The Alliance Survey
Update: Want some real insight into better teachers (and helping teachers with that effort)? Read this from the New York Times Magazine, Building a Better Teacher. Several readers here have suggested it and I echo it. Long but great. There are issues to be considered like how we educate our teachers (how we turn regular folks into teachers), the innate ability to teach, incentives etc.
I just finally got around to looking over the Alliance for Education survey called "Teaching Quality Community Survey". What were they thinking? (Sorry to be a little late to this party but I was out of town last week.) I'm not going to even provide a link. I answered every question "don't know" so I could read through the whole thing.
Just from a survey standpoint, it's a mess. There are multiple values in questions starting with the very first one. It's about (1) redesigning the salary schedule AND (2) eliminating coursework incentives AND (3) "reallocating pay to target the district's challenges and priorities." What?!? You can't write a survey question like that.
Question two has a classic "leading the reader" form using phrases like "redouble efforts" and "as attempted by the current superintendent". How does the reader know this actually DID happen? Also, the "latest" negotiations haven't even formally started; is the district showing its hand here?
And it goes on and on. "Gather teacher data so that teachers are equitably distributed among schools." So elsewhere they want to eliminate pay for more education for teachers but at the same time in this question they want to spread the number of teachers who do have more education more equitably among the schools?
They ask about using student performance in RIFs. That's okay but the minute you say yes, that leaves them able to say "ha!" X% of parents want student performance in RIFs." Without giving other options or the option to say it could/should be only ONE of several factors used in deciding RIFs, this is not a good question.
They also assume that all parents know what "super seniority" is, how many levels of choice there are for teacher effectiveness, how many hours teachers work now in a day and how long the instructional year is (and why a school might have less than that). People can certainly say they "don't know" the answer but then that leaves a lot of questions with a "don't know" answer.
There are very few questions that are not posed in a non-slanted or confusing form. I cannot believe it. I have to wonder if the Alliance really did this on their own or if the district helped them. One, because the people at the Alliance are too smart for this kind of survey and two, because the district's past surveys have been so poorly written and this sounds like them.
The Alliance is also having a series of meetings around this issue. I'll post these only because if you object to this kind of bias by a leading education group, you should go and let them know.
I just finally got around to looking over the Alliance for Education survey called "Teaching Quality Community Survey". What were they thinking? (Sorry to be a little late to this party but I was out of town last week.) I'm not going to even provide a link. I answered every question "don't know" so I could read through the whole thing.
Just from a survey standpoint, it's a mess. There are multiple values in questions starting with the very first one. It's about (1) redesigning the salary schedule AND (2) eliminating coursework incentives AND (3) "reallocating pay to target the district's challenges and priorities." What?!? You can't write a survey question like that.
Question two has a classic "leading the reader" form using phrases like "redouble efforts" and "as attempted by the current superintendent". How does the reader know this actually DID happen? Also, the "latest" negotiations haven't even formally started; is the district showing its hand here?
And it goes on and on. "Gather teacher data so that teachers are equitably distributed among schools." So elsewhere they want to eliminate pay for more education for teachers but at the same time in this question they want to spread the number of teachers who do have more education more equitably among the schools?
They ask about using student performance in RIFs. That's okay but the minute you say yes, that leaves them able to say "ha!" X% of parents want student performance in RIFs." Without giving other options or the option to say it could/should be only ONE of several factors used in deciding RIFs, this is not a good question.
They also assume that all parents know what "super seniority" is, how many levels of choice there are for teacher effectiveness, how many hours teachers work now in a day and how long the instructional year is (and why a school might have less than that). People can certainly say they "don't know" the answer but then that leaves a lot of questions with a "don't know" answer.
There are very few questions that are not posed in a non-slanted or confusing form. I cannot believe it. I have to wonder if the Alliance really did this on their own or if the district helped them. One, because the people at the Alliance are too smart for this kind of survey and two, because the district's past surveys have been so poorly written and this sounds like them.
The Alliance is also having a series of meetings around this issue. I'll post these only because if you object to this kind of bias by a leading education group, you should go and let them know.
Comments
The student weighted budget does not work for schools who are serving more than 60% free/reduced lunch children. $7,000 per child does not cover the cost of teaching children who have greater needs.
How will the district assure students who are assigned to RBHS that their "quality school" is comparable to other high schools in the district?
How do they plan to pay for it?
Budgets for 2010-2011 were delivered to schools on Monday, and RBHS currently has 500 students (I was told). How is the district compensating RBHS's budget today, in preparation for the students they can expect, but who are currently not attending?
I recommend that concerned parents do a "side-by-side" of the staff list at Rainier Beach and say,......Garfield and Roosevelt. It's a pretty compelling case for lack of equality, given that the student weighted assignment does not take into account how much more resources are required to teach kids living in poverty/first generation immigrants, etc.
They said Ms. Escobar was brought in to develop a Performing Arts program through partnerships she had developed while at The Center School.
Still a lot of questions to be answered for parents who may find their children assigned there.
hmmm....
My guess is either a) someone at SPS or b)one or more of "the gang of four": Broad/Gates/Duncan/NWEA
The powers that be don't think we're stupid, they think we are easily led and well-conditioned by media and "reports" (such as A4E's recent "teacher quality report." Throw in weighted phrases about "teaching more hours" and "quality teachers should not be riffed" or whatever, and people will instinctively respond.
This is not preying on stupidity: it is praying on feelings and emotional responses people have to a carefully laid groundwork of pointing at teachers as problem.
Unless there is a counter effort to combat this disgusting campaign, we will see good teachers swept away, like happened recently in Rhode Island: Declare a whole school "failing," don't look at individual students or teachers, and sweep out all the teachers in the name of "reform." Now it appears that we are also sweeping students away, in the form of charters and magnet schools that open in what used to be regular public schools, sending those students who knows where, and bringing in a fresh crop of students (who choose to be there.) Some reform.
Have Ralph Reed and Frank Lutz been in town recently? Shame on the Alliance. What a bunch of tools.
For a more nuanced and thoughtful look at gaining measurable, reliable academic results in the classroom, read the NYT magazine's cover story from this week. Anyone interested in teacher merit pay, tenure, training, class size, etc. should give it a read.
"Building A Better Teacher"
I wanted to call him and berate him for his ignorance. Our "school system" is not "in distress." Most schools are doing fine, and many aren't. Wholesale reform and Mayoral Control are on his plate. Be ready for it.
"Grading our Teachers"
http://www.seattleschild.com/article/20100305/SCM02/100309866/0/SCM0501
Surely, they did not intend "average parents" to be able to answer these questions in any meaningful way because they are full of terms with specific education-related meanings that most of use don't know.
Super seniority?
Eliminate all lanes on the salary schedule?
Phase II hiring?
I suspect that it is a minority of community members who can have truly informed opinions on these matters.
Whatever answers they get from the poorly worded, leading questions will not be reflective of parents' wishes.
WV: Shingrog? Cotton Hill's St. Patrick's Day drink?
And, they don't think *we're* stupid. They think that the majority of parents, busy with their lives, worrying a bit about money, generally satisfied with their schools are stupid (and ignorant).
Any thoughts on how to nip the Alliance survey? Would it help for people to answer "don't know" to everything (i.e. decrease their valid response rate)?
Is there a comment form at the survey?
(And, no one really thinks that Arne Duncan designed this survey, do they?)
- write on the Alliance blog and tell them what you think (http://www.alliance4ed.blogspot.com/)
-write to the head of the Alliance, Sara Morris (sara@alliance4ed.org) and the President of the Board of Directors, George Griffin, III (george@g3-associates.com)
-write to the School Board and tell them to ignore any findings presented to them.
-write to the Mayor and City Council and tell them to ignore any findings presented to them
I find myself marveling at the skill they've exhibited at defining their agenda, and how successfully they've defined critics as troglodyte obstructionists.
I've seen this caliber of political messaging ONLY from the Reagan / Cheney / Bush administrations.
There is plenty of blame to go around with the systemic failures in education. I wish we were working to solve them. Obviously, 1 of the smartest strategies for those in charge of the failures is to single out 1 group still capable of standing up and pointing out that those in charge aren't being held accountable for much of anything!
B.M.
"It was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very different, I have been assured, from the practices of former times) that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify the monarch's resentment, or the malice of a favorite, the Emperor always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world. This speech was immediately published through all the kingdom; nor did anything terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his Majesty's mercy; because it was observed, the more these praises were enlarged and insisted upon, the more inhuman was the punishment, and sufferer more innocent."
Gulliver's Travels, I
Sad, really...Pathetic.
I've written our Mayor, the Seattle Ed dept and others - If they merely look at the survey they will see that this it true.
Unless....unless they have the same agenda.
Was it explicit that it was data on levels of teacher's education vs some other measure of teacher QUALITY or performance? I fear both, but wondered...