No one at the Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies works harder than Stacey Isaacson, a seventh-grade English and social studies teacher. She is out the door of her Queens home by 6:15 a.m., takes the E train into Manhattan and is standing out front when the school doors are unlocked, at 7. Nights, she leaves her classroom at 5:30.
“She’s very dedicated,” said Tejal Bahtt, a fellow teacher. “She works way harder than I work. Yesterday I punched in at 7:10 and her time card was already there.”
Last year, when Ms. Isaacson was on maternity leave, she came in one full day a week for the entire school year for no pay and taught a peer leadership class.
Her principal, Megan Adams, has given her terrific reviews during the two and a half years Ms. Isaacson has been a teacher. “I know that this year had its moments of challenge — you always handled it with grace and presence,” the principal wrote on May 4, 2009. “You are a wonderful teacher.”
On the first day of this school year, the principal wrote, “I look forward to being in your classroom and seeing all the great work you do with your students,” and signed it with a smiley face.
The Lab School has selective admissions, and Ms. Isaacson’s students have excelled. Her first year teaching, 65 of 66 scored proficient on the state language arts test, meaning they got 3’s or 4’s; only one scored below grade level with a 2. More than two dozen students from her first two years teaching have gone on to Stuyvesant High School or Bronx High School of Science, the city’s most competitive high schools.
“Definitely one of a kind,” said Isabelle St. Clair, now a sophomore at Bard, another selective high school. “I’ve had lots of good teachers, but she stood out — I learned so much from her.”
You would think the Department of Education would want to replicate Ms. Isaacson — who has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia — and sprinkle Ms. Isaacsons all over town. Instead, the department’s accountability experts have developed a complex formula to calculate how much academic progress a teacher’s students make in a year — the teacher’s value-added score — and that formula indicates that Ms. Isaacson is one of the city’s worst teachers.
According to the formula, Ms. Isaacson ranks in the 7th percentile among her teaching peers — meaning 93 per cent are better.
This may seem disconnected from reality, but it has real ramifications. Because of her 7th percentile, Ms. Isaacson was told in February that it was virtually certain that she would not be getting tenure this year. “My principal said that given the opportunity, she would advocate for me,” Ms. Isaacson said. “But she said don’t get your hopes up, with a 7th percentile, there wasn’t much she could do.”
How'd she get ranked at the 7th percentile?
Winerip says the algorithm is so complex really, even the DOE can't be sure:
Everyone who teaches math or English has received a teacher data report. On the surface the report seems straightforward. Ms. Isaacson’s students had a prior proficiency score of 3.57. Her students were predicted to get a 3.69 — based on the scores of comparable students around the city. Her students actually scored 3.63. So Ms. Isaacson’s value added is 3.63-3.69.
What you would think this means is that Ms. Isaacson’s students averaged 3.57 on the test the year before; they were predicted to average 3.69 this year; they actually averaged 3.63, giving her a value added of 0.06 below zero.
Wrong.
These are not averages. For example, the department defines Ms. Isaacson’s 3.57 prior proficiency as “the average prior year proficiency rating of the students who contribute to a teacher’s value added score.”
Right.
The calculation for Ms. Isaacson’s 3.69 predicted score is even more daunting. It is based on 32 variables — including whether a student was “retained in grade before pretest year” and whether a student is “new to city in pretest or post-test year.”
Those 32 variables are plugged into a statistical model that looks like one of those equations that in “Good Will Hunting” only Matt Damon was capable of solving.
The process appears transparent, but it is clear as mud, even for smart lay people like teachers, principals and — I hesitate to say this — journalists.
Ms. Isaacson may have two Ivy League degrees, but she is lost. “I find this impossible to understand,” she said.
In plain English, Ms. Isaacson’s best guess about what the department is trying to tell her is: Even though 65 of her 66 students scored proficient on the state test, more of her 3s should have been 4s.
But that is only a guess.
Moreover, as the city indicates on the data reports, there is a large margin of error. So Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile could actually be as low as zero or as high as the 52nd percentile — a score that could have earned her tenure.
How did the DOE respond to this travesty that a teacher with 65 out of 66 students scoring proficient on the state tests is getting ranked at the 7th percentile by a VAM with a margin of error of 35%?
They didn't respond to the particulars of this case at all.
Rather, they built a straw man and knocked that down instead:
Teachers are eligible for tenure in their third year. To qualify, a teacher must be rated “effective” in three categories: instructional practices, including observations by the principal; contribution to the school community; and student achievement, including the teacher data report. Ms. Isaacson was rated effective on the first two.
The past chancellor, Joel I. Klein, imposed new policies to make tenure harder to earn.
In an e-mail, Matthew Mittenthal, a department spokesman said: “We are saying that a teacher’s tenure decision should simply be delayed (not denied) until that teacher has demonstrated effective practice for consecutive years in all three categories. The alternative is what we’ve had in the past — 90-plus percent of teachers who are up for tenure receive it. Do you think journalists deserve lifetime jobs after their third year in the business?”
Nobody mentioned anything about a lifetime job.
The problem with this case is that even the DOE CANNOT be CERTAIN that Ms. Isaacson ranks at the 7th percentile.
She might actually rank at the 52nd percentile.
You see, that's what the margin of error in these reports does to these rankings.
A MOE which even the DOE admits exists.
And yet, rather than address a legitimate concern that teachers and people who care about public education have over value-added models, the DOE decides to throw jive ass straw at the reporter and hope nobody notices.
Would Mayor Bloomberg want to be evaluated by a voter poll with a 12%-35% MOE?
I bet he wouldn't.
Somebody ought to ask him about that to his face and make him answer.
Same goes for Klein, Black, Rhee, et al.
Somebody ought to ask Obama and Duncan this too.
What margin of error are these folks willing to accept in their performance evaluations?
Why is it only teachers get evaluated with an assessment model that has a margin of error the size of Bloomberg's ego?
Great analysis. Those numbers of the MOE we read about a couple of months ago are still swimming in my head. I'm actually surprised the NY Times reported like they needed to about these faulty teacher data reports. Thanks for this.
ReplyDeleteI was very happy to see this article too. Winerip really got at the core of the issue and exposed the DOE shill as a fraud.
ReplyDeleteI hope we see more of this!