CAT Tracks for April 13, 2011
A TALE OF TWO E-MAILS

CAT Tracks Editor's Note:

Received an e-mail from Bill Schechter, the author of the piece featured below. He wanted to make sure that readers of my "intro" did not misunderstand his position. Rather than risk misinterpreting his clarification, his e-mail follows:

    From: Bill Schechter
    Date: 4/15/2011 5:22:21 PM
    To: rjnewell@midwest.net
    Subject: Hi folks...a word of clarification

    Hello,

    Thanks for linking to my Washington post story.

    Just a word of clarification about the comments made on your linked page.

    My story is not about research. Or science. I believe the most reputable university research demonstrates that merit pay and so- called "Valued-Added" test-score based teacher assessments are flawed and do not work.

    All my little piece shows is that the President and the Secretary enrolled their kids in excellent schools that do not use the very policies that these leaders advocate for schools that other people's kids attend.

    So this is not about science or research. It's about about hypocrisy.

    I believe that the two teachers/staff cited are perfectly competent to tell us what the policies of their schools are, with respect to teacher evaluation. I have shielded their identities for obvious reasons.

    Hope the school year is going well in Cairo!

    Best Wishes to my mid-western colleagues!

    Bill Schechter


In a follow-up e-mail to my offer to add his clarification to the post, Bill repeated his salutations to his mid-western colleagues:

    Hi Ron,

    Yes, maybe you could add my clarification because I'd also like to also take the opportunity to say to Cairo teachers:

    Best regards from Massachusetts...and stay strong!

    Bill


Original post follows...

A TALE OF TWO E-MAILS


Okay, okay, the "research" cited below isn't all that scientific...being the responses of two unidentified faculty members.

But...

I liked the "set up" and the succinct punch line...LOL!

Then again...

Since President Obama and Stooge Duncan blatantly IGNORE real scientific research that shows the unreliability of linking teacher evaluations and student test scores, why bother!

From the Washington Post...

Link to Original Story

The Answer Sheet
By Valerie Strauss

Performance pay at schools Obama, Duncan picked for their children?

Bill Schechter is a 35-year vet­eran history teacher at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Sudbury, Mass., who is retired from the classroom and now supervises the student-teacher practicums of students earning masters degrees in teaching at a local university. He also serves as a volunteer tutor at a Boston public school.

Schechter was recently preparing testimony to give before the Massachusetts Board of Education, which will soon hold hearings on whether to base teacher evaluation on student test scores — and if so, to what extent -- when this question occurred to him: How do the schools serving the children of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan handle this important education reform issue?

He decided to investigate and here is his report.

By Bill Schechter

Anyone who is a parent knows how determined, even desperate, we can be to do the best by our children, particularly in the areas of health care or education. We want them to have every opportunity to grow into healthy, happy, and thoughtful people. We hope and pray for their success.

Indeed, the Boston Globe recently ran a series spotlighting the enormous anxiety experienced by Boston parents as they awaited news of their young children’s school placements.

President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are also parents who naturally want the best for their kids. Obama enrolled his two children at Sidwell Friends, a private Quaker school in Washington, D.C., and Duncan enrolled his two children in the Arlington, Va., public schools, respectively.

Do these excellent schools evaluate or pay teachers on the basis of student standardized test scores?

This question is important because the issue of “pay for performance” models of teacher evaluation now dominates the intense debate over education reform. Duncan has voiced his support for performance-based merit pay.

In Massachusetts, the State Board of Education is holding a public hearing on whether teacher evaluation should be tied to student test scores, and, if so, to what extent.

I wanted to find out how Sidwell Friends and the Arlington Public Schools approached the pay-for-performance issue. What did the president and the secretary seek and obtain for their own kids, where the important issue of teacher evaluation was concerned.

The answers recently arrived in two emails: