by Jessica Lahey
In the wake of last week’s release of New York City Teacher Data Reports, educators and administrators are debating what exactly the value in a high value-added teacher looks like. Even teachers who scored high marks on the Teacher Data Reports question the value of tests that cannot possibly evaluate every aspect of what it means to be a great teacher, and the value that teacher imparts to his or her students.
The new feature-length documentary A Place in the World, directed by Adam Maurer and William Reddington, addresses the question of teacher value and the role of a school in building community. The documentary chronicles two years at The International Community School (ICS), a K-6 charter school in DeKalb County, Georgia. DeKalb County is the largest refugee resettlement area in the country and the most diverse county in the state of Georgia. Half the students at ICS are recent immigrants and refugees from war zones, and half are local children from DeKalb County.
The film focuses on two educators: Drew Whitelegg (Mr. Drew to his students), a first-year teacher, and Dr. Laurent Ditman, Principal of ICS. Mr. Drew, formerly a post-doctoral Fellow at Emory University, speaks honestly about how tiring his job as a fourth-grade teacher is, how difficult it is to avoid being consumed by the challenges inherent in teaching a population of barely English-literate, emotionally and physically terrorized children how to function as educated members of American society. “Teaching at a university was a dawdle compared to teaching here. I mean it really was. And there’s a sense that you are in this for the long haul. But the rewards – the rewards here are absolutely endless. And they don’t come from all the great moments, they come from the small moments.”
According to Mr. Drew, the education gap that divides the American and refugee students in his fourth grade classroom at ICS is created by language deficits. Mr. Drew is not talking about language deficits in terms of the ability to hold a basic conversation, he’s talking about cultural vocabulary, the connotation words carry in American culture that help proficient readers understand context and relevance. Mr. Drew gives an example in the film: The math problem 1/2 + 1/4 written numerically, as a math problem, is something his students can do. But ask this same problem as a word problem, with one kid baking cakes and giving half away to friends and then deciding to give another quarter away to another friend, “then it’s not a test of math, it’s a test of language ability.” Many of Mr. Drew’s students come to his classroom with no knowledge of English, and some students, such as Bashir, who was born in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, have no understanding of the concept of school. Bashir spent his first days at ICS wandering the halls, walking in and out of classrooms, calling out for his father. Principal Laurent Dittman recounts the story of a girl from the refugee camps in the Sudan who spent her first weeks at ICS huddled under a table, hiding from whatever dangers she had survived in the Sudanese refugee camp.
Dr. Dittman, himself an immigrant and the child of Holocaust survivors, believes in school as a refuge from his students’ unsettled home lives. He understands his students’ impulse to hide under tables in order to escape. “The first thing I learned from my parents was how to hide. When something bad happens, or is about to happen, you hide. I see that in many of the kids at the school.” Dr. Dittman views his school as a refuge for his students, a place to come out of hiding and learn. Dr. Dittman says of his own upbringing in an immigrant family in France, “I really liked school. It was a safe place. My parents were refugees and things at home were not always a lot of fun, and I saw school clearly as a refuge.”
When asked about the standards his students are expected to meet under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), his outlook is not quite as hopeful. “According to NCLB 2014, all students – 100% – will be proficient in all subject matters. What’s the old Garrison Keillor, everybody is above average? That doesn’t make any sense. My guess is that in a few years, all those standards, all those compulsory standardized tests will be a bad memory. I think that the pendulum is going to swing back the other way and return to a more rational, less ideological approach to education.”
ICS did not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in 2011 under NCLB. Dr. Dittman and Mr. Drew, who educate malnourished, traumatized, impoverished and previously uneducated children, must cover core subjects such as math, science, and history while helping their students find a place in American society. They are not simply teaching American history, they are teaching their students how to be Americans. The making of Americans is currently not a category in the Teacher Data Reports’ calculation of a teacher’s value-added assessments.
For validation on that front, Dr. Dittman and Mr. Drew do not look to test scores and value-added assessments; they look to their students. Dr. Dittman thinks back to that that one Sudanese girl, hiding under the classroom table. His voice breaks as he recounts the ending to her story. The girl refused to come out until one day her teacher crawled under the table and joined her there. Once her teacher had gained the girls’ trust, she felt safe enough to crawl out from under the table and join the class. According to Mr. Drew, “I don’t think teachers should blow their own trumpets or credit themselves overtly, but I think that you can go home at the end of the day and say, you know what, I’ve made a difference, you know, and the world is actually a better place from what I did today.”
As teachers and administrators move forward and continue to do the job of teaching this country’s students, it is important to remember that not all value is quantifiable. The Teacher Data Reports, in all their margins of error and fuzzy logic, can never get at the real value of this country’s teachers.
Jessica Potts Lahey is a teacher of English, Latin, and composition at Crossroads Academy, an independent Core Knowledge K-8 school in Lyme, New Hampshire. Jessica’s blog on middle school education, Coming of Age in the Middle, where this piece also appears, can be found at http://jessicalahey.com.
Jessica,
We clearly appear to be on opposite sides of the fence in this matter. That being said, great topic and well presented.
“The Teacher Data Reports, in all their margins of error and fuzzy logic, can never get at the real value of this country’s teachers.” Nor, do I believe, are they intended to, nor can any other single measure. However, the reports, in conjunction with subjective administrative and peer observations can give schools a much clearer/broader perspective over which teachers are and which ones are not getting the job done in our classrooms today.
Remember, before the objective data from state NCLB tests was entered into this new “mixed measures” approach, it was not uncommon for 98% to 99% of teachers in a school or district to be deemed satisfactory or effective. As well, it was also not uncommon for some teachers to never be evaluated at all.
A myriad of problems/concerns have surfaced in the initial round of the new evaluations. However, with local collective bargaining units finally on board with adding quantifiable information to the process, now is not the time to scrap this new procedure.
I realize this is a hot-button issue and my version is clearly a minority opinion, especially among the educational establishment. Nevertheless, as a retired public school teacher I believe this step in the reform of our schools is absolutely necessary. Absolutely.
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 2, 2012 @ 11:05 am
“We clearly appear to be on opposite sides of the fence in this matter. That being said, great topic and well presented.”
And that, right there, @PaulHoss, is why I love writing here. Civilized, polite debate rather than ad hominem attacks and verbal food fights. Thanks for the comment!
Comment by Jessica Lahey — March 2, 2012 @ 11:14 am
This issue does not just affect kids in the U.S. learning English, it is a global business challenge. Apparently there is a term called globish for a set of words one would need to conduct business in English stripped of sayings and idiom.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/03/01/a-new-international-business-language-globish/
Comment by DC Parent — March 2, 2012 @ 2:40 pm
“As teachers and administrators move forward and continue to do the job of teaching this country’s students, it is important to remember that not all value is quantifiable.”
Teachers at this school can keep track of how many students who began the school year roaming halls and hiding under desks no longer demonstrate behaviors that indicate fear as the school year progresses. That would give them a good indicator of whether or not they are earning their students’ trust. Or they can keep track of how many students know how to say a few simple words of English after a given period of instruction.
While it is true that the NCLB-required assessments might not be appropriate for the kids in this school, that doesn’t mean that we should just throw up our hands and say that there is no way we can possibly quantify growth in these students.
Comment by alamo — March 2, 2012 @ 2:53 pm
“Civilized, polite debate rather than ad hominem attacks and verbal food fights.”
Unfortunately, Jess, that’s also why relatively few have posted on this hot-button issue of New York’s teacher data reports. Most choose to avoid a good rock fight, even if only figuratively. While many believe this to be the diplomatic/pragmatic approach, I consider it mild cowardice. They must not believe too strongly in their position or they believe the opposition has too strong a leg to stand on.
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 6, 2012 @ 9:57 am
@Paul Funny, I’ve thought long and hard about what to say about this piece and VAM in general, and I find myself seized not by the desire to be diplomatic or avoid a rock fight, but pure enervation. On the one hand (I’m going to need lots of hands for this), I’m supportive of the principle of accountability; on the other, I view reading tests as fundamentally flawed measures. I view VAM as a pretty poor metric for evaluating individual teachers, but think it tens to be a valuable way to look at whole schools. I’m genuinely disturbed by the degree to which panic — and that’s really the right word — over testing drives schools and teachers to make deleterious instructional decisions, but on another hand (I’ve lost track) education as an overarching enterprise is pretty much lying in the bed it has made over the last 50-75 years with its general inattention to outcomes. So when I hear people defend VAM by saying, “Yeah, it’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing,” I don’t agree. But I completely understand why someone would hold such a view. Ultimately, I’m more interested in an even larger battle, which is changing our overall approach to K-12 education, specifically elementary ed and most specifically, early childhood ed. If I don’t take a strong position of VAM it’s also because, frankly, I don’t see much point. I tend to view the accountability era as simply something we’re going to have to live through, something which is doomed to disappoint and fail–simply because it does nothing to change what’s happening in classrooms for the better–and hopefully something which can be replaced a decade or so down the road by something more sensible.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — March 6, 2012 @ 10:41 am
@Paul and @Robert,
I was going to write about this, but decided I’d had it with pieces on VAM and the Teacher Data Reports. However, this one analogy has stuck with me. My physician/statistician husband quipped, after reading the statement by the NY DOE, that the release of this data without interpretation by skilled statisticians is the equivalent of your doctor drawing a bunch of labs, which he then hands to the press, who then ask the patient to draw conclusions based on his uninterpreted lab results.
All of this is unfortunate, because I DO believe that quantifiable outcomes can help us make American education better. The people who should be the MOST upset here are the ones looking for ways to evaluate teachers and students in order to make improve education (granted, those teachers have a right to be angry too). People who believe in the power of meaningful statistics have a right to be pissed off that flawed, incomplete, and meaningless data has been released to the public rather than meaningful assessments of teacher quality.
Comment by Jessica Lahey — March 6, 2012 @ 10:54 am
Robert and Jess,
More to the point; where are the Erin Johnsons, Government Bureaucrats, Students of History, Margo Moms, Don Hirschs, Sandra Stotskys, etc., etc.? Folks who have never been bashful before but for some reason have chosen to avoid this discussion. Come on, guys. where’s your sense of adventure, your passion, your spirit? And don’t tell me it’s all dried up or that you’re reformed out of your minds. You’re out there. What’s a matter? Cat got your tongue? Ya chicken?
My God, this is one place I thought there would be a rational debate over such a critical issue and we have to go trolling for responses? It makes no sense.
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 6, 2012 @ 12:00 pm
A taunting! I accept!
1. Excellent teachers can teach to the best of their ability, and students can still fail to learn. Education is the servant, not the master.
2. “Measurable” results = limited results. (See Blake, William. “Newton.” Monotype engraving ca. 1795.)
3. Bad policy = definite results. Poorly wrought legislation, conflicting and competing mandates, crummy curriculum, shoddy “assessments,” etc. What profiteth a teacher to gain a high-value-added score and forfeit genuine academic achievement?
How’s that? Too bad a mere yokel’s opinions have to serve until the above-named heavy-hitters can oblige Mr. Hoss.
Comment by James O'Keeffe — March 6, 2012 @ 9:05 pm
Splendid reply, James.
Like you, I wasn’t on Hoss’s list, but here’s why I haven’t been especially vocal on this matter lately:
a. Too much noise (not here, but overall).
b. Most of the good points have been made.
c. The remaining ones don’t fit well into blog comments.
d. Things said once have more weight, sometimes, than things said a hundred times.
f. I haven’t been silent. I just haven’t been garrulous.
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 6, 2012 @ 11:58 pm
Oops. That last item was supposed to be “e,” not “f.”
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 6, 2012 @ 11:59 pm
James and Diana,
Please forgive my oversights. There are a number of names I didn’t include, but quite inadvertently. The etc.(s) above (think they should have been et. al.) were my rush to “taunt” or entice others into the debate. Again, my sincerest of apologies; and to all the others out there as well who regularly follow this blog.
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 7, 2012 @ 10:11 am
No apologies necessary! I was acknowledging my place, practicing the art of self-deprecation. I really am a yokel. Let’s hope more of those heavy-hitters (I would consider Dr. Senechal in that class) join the party.
Comment by James O'Keeffe — March 7, 2012 @ 12:50 pm
I once heard of a survey that was done on teachers and computers and basically within the survey teachers named their computers about 50% of the time. This was a while back and may not still hold. But that survey emphasized how much teachers viewed themselves as people people. I think the fear of so many teachers is that value added takes away that people element and devalues those other qualities. When I read columns like this I see a plea to keep this quality in teaching. You can see this issue arise in many places news, librarianship, shopping. For better or worse we often choose suboptimal solutions we undervalue many qualities of teachers to allow us to compare other outcomes. The question I have for teachers is in fighting this fight, how much energy is being expended relative to getting other resources in teaching?
Comment by DC Parent — March 7, 2012 @ 5:53 pm
Close to a ditto! No apologies necessary whatsoever. I was practicing the art of exhaustion.
I, too, miss hearing from a number of people, including those you mentioned. Say, where’s Andrei Radulescu-Banu?
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 7, 2012 @ 5:59 pm
Where are they now? Andrei Radulescu-Banu? Agree or disagree with him, thoughtful entries on a regular basis. Where are these folks?
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 7, 2012 @ 6:13 pm
Hi guys –
I wish I could say something witty, but not much else remains to be said. I came to the conclusion that schools have evolved to a state where they constantly act to maximize one metric (standardized test scores, e.g. the MCAS) and to minimize a second metric, which can roughly be described as ‘trouble’. In that second category enters pressure from parents, politicians and the newspapers.
Take the example of teacher qualification steps. Our Superintendent went to visit China last summer, and found that teachers had a career ladder organized into a beginning level, an intermediate and a model/master teacher level. Teachers can step up based on experience, expertise – and, I assume, also based on a state exam which I expect is quite difficult for the master teacher level.
In our town, despite the fact that we set our own rules (we are a democracy, thankfully!) we do not have a meaningful career ladder. Every teacher is promoted based on time served.
And why is that? Some may think to blame the union, but I think they are missing the point.
Quiz: if our elementary school has 3 classes in, say, 1st grade, and if two teachers are known to be entry level and a third is a master teacher, how many parents would complain to the principal about the class assignment of their child?
Would then the principal, and by extension, the Superintendent support a meaningful career ladder for teachers, or would they act to minimize the trouble from parents?
Trouble is not quantified, the way test scores are, but is very real when every teacher and administrator is one step away from making a career wrecking move. As a result, our teachers have trouble teaching the rule of three but instead have developed world class political skills around the school system.
And since phenomena in education repeat themselves in society in Chinese forms, the way Gramsci once said, we are raising a generation very politically astute, but frighteningly low skilled in math.
Comment by andrei radulescu-banu — March 8, 2012 @ 12:54 am
Andrei,
Great to hear from you again. Try not to make yourself so scarce – for our sake. You have too much to contribute.
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 8, 2012 @ 2:46 pm
In this matter I agree heartily with Paul Hoss.
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 10, 2012 @ 12:33 am