Pitchers, Teachers, and Data

by Robert Pondiscio
June 28th, 2010

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in accountability, Education Practice, Educational Policy, Opinion | 32 Comments »

Over on Twitter, my friend Stephanie Germeraad, who is nearly as passionate about sports as she is about education, suggests education ought to steal a page from baseball when it comes to teacher seniority.  Commenting on the decline of legendary closer Trevor Hoffman, she tweets a quote from Alan J. Borsuk: “Schools can learn from baseball.  Brewers wouldn’t start Hoffman just because he’s been pitching longer.”  The point is that seniority is no guarantee of quality. Fair enough.  But here’s a sobering truth:  We are far more capable of measuring the effectiveness of relief pitchers like Hoffman than classroom teachers. 

If you’re a casual baseball fan, you might know a few ”facts” about the pitchers on your favorite team:  their won-loss record, their ERA  (the number of “earned runs” allowed per nine innings), or their WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched).  To an expert, such statistics scratch the surface at best, and may even be irrelevant.  Wins are a function of a team’s offense, for example, as much as a pitcher’s effectiveness, while ERA and WHIP are strongly influenced by the defensive ability of the other eight men on the field.  An outfielder with greater range for example, will record an out on a ball that a lesser defender lets fall for a hit.  Same pitch, same swing, different outcome.

Among baseball geeks, you often hear discussions of fielding independent pitching, or ”FIP,” a measure of the things a pitcher is directly responsible for such a strikeouts, home runs and walks.  FIP helps you understand how well a pitcher pitched, regardless of how well the team played behind him.  Data even helps teams decide what kind of pitchers are best suited to their stadiums through analysis of   “park effects.”  A fly ball pitcher (yes, they keep track of fly balls, line drives and ground balls hit off every pitcher) might prosper in a big stadium like New York’s Citi Field, but allow lots of home runs in a bandbox like Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park.  A pitcher who “pitches to contact” (i.e., doesn’t strike out a lot of hitters) is fine if your team’s defense is strong.  If not, you might spend more to sign pitchers who are strikeout artists.  Data even helps spot problems as they occur.  Fans of the New York Mets are concerned that all-star pitcher Johan Santana’s fastball is topping out below 90 miles an hour of late, making his changeup, a slow-speed pitch, less likely to fool hitters expecting the fastball.

To a baseball fan statistics are a revelation.  The granularity and specificity are illuminating.  You can see, if you’re so inclined, a pitcher’s FIP, ERA, strikeouts, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio.  The percentage of batted balls that were hit on the ground, in the air, or for line drives can speak volumes about a pitcher’s effectiveness.  When a player’s agent goes to negotiate his contract, he can even discuss his “Wins Above Replacement” (WAR),  a statistic that measures the total value of a player over a given season compared to an average replacement player. 

If these kinds of numbers thrill you, adding depth and nuance to your love of baseball, thank Bill James.  It is no overstatement to say that no one has had a greater impact on baseball in the last 25 years than James, who pioneered and named the field of sabermetrics, the use of detailed statistics to analyze baseball team and player performance.   James has made a career of demonstrating the factors that lead to teams scoring runs and winning games, and how the efforts of individual players contribute to wins.  Some of his insights have been legendary and have overthrown time-honored beliefs about the game–why RBIs matter less than on-base percentage, for example. Or why stolen base attempts tend to hurt a team’s offense.  Before Bill James, baseball was all batting averages, bromides and intangibles–a century of baseball men who knew what they knew based on experience, instinct and rudimentary data.

We are in the test scores, bromides and intangibles era of measuring teacher quality.  If you’re a prinicipal, wouldn’t you love to know the “school effects” of teacher performance when it came time to make hiring decisions?  Would it change your perception of merit pay if there was a classroom equivalent of FIP–the factors directly under a teacher’s control?  What if we could compensate teachers based on their replacement value compared to an average first year teacher? 

“It’s far more than win/loss/ERA/WHIP” is the clubhouse mantra,” Stephanie tweeted, defending her assertion that education can profit from baseball’s example. ”Difference is, baseball doesn’t say they therefore can’t do it,” she wrote. Not quite right.  In baseball there is data–lots of it–to measure effectiveness clearly and fairly.  Difference is ”it’s far more than test scores” is not a mantra in ed reform. 

Education awaits its Bill James.

Good Schools “Avoid False Choices”

by Robert Pondiscio
October 13th, 2009

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Core Knowledge School, Education News | 5 Comments »

Whole language or phonics?  Skills or content?  Equity or excellence? In visits to successful schools, Karin Chenoweth has “been struck by how free they are from the frustrating controversies other schools get mired in.”   Chenoweth who works for the Education Trust, writes  in Education Week  that high-achieving schools with significant populations of low-income children ”tend to avoid questions about the philosophy of reading instruction. Rather, they approach the issue with what I consider a cheerful empiricism.” 

One such school is PS/MS 124, a Core Knowledge school and a past winner of Ed Trust’s “Dispelling the Myth” award.  As part of the New York City school system, “it is expected to teach its students a district curriculum that emphasizes skills rather than a set body of content,” writes Chenoweth.  But principal Valarie Lewis, noticed “teachers would teach skills, but if [the children] didn’t have background knowledge, it didn’t stick.”

She and the school’s then-principal, Elain Thompson, brought the Core Knowledge program to the school. Its curriculum, developed in part by E.D. Hirsch Jr., focuses on providing students with a great deal of background knowledge, from nursery rhymes to Newton’s Laws. ‘Teachers still need to teach the skills,’ said Judy Lefante, the school’s Core Knowledge coordinator, ‘but we’ve worked hard through professional development to make sure they teach skills through content.’ Skills such as making inferences, drawing conclusions, and separating facts from opinion, for example, are all worked on within the science and social studies content areas.”

Student achievement at PS/MS 124 is “almost indistinguishable from that of wealthy, white schools,” Chenoweth notes, “despite the fact that more than 80 percent of its mostly African-American, Latino, and South Asian students qualify for free lunches,” 

“The point is this,” she concludes. “Arguments that for too long have fostered false dichotomies, pitting one practice against another, can be resolved—but only if educators have as their clear goal ensuring that all their students become educated citizens, and then focus closely on what it takes to help them reach that goal.”

How It’s Being Done

by Robert Pondiscio
October 9th, 2009

Tags: , ,
Posted in Education News | No Comments »

If you’re in or near Washington, Karin Chenoweth, the former Washington Post ed columnist who currently toils for Ed Trust, will be at the Politics and Prose bookstore discussing her new book, How It’s Being Done, on Saturday, October 9 at 3pm.  An excerpt from the book is in the current issue of The American Educator. 

One of the most successful Core Knowledge Schools, PS/MS 124 in Queens, New York is featured prominently in both the book and the excerpt.

Kudos to P.S. 124

by Robert Pondiscio
August 26th, 2009

Tags: , ,
Posted in Core Knowledge School, Education News | 1 Comment »

New York City’s P.S. 124, an Official Core Knowledge School, is profiled in the Christian Science Monitor as an example of how to build sustainable success with low-SES  students–even on a tight budget.

Ten years ago, the school won a three-year, $784,000 state grant to carry out a plan for comprehensive reform. Rather than looking for money to reduce class size or try the latest fad, as is tempting for schools that feel chronically underfunded, two successive principals committed to a curriculum approach called Core Knowledge, one they hoped would unify teachers and students in high expectations for learning. The school is still reaping the benefits of their decisions today.

When the grant ran out, the paper notes, the school “consistently set aside a portion of its Title I money–federal support for low-income students–to keep Core Knowledge going. ‘Staying true to one program and giving it time to take root is the key,’ principal Valarie Lewis says. ‘Too many schools … have tried to get quick fixes and they’ve brought in too many programs; they’ve spent too much money.’”

National recognition for PS 124  is nothing new.  The school was a 2007 winner of Ed Trust’s coveted ”Dispelling the Myth” award for exceptional success in educating low-income students and students of color to high academic levels. 

Kudos to Lewis and her staff for sustaining their success. 

Poor Kids Shortchanged in Ohio

by Robert Pondiscio
December 23rd, 2008

Tags: , ,
Posted in Education News | 4 Comments »

A new Ed Trust report shows that even though Ohio school districts get additional funding for low-income children, only three of the state’s 14 largest districts have higher teacher salaries in their highest-poverty schools, compared to their more affluent schools.

“Common sense and basic fairness tell us that schools educating low-income students need significantly more—and certainly not less—if we expect them to reach the same high standards and achievement levels as children who have more resources at home,” says Ed Trust’s Ross Wiener, author of the report, No Accounting for Fairness.

On Curriculum: The Silence of the Dems

by Robert Pondiscio
November 14th, 2008

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in No category | 10 Comments »

Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools has laid her hands on a 34-page transition memo written by Democrats for Education Reform, and puts it online for all to see.  She leads with DFER’s touting Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp or Chicago schools boss Arne Duncan for Secretary of Education over NYC’s Joel Klein (the memo is pretty clear, however, that in DFER’s ideal world, Klein or Washington’s Michelle Rhee would get the job).  

Here’s what you won’t read in the DFER memo: anything about curriculum.  The word appears only once in 34 pages, and that’s in someone’s job title.  The memo to the President-elect lays out dozens of staffing recommendations and a legislative strategy that addresses accountability, teacher quality, and a 20% increase in Title I funding.  DFER even suggests the Obama Administration ”steer clear of getting involved in any aspect of the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind until it has firmly gotten its footing.”   On what kids should actually be learning?  Cue the crickets.  Chirp. 

This is not to single out DFER.  Ed reform groups across the board have much to say about funding, structures, choice, charters, incentives and myriad other topics yet virtually nothing about what children are actually taught inside the classroom.  There are clear connections to be made between curriculum and reading achievement, but with 15% to 18% of school age children moving in a given year, student mobility alone is reason enough to support a uniform national curriculum.  Without it, we institutionalize the gaps and repetitions that occur as student’s move from class to class, school to school or town to town.  In particular, low-income children, who move far more often, are profoundly impacted by this. 

To her credit, Kati Haycock touched briefly on the issue in her address at the start of the Education Trust National Conference in Washington yesterday, asking educators to consider not just common standards but ”common curriculum, some common lessons and assignments, and a carefully sequenced development of skills, knowledge and vocabulary.”

At least someone’s talking about it.  Anybody listening?

Bringing Up the Rear

by Robert Pondiscio
April 4th, 2008

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Assessment and Testing | No Comments »

Improvements shown in the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, the first time eighth- and 12th-graders were tested in the subject since 2002.

The overall percentage of kids rated as “proficient” didn’t change, but both 8th and 12th graders saw upward movement on the percentage scoring at the lower “basic” level.  “Large achievement gaps still persist, though,” notes the Christian Science Monitor “between white and minority students, higher-income and low-income students, and, far more than in other subjects, between girls and boys.”

“The overall improvement in 12th grade is the first good news out of high schools, and that’s great,” Ed Trust’s Amy tells the paper. “But our excitement about that is seriously tempered by the lack of national gap closing.” 

In 2002, the average score for 12th-graders was 148; it’s up to 153 as of 2007.  The percentage of students scoring at the basic level went from 74 percent to 82 percent. “The biggest gains among eighth-graders were also among low performers, with more students reaching the basic level. It’s a trend that has also emerged in NAEP tests on other subjects: the lowest performers are getting better, with little change at the middle or top,” reports the Monitor.

More coverage of the NAEP:

Los Angeles Times

California still lags in student writing skills

Denver Post

Students’ writing skills don’t change

Boston Globe

State’s 8th-graders score well in writing test, despite gender gap

New York Sun

Writing Mastery Eludes Majority In Eighth Grade

Detroit News

Writing scores edge upward

Wall Street Journal

Write Stuff Shown by More in Grades 8, 12

The New York Times

In Test, Few Students Are Proficient Writers

Giving Kozol His Due

by Robert Pondiscio
February 8th, 2008

Tags:
Posted in Educational Policy, Opinion, Review | No Comments »

Education SectorUnusually good, nuanced and ultimately fair dissection of Jonathan Kozol’s work by The Quick and the Ed’s Kevin Carey today. A stark contrast to what Carey rightly describes as the “standard conservative anti-Kozol piece, which has become a genre unto itself.”

Carey’s main point is a good one. “In in his righteous anger and dark pessimism, [Kozol] has become blind to all evidence of progress and possibility with our public schools.” Having read a lot of Kozol and worked for years in precisely the neighborhood he chronicles, I’m inclined to agree with Carey. That said, there is an undeniable tendency on the part of both teachers and reformers to congratulate themselves for their effort and incremental progress. The needle is moving, but barely. Anger is still the right reaction. There’s a hell of a lot more to be unhappy about than not.

Narrowing the Two Achievement Gaps

by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
November 9th, 2007

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Essay, Research and Reports | 2 Comments »

Education TrustA presentation at the 18th Education Trust National Conference, Nov. 9, 2007, Washington, D.C., by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

© 2007 Core Knowledge Foundation. Not to be copied or reproduced without permission from the Core Knowledge Foundation, 801 E. High Street, Charlottesville, VA 22902.

I am grateful to the Education Trust for inviting me to give this talk. It’s an honor and a kind of homecoming. We at Core Knowledge feel great affinity with The Education Trust with its focus on narrowing the unfair achievement gap between groups. That injustice was my reason for leaving academic pursuits and entering education reform in the 1970s.

I won’t distract you with the intricate details of my experiments on literacy some 35 years ago beyond observing that they were first done at U VA, and then at a mainly African-American college in Richmond. I described the results in two technical publications that are virtually unknown. But they have colored all of my subsequent work. Anyone who bothers to read those reports might be surprised to discover that it was empirical science and not ideology that originated Cultural Literacy and the Core Knowledge movement. The ideological controversies surrounding Cultural Literacy during the 1980s and ’90s were gripping but, to my dazed mind, essentially off point. For, the key educational issues we faced urgently both then and now are less connected with ideology than with empirical reality.

I’ll very briefly describe the discovery that shocked me into education reform. The African-American students at the Richmond college (It was the Sargeant Reynolds Community College.) could read just as well as UVA students when the topic was roommates or car traffic, but they could not read passages about Lee’s surrender to Grant. Their performance on that particular text shook me up the most. For they had graduated from the schools of Richmond, the erstwhile capital of the Confederacy, but were ignorant of the most elementary facts about the Civil War and other basic information that is normally taken for granted in writing. They had not been taught the various things that they needed to know to understand ordinary texts addressed to a general audience. The results were shocking. (What had the schools been doing???). I decided to devote myself to helping right the wrong that is being done to such students.

Let me explain my title: “Narrowing the Two Achievement Gaps.” The sort of gap usually meant by the phrase “achievement gap” is the one between whites and African Americans or whites and Hispanics, or more generally between high- and low- income students. Let’s call this “the fairness gap.” But there is an equally fateful achievement gap between our students and those in other developed nations. Let’s call this “the quality gap.” My first theme in this talk is that these are not separate problems. The solution to the fairness gap is also the solution to the quality gap, and vice versa.

I will focus on the verbal achievement gap, which is critical to academic performance, later income, and general competence. I want to show that if we raise the average verbal achievement for all groups of students we will, by that very deed, also narrow the fairness gap, killing two birds with one stone.

Read the rest of this entry »