I served on a panel in Lafayette Thursday for a discussion of the status of education in Louisiana
sponsored by the Louisiana Association of Educators. As part of the
panel presentation I pointed out two serious flaws in the Louisiana
school accountability system. After the forum, a couple of teachers
asked me to write a post on those two issues so that the teachers and
other educators who were not able to attend the forum could also
utilize this information in discussions with their legislators. Here
they are:
Some legislators may wonder why so many
teachers are frustrated and even angry about the education reforms
passed recently by the legislature. I would like to just point out
two major accountability issues that teachers believe are extremely
unfair to students, schools and teachers.
The first is the letter grade labeling
of all our public schools. We need to point out that no such labeling
of private schools exists even though the legislature has approved
vouchers for our tax dollars to fund such schools.
It was assumed by
the legislature that the school letter grade system which was left up
to the State Superintendent to implement would be accurate and fair.
It is neither.
The letter grade system imposed by the
State Superintendent totally ignores the percentage of high poverty
students in a school. Many experts believe that the level of poverty
in a school can account for as much as 80% of student performance.
But the Louisiana school grading system ignores this important
factor. My research has shown that a low poverty school (such as a
school with only 45% of its students on free or reduced lunch) will
almost always score at a “B” or “A” level in Louisiana. A school with
twice the poverty or 90% free or reduced lunch will generally score
at a “D” level even if all the other factors at the two schools
are equal. This means that you could actually switch the teaching
faculties and administrators of those two schools and the letter
grades would remain generally the same.
So what the DOE pretends is a level
playing field condemns high poverty schools, their students, and
their teachers with a label of failure. Such a system may easily
destroy parental support for our struggling schools just at the time
when we most need positive parental involvement. Imagine what it does to
the morale of the dedicated teachers and administrators who have
chosen to take on the incredible challenge of giving the best
education possible to high poverty students. This letter grading
system tells us very little about the relative efforts and expertize
of the educators in wealthy compared to high poverty schools.
Another reason the school grading
system is unfair is that it uses exactly the same factors to compare
magnet or accelerated schools which select the best performing
students, to schools such as our alternative schools whose
enrollments generally include the least motivated and lowest
performing students. Is it any wonder that all true academic magnet
schools are rated “A” while all alternative schools are rated
“F”? This rating system tells us absolutely nothing about the
caliber of teaching going on in either type of school.
The other big issue with teachers is
the unfairness and inaccuracy of the new Act 54 teacher evaluation
system. I will just give one example of the many flaws teachers have
seen in this program: The State Superintendent has decreed that the
bottom 10% of teachers rated by the Value Added Model will be
designated as “ineffective”, will immediately lose their
tenure, and will be placed on a path to dismissal if their scores do
not improve. Such a system may not be so objectionable if the VAM
system were fair and accurate. It is neither.
The data collected by the DOE itself on
the stability or reliability of VAM proves that it is unreliable and
erratic. For example, over a two year period, only about 25% of
teachers rated the first year as ineffective would be rated again as
ineffective the second year even if they did not change their
teaching methods or effort in any way for the second year. That means
that the VAM evaluation system has a 75% probability of incorrectly
labeling teachers as ineffective in the first place. But when this
happens, the teacher immediately loses her/his tenure without right
of appeal. That is because the ALEC model legislation adopted by our
legislature states that the evaluation itself is the only proof
needed to condemn a teacher as ineffective. And to further insult
professional educators, this flawed VAM system overrules the
Principal's evaluation of the teacher even though the law stated that
the two portions of the evaluation were supposed to be weighted
equally.
Members of the panel pointed out many
other flaws in the evaluation system related to special education
teachers, librarians and others We also explained that the only
teachers that have now been granted a waiver of the vicissitudes of
VAM are teachers of high performing students who because of an
amendment by Superintendent White will not be required to
show the academic gains originally demanded by the VAM formula. How
does White explain that to all the other teachers in the bulls eye of
VAM?