How Many New Teachers Should a School Have?

The local paper ran a rather bland article yesterday about the number of new teachers in local schools ("School debate value of novice teachers").

According to the people they interview, it essentially boils down to this: newer/younger teachers are more enthusiastic and sometimes relate to the kids better, while older/more experienced teachers have better classroom management, more expertise, and can serve as mentors. Sounds about right to me.

I think you can make a compelling argument that too many of either one is a bad thing. But where is the line for "too many?" This particular article highlights Rutherford County (in the suburbs of Nashville) as having the highest number of novice teachers (due to rapid growth) in the area. 37% of the teachers in the district have five or fewer years of experience.

That's fairly high, but about half what it was in the school where I taught (which was not atypical for middle schools in the Bronx).

I would think that having around one-third of the staff in their first five years (assuming that there's an even distribution within that experience demographic -- e.g. not all of that third are in their first year of teaching) is probably about as high as you would want in an ideal school.

A school where less than a third of the teachers have five years of experience or more, however, should be raising somebody's eyebrows. Not that it's not possible to have a successful school in such circumstances, but it certainly merits further investigation if you're an administrator.

"Am I making sense?" "No."

I often criticize my program for focusing (almost exclusively) on quantitative methods -- at the expense of qualitative methods.* I'm now in my fifth semester and am taking my first class on qualitative methods. I very much want to learn about them/how to use them but I'm troubled by the language used in some of the literature.

Why am I troubled? Because I'm not convinced it makes any sense. I'm sure it makes sense to somebody, somewhere (whoever you are, you are welcome to explain it to me), but it doesn't make sense to me (and I'm not just some nobody they pulled off the street -- I have quite a bit of background knowledge related to this).

I fail to understand why this literature can't be written in language that's more practical and understandable. Is the author trying to impress somebody? Are they so far removed from reality that they think this makes sense? It seems like they're off in their own little world speaking an entirely different language.

Here's one sentences that has frustrated me:

Methods are needed that are simultaneously epistemologically/ontologically based in the soil that nurtured pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, and grounded theory, and that also address demands for empirical understanding of the heterogeneous worlds emerging from this "fractured, multi-centered discursive system" of new world orderings.

*So we're all clear, quantitative methods are essentially numbers-based techniques used to analyze data, while qualitative methods rely on "softer" knowledge, often derived from interviews or observation.

Book Recommendation: Gang Leader for a Day

The last couple weeks have just flown by, and I somehow never found time for a blog post. I did find time, however, to read an excellent book that I picked up a couple months ago: Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. If you have a few spare hours, and a few spare dollars, I'd recommend picking up a copy.

Venkatesh is a Professor of Sociology at Columbia whose exploits were chronicled in Freakonomics, but this book chronicles his story before he ascended the ranks of academia. Back when he was a frustrated grad student (like me) he strolled into the projects one day trying to pilot some survey questions and impress the faculty. He accidentally walked in on a gathering of gang members who immediately became suspicious of him. The gang's leader eventually decides that Venkatesh isn't a bad guy and offers to show him how the gang works. The bulk of the book chronicles the six years he spends observing a crack gang, wandering through the projects, and learning first-hand about the lives of the people there.

The living conditions inside the projects are appalling, but not particularly surprising. What I thought was more surprising was the level of complicitness between the gang, the building leader, the housing authority, and the police. The gang helps out the community in a lot of ways and, in exchange, the community looks the other way. Indeed, there seems to be more enmity for the police and the government than for the gang.

Perhaps the most shocking scene in the book is when a handful of police officers march into a gang party. I assumed that mass arrests were going to take place but, instead, the officers demanded that the gang leaders put all of their cash and jewelry into bags that the officers passed around and then left with the loot.

When people hear "gang" or "projects" they assume the worst. But, in the end, it's clear that there was a functioning community behind these. The people he chronicles are poor and they struggle, but they have relationships and they help each other out -- just like any other sector of society. The gang is not simply "evil" and the projects are not simply "bad." The people and their situation is complex, as life always seems to be.

For once in my life, I don't really have any pointed criticism for the book. That's partially b/c it's more of a narrative than anything else -- it reads like a novel -- and partially b/c I really have no idea what he saw and how accurately he describes it. In the end, Venkatesh is mostly content to describe and leave judgment to the reader. My main lament is that he didn't include more stories and observations -- the book is less than 300 pages and I'd have to imagine that he has thousands of pages of field notes.

In addition to being interesting and informative the book is a quick read. It leaves me wishing that more academics could write in such an engaging fashion. And that more academics could write such illuminating pieces on such important topics.

Memo to Mark Roosevelt

To: Mark Roosevelt, Superintendent, Pittsburgh Public Schools
CC: Dr. Jerri Lynn Lippert, Executive Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Professional Development, and Mary Van Horn, Vice President Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers
From: Corey Bunje Bower, concerned citizen
Re: Percentage for Failing Grade 'E'

I'm concerned about the memo of 22 September stating that "no percentages below 50% should be recorded regardless of actual percent earned below 50%." I'm sure you're well aware that the policy is quite controversial, and I hope you're also well aware how much the policy has upset teachers in your district. As the leader of the district it is your responsibility to create policies that will aid in the education of the children of Pittsburgh and implement them in such a way that progress will not be halted. In creating and implementing this policy, you have failed in both of these regards.

Grading has never been an exact science, but you have willfully created a grading system that is even less valid and more unfair. The memo has some reasons behind the policy listed under bullet points. One of the bullet points reads "Not Grade Inflation . . ." That this defensively worded statement was included indicates to me that somebody knows something is wrong. Students are now in a situation where scoring 10% and 50% on a test are equivalent. This means that if Student A scores 10% and 80% on two tests that he will have a higher test average than Student B who scores 50% and 75%. In other words, many of the grades assigned under the system will be illogical. How is a teacher supposed to explain that a student who got 2 out of 10 questions on quiz correct received the same grade as a student who got 4 out of 10 correct? And how is a math teacher supposed to explain that 2/10 and 4/10 both equal 50%?

I understand that you don't want students to be in a position where there's nothing they can do to pass. But by making it nearly impossible to put oneself in that position you've created a situation where students know that no matter what they do they can always find a way to pass a class. This means that students can walk into a classroom, declare that they're not doing any work that day -- they'll do some at the end of the semester -- but ask that the teacher make sure to record their 50 for the day. If you don't think this is happening in Pittsburgh's classrooms right now then I suggest you learn more about said classrooms.

Perhaps even worse than the policy itself is the way in which it was implemented. Since you have never worked in a school before, I recommend that you spend some time inside them talking with the faculty and staff. Before releasing the next policy memo, try to put yourself in their shoes. It's bad enough that you're creating bad policy, but you're rubbing salt in the wound by sending out directives from above a month into the school year. How do you expect a teacher to react to such a directive? What choice do they have but to view you as woefully out of touch? You cannot possibly be an effective leader while teachers view you this way. And without an effective leader, the prospects for progress in Pittsburgh look grim.

Pittsburgh's Prepostorous Policy

Yesterday I expressed outrage at Pittsburgh's new grading policy and also posted the district's rationale. I'd like to take a couple minutes to explain in more depth why I find this new policy so objectionable:

1.) The process. Teachers were informed of the new policy via memo nearly a month into the school year. From an unscientific perspective, let me tell you two surefire ways to upset teachers: rain down commandments from above, and/or change things willy-nilly. The greatest irony is that the union and the administration finally agreed on something -- and it happens to be terrible idea implemented in even worse fashion.

2.) The memo argues that the policy will increase student engagement because it will prevent a situation where students have no chance at passing regardless of what they do. While I understand this goal, it fails to consider that it's also creating a situation in which students know they can do nothing for almost the entire semester and still pass -- because they're never going to be put in a situation where passing is impossible.

3.) It undermines the current grading system. A 0-100 system is flawed, but simply eliminating 0-49 does not make it a valid grading system -- it only serves to point out the flaws inherent in the current system.

4.) It makes grades even more meaningless. For example, a student who has test grades of 30 and 70 will now have a higher average than a students who has test grades of 50 and 65.

I could go on, but I'll stop there.

In short, the policy is inane. Joanne Jacobs ridiculed a somewhat similar policy Dallas just implemented on her blog a couple of weeks ago but, unlike Pittsburgh, Dallas requires that students re-do assignments and re-take tests in order to earn the grades.

Pittsburgh's Explanation

My last post mentioned the fact that Pittsburgh has altered the grading system so that no student may receive a grade below 50% on any assignment. If you read the last post you can tell from my tone that I don't particularly like this idea. Before I explain why, I thought I'd post the official rationale for the decision. Here's a memo that was sent out to all teachers today:

To: All K-12 PPS Teachers and District Administrators
From: Dr. Jerri Lynn Lippert, Executive Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Professional Development, and Mary Van Horn, Vice President Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers
Date: 9/22/2008
Re: Percentage for Failing Grade “E”

The following is the district requirements for issuing class grades for assignments, report card grades, and semester final grades for all K-12 students based on the below grading scale:

A 100%-90%
B 89%- 80%
C 79%-70%
D 69% - 60%
E 59%-50%

The “E” is to be recorded no lower than a 50% regardless of the actual percent earned. For example, if the student earns a 20% on a class assignment, the grade is recorded as a 50%. No percentages below 50% should be recorded regardless of actual percent earned below 50%.


Rationale for Grading Scale:

· Equity Across Schools: The Failing Percentage (59%-50%) creates equity across all schools. Many teachers were already using the 50% as the lowest recorded “E”.

· Increased Student Engagement: Students with failing percentages below 50% often feel helpless and disenfranchised as a result of not being able to recover from low percentages in subsequent nine weeks. Students in this situation may develop or may have increased behavioral and/or attendance issues leading to retention and/or dropping out.

· Unequal Weight: The 59 percentage point band from 0%-59% creates a skewing situation with failing grades carrying more weight than passing grades.

· Not Grade Inflation: Recording 50% as the lowest “E” even if actual percentage earned is less is not grade inflation. The 50% is still failing. In addition, a high school student would have to earn 100% on the semester final in order to pass the semester if s/he had a recorded 50% for both the 1st and 2nd nine weeks.

· Promise Ready: Academically struggling students (who are at greatest risk of retention and/or dropping out) need to feel a sense of grade recovery so that they are motivated to begin to engage in courses and have potential academic success when efforts are applied.

Grades Are Stupid

It's late. My title is needlessly acerbic. My post will be short. I may write more on this later.

I complained an awful lot about the meaninglessness of grades when I was a student. But when I taught I found out how ridiculous they really are. The bottom line is really that teachers are forced to reduce an entire semester or year's worth of interaction and work to one rating. Which isn't entirely devoid of utility. But when you consider all of the rules, regulations, semantics, and politics that go into grading, then the utility dwindles pretty close to zero.

When I was teaching, students were given number grades. Teachers could give students any of the following grades: 50, 55, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100. Grades below 50 weren't allowed b/c it would make it too hard for a student to pass for the year if they had a grade below 50 one quarter. 60 wasn't allowed because that was the pass/fail cutoff and they didn't want ambiguity. I have no idea why intervals of 5 were used below 90 and intervals of 1 were used above.

Maybe somebody from NYC was hired by Pittsburgh, because they've adopted one of these rules -- except in a much more bureaucratic and absurd way. The minimum grade a student can receive on any assignment in Pittsburgh is now 50. I'm unclear as to whether a student is given a 50 on an assignment if they fail to complete it.

The motivation behind the policy is sound -- they want to prevent kids from losing hope and, simultaneously, have more kids passing. But, in my mind at least, such an inane rule simply proves that the system is ridiculous to begin with. I'll leave you with my favorite quote from the article:

"one teacher . . . already worries about how awkward it will look when a student correctly answers three of 10 questions on a math quiz -- and gets a 50 percent"

Time for National Testing?

I usually avoid taking stances on issues in this blog for a few reasons, maybe because I'm early in my career and am not convinced I know the answers -- or maybe just because it's a lot easier to poke holes in the solutions of others. But here's one idea that's been in the back of my head for a few years now that just seems more and more appealing over time.

That idea? National tests.

Now, to be clear, the idea certainly has drawbacks. First of all, local control has been a hallmark of American education throughout our history and the ramifications, yet alone the legality, of national tests are hazy at best. National testing would, most certainly, have to be accompanied by national standards -- which probably wouldn't please local school boards. What if, for example, people in Peoria want to teach a certain skill in 5th grade while people in Kalamazoo want to teach it in 4th grade? Exceptions would have to be made for some part of any social studies test so that questions could be included about local history, geography, and the state bird. Despite all of this, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the positives outweigh the negatives.

One of the biggest complaints about NCLB is that it's an "unfunded mandate" and, as a result, states are forced to spend quite a bit of money on testing. Since state education departments have differing levels of financial resources and political will, the quality of tests vary widely across state -- some feel forced to use only cursory multiple choice tests while others have much more intensive, and more expensive, testing regimes.

Over at Eduwonkette, Jennifer Jennings, Aaron Pallas, and Dan Koretz have taken turns pointing out the flaws in the NY state test and the NYC school report cards that rely on their results (here, here, here, here, and read these comments). It's enough to make me feel badly for David Cantor, the press sectary for NYC schools, who has to defend the report card system.

And it's enough to make me think that this would be a heck of a lot easier if we could focus our monies and efforts on one test. It would mean that we could have test whose results were valid enough that ratings based on them would also have some validity. It would mean that kids in all states were being judged on the same criteria. It would mean that research would be a heck of a lot easier and more meaningul. And it would mean that districts and states could spend less time on figuring out how to evaluate students and more time on figuring out how to teach them.

In short, testing would cost less, be more accurate, and let people spend more time on the important stuff.

Ridding Schools of "Bad" Teachers

A recurring theme in education commentary is that there are too many bad teachers -- largely because teachers are too hard to fire. The latest blurb on this topic comes from the Fordham blog and cites a statistic that only 1.9% of teachers with at least three years of experience were dismissed or didn't have their contract renewed due to poor performance. The leap to connecting the bevy of bad teachers to burdensome contract rules is, thus, easy to make. Before we can draw any firm conclusions, however, we'd need the following info:

How many teachers are actually "bad" enough that they should be fired?
This is, of course, subjective -- but we have to have some ballpark figure of how many people should be fired before we can determine that not enough are

How many teachers are fired in their first three years?
Ideally, tenure should be granted only to effective teachers -- meaning that the vast majority of less effective teachers would move on in the first few years

How many "bad" teachers leave voluntarily?
Efficacy is closely related to satisfaction in teaching, and it stands to reason that less satisfied teachers would be more likely to leave

How many "bad" teachers are counseled out rather than officially sanctioned?
Just because only a small number are actually fired doesn't mean that only those teachers are leaving the profession. Beyond those who leave voluntarily, I'm willing to bet that many more people are "counseled out" than are officially fired.

How hard is it to actually dismiss a teacher?
I hear a lot of complaints, but I'd like to know if it's really impossible or if it simply takes more effort than many are willing to put forth

What percentage of "bad" pre-tenure teachers are thoroughly reviewed by their principals?
If teachers are making it through the tenure process unscathed despite being ineffective, that doesn't strike me as their fault -- part of a principal's responsibility is to evaluate teachers, particularly novice teachers

How many teachers become "bad" after being granted tenure?
If principals thoroughly review beginning teachers and allow only the best to be tenured, but these teachers then burn out and stop trying then we might want to reevaluate the idea of tenure. On the other hand, it would also be worth considering why they burn out.

In short, citing a statistic about a low number of teachers being fired fails to fully describe the situation. It doesn't tell us how many people should leave, are leaving, or why they are/are not leaving.

Oops, Forgot a Variable

The Fordham blog alerted me to the fact that George Will again mentioned David Whitman's new book in his latest column (which, if you haven't noticed, intensely interests me).

Will's column focuses on one of the schools profiled in the book -- Cristo Rey Jesuit High School -- and its positive outcomes. As far as I can tell, Cristo Rey is doing an admirable job educating low-income students and deserves a lot of praise. So I'm glad Will took the time to highlight their educational model and achievements.

But near the end Will makes a statement that is somewhere between overly simplistic and absurd. I'll post the entire paragraph below:

CRJHS can have its work program, its entirely college preparatory courses ("the old, dead white man's curriculum," says an English teacher cheerfully), its zero tolerance of disorder (from gang symbols down to chewing gum), its enforcement of decorum (couples dancing suggestively are told to "leave some space there for the Holy Spirit") and its requirement that every family pay something, if only as little as $25 a month. It can have all this because it is not shackled by bureaucracy or unions, as public schools are.

From a research standpoint, here's the problem with that statement: his model is misspecified -- it suffers from omitted variable bias. And it's particularly egregious in this case b/c he leaves out a potentially confounding variable -- selection. If he published a paper with such findings, they would be dubbed spurious.

He attributes all of the successes of the school to the fact that they don't have to deal with as much red tape as other schools (particularly public schools). But he fails to mention that the larger reason the school can have such policies is because they can select their students -- both which ones are admitted and which ones are allowed to remain enrolled. And, perhaps even more important, the students who enroll are from families who chose to apply and chose to pay at least a small fee to enroll their children -- and then chose to remain enrolled once they knew what the school was like.

In Whitman's book, he writes that 43% of students who applied in 2006 were admitted (p. 142), and that the retention rate (percentage of students who remained enrolled) from freshman to senior year was 62% (p. 144). In other words, a significant number of kids (about 73% of those who apply) either choose not to or are not allowed to complete 4 years at the school.

Part of the reason why public schools can't have such strict discipline codes is due to bureacracy, but the larger reason is because they can't select their students -- meaning that they have to accomodate everybody, and they must have options for students who don't like the rules other than expulsion.