who is corrupt not because he takes money out of the retirement fund but because he inflates the number of meth related crimes in order to get government funding to fight meth. And when he finally succeeds in defeating meth his staff budget would be cut. So we need to ask if testing is the best road to accountability. And where is this accountability question coming from anyway? What did we do before “accountability” that so poorly that testing seems like a good investment of time and resources?

By: imbrendab

imbrendab — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:50:20 +0000

Thanks, guys. Between the Red Socks and the Senators, I finally laughed at the situation rather than steamed or cried, which is what usually happens when I think about testing and accountability.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:48:14 +0000

Oh, Robert. It is simple. Employment At Will.

Andromeda, how interesting! I may steal that.

Special Bulletin: All Senators in Oregon are re-routing their votes for the financial bailout to their defeated opponents. “The electronic voting booths we rigged by our biggest campaign contributors, our staff registered voters while on vacation in Canada, and we meant to vote ‘Present.’ We have been gaming the system all along. Our records are not our own but what our constituents deserve.” The state political committees have commissioned a study via ear mark. Feel free to lodge a complaint with your local think tank

By: Mike G

Mike G — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:57:16 +0000

In other news, the Red Sox reported today that they were re-routing 3 victories from the Dodgers back to Boston.

“Those Dodger wins were generated by Manny Ramirez,” said team president Larry Lucchino. “If Mannywood hadn’t demanded a trade from Boston, those wins would have been ours.”

This development belatedly makes Boston the AL East Division Winner.

By: Andromeda

Andromeda — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:35:47 +0000

And yet, if you take the viewpoint that the schools have a *right*, rather than an obligation, to the students, it all makes sense. And that viewpoint crops up disturbingly often whenever bright students enter the picture.

By: Robert Pondiscio

Robert Pondiscio — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:50:04 +0000

Of course they did! And as a teacher, I surely don’t need a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head to make me feel accountable. That said, I think we all know teachers who show up, phone it in, and don’t put in a single minute more than they are contractually required to. The trick, of course, is knowing how to tell the difference and making accountability part of the culture instead of an external obligation. Simple, I know.

By: FeFe

FeFe — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:38:12 +0000

OMG! Also, Robert, didn’t teachers feel any sense of accountability to their students or parents who pay their salary prior to NCLB? The Union tells me there is honor in being a teacher but gaming the system tells me otherwise. We need a clearing house in every school board across the nation 25 years later.

By: john thompson

john thompson — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:17:08 +0000

I shouldn’t have been so colloquial (and probably I shouldn’t try to spell that word without spell check)

When I said that we “ate” their scores, I meant that we would be held accountable for the scores the the students got while attending the alternative school. The principal just assumed that the alternative school would provide less value added. At any rate, we would be held responsibility for the instruction that was given, or not given, by another school. So, she wouldn’t Long Term Suspend students.

The silliness of those speculations is my point though. The principal was so fixated on test scores that she didn’t think clearly. So, we kept even more of our most disruptive students, driving down scores for everyone.

On the other hand, our district’s web site used to have a scattergram which showed that our schools as a whole did a relatively better job of increasing test scores of low income students than the suburbs. That information should have given us the confidence to use our professional judgments to do our best for our students, and not resort to “quick fixes” that we knew would be counter-productive. But, the more impossible the task, the more likely that people will panic, and make bad educational decisions.

So, I think we need accountability, but I’d be relucatant to make accountability a “driver” of any system. Accountability is just one characteristic of good management – no more and no less.

By: Robert Pondiscio

Robert Pondiscio — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:05:58 +0000

Wouldn’t that create an incentive to suspend kids with low scores on trumped up charges, John?

I agree with your larger point, John. If we’ve learned any lesson about accountability it ought to be that the accountability system will become the driver of every school-based decision, from curriculum to disciplinary measures, whether we want it to or not. Hence we have to be very careful in creating accountability systems that encourage the outcomes we seek.

Simple, right?

By: john thompson

john thompson — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:53:41 +0000

Yes, rerouting is foolish but it isn’t as bad as the system we once had. We had to “eat” the scores of kids who were referred to the alternative school for disciplinary problem. Which led to a more foolish situation, where the principal refused to suspend disruptive kids to alternative schools because of fear that it would hurt our scores.

But neither is any more foolish than the normative approach where neighborhood schools that lose their top students to magnet schools are held accountable under the same rules as the magnets.

Perhaps the most foolish belief of all, however, is the hope that we can repeal Campbbell’s Law. As long as we have stakes attached to testing, we will ccontinue to lurch from one foolish system after another. As as the accountability systems become more capricious, then the gimmicks will become ever more weird.