School Leadership 2.02024-03-29T12:06:47ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennanhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2190158262?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://schoolleadership20.com/group/data/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=31k5lqneo74xj&feed=yes&xn_auth=noWhere can I find Bilingual Teacher Shortage Data for NYS?tag:schoolleadership20.com,2019-05-24:1990010:Topic:3307962019-05-24T17:12:27.052ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
<p>Looking for NY Bilingual Teacher Shortage Data.</p>
<p>Looking for NY Bilingual Teacher Shortage Data.</p> Without data we will be relegated to the "Endangered Species" listtag:schoolleadership20.com,2013-07-28:1990010:Topic:1685022013-07-28T22:33:50.328ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
<div class="description xj_comment_editor xg_user_generated" id="desc_1990010Comment168769"><p>I am so frequently at a loss at to why we - teachers - are resistant to using data to a higher level than we are now. Every other profession is able to define, collect, analyze and manage data to improve both productivity and achievement. From the used car dealer to the girl working the counter at a hamburger joint, everyone uses data to drive performance, make decisions and increase productivity. We…</p>
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<div class="description xj_comment_editor xg_user_generated" id="desc_1990010Comment168769"><p>I am so frequently at a loss at to why we - teachers - are resistant to using data to a higher level than we are now. Every other profession is able to define, collect, analyze and manage data to improve both productivity and achievement. From the used car dealer to the girl working the counter at a hamburger joint, everyone uses data to drive performance, make decisions and increase productivity. We have not yet pulled the curtain completely to reveal the wizard hiding in the dark. Practice Management Consultants deal with this every day by separating "practice" from "business." Until we <strong>permit</strong> the use of the word <strong>business</strong> when referring to schools, we will stay a day late and a dollar short on moving ahead. Data works to the benefit of every other profession. The first step is humbling and humanizing, but until we take that step, we will stay right where we are.</p>
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<p>Dr. Michael Cubbin</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://thebusinessofschool.org/" target="_blank">http://thebusinessofschool.org/</a></p>
</div> Key Data Visualization Through iDashboardstag:schoolleadership20.com,2012-05-14:1990010:Topic:1060312012-05-14T13:35:36.652ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
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</p> What Do Teacher Teams Do When They “Look at Data”?tag:schoolleadership20.com,2012-04-09:1990010:Topic:1019812012-04-09T14:51:25.242ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
<p><span><b>What Do Teacher Teams Do When They “Look at Data”?</b></span></p>
<p><span><b><br></br></b></span></p>
<p><span><b>From the Marshall Memo #430</b></span></p>
<p><span>In this thoughtful <i>American Journal of Education</i> article, Judith Warren Little of the University of California/Berkeley says there is very little good research on what teachers actually do when they engage in data-based decision making. She suggests that researchers zoom in on the details of teachers’ work, using a…</span></p>
<p><span><b>What Do Teacher Teams Do When They “Look at Data”?</b></span></p>
<p><span><b><br/></b></span></p>
<p><span><b>From the Marshall Memo #430</b></span></p>
<p><span>In this thoughtful <i>American Journal of Education</i> article, Judith Warren Little of the University of California/Berkeley says there is very little good research on what teachers actually do when they engage in data-based decision making. She suggests that researchers zoom in on the details of teachers’ work, using a “micro-process” lens to get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t work when teachers look at interim assessment data. </span></p>
<p><span>Micro-process research has been used to see what goes on when a doctor conducts a standard medical interview of a patient. Close observation of the human dynamics has revealed that the doctor’s questions often focused on biomedical data, ignoring the patient’s efforts to introduce “lifeworld” information. “More specifically,” says Little, “an interview structure that privileged short answers to a physician’s questions about symptoms tended to silence, constrain, or interrupt longer patient narratives that might have served as a resource in medical diagnosis and treatment.”</span></p>
<p><span>In schools, micro-process studies have helped spotlight the dreary “I-R-E” (Initiate-Reply-Evaluate) classroom dynamic – the teacher asks a question, a student responds, the teacher says whether it’s right or wrong, and the cycle repeats itself. </span></p>
<p><span>Little summarizes six studies that closely observed teachers as they worked with data. In the first (Earl, 2008), the researcher noticed (in Little’s words) “the tendency of teachers to turn away from the data in hand even when it is closely linked to the curriculum in use and to talk in more general terms about instruction or noninstructional factors in student performance, such as parental expectations.” This study pointed to the challenging and vital role of the principal “to sustain a focus on the data and on interpretations and implications that could be anchored specifically in those data.” Earl described a principal who repeatedly brought teachers back to making meaning of the evidence in front of them by asking: “What patterns do you think are meaningful? Are there any other patterns that you find? How do you feel about how the grade 1 students are doing? I want to go back to the data. You know what is really interesting to me. Look at this plum color. Let’s look at the data wall for grade 1. Would you take us through each child and tell us about them.”</span></p>
<p><span>The second study (Timberley, 2008) compared schools doing data analysis, some with good learning results and some producing no gains. In the effective schools, leaders set a clear purpose for data work, teachers met more often, there was student reading and writing data on the table, and the focus was on how specific teaching practices enhanced or inhibited student gains. In the unsuccessful schools, leaders gave only vague direction and data conversations lacked substance and clear instructional implications. Timberley says, “Rather than basing these conversations on information about student progress, they focused mostly on teaching practice… Less effective conversations became stuck in activity traps in which examining data and having conversations was seen as a good thing to do with only a vaguely defined purpose for doing so.” Timberley also noticed a difference in professional norms in the successful and unsuccessful schools. In the former, teachers reached out for help to instructional coaches and accepted suggestions to be observed and to observe each other’s classes. In the latter, teachers didn’t critically analyze different ideas, accepting a variety of suggestions as equally valid. </span></p>
<p><span>The third paper (Little and Curry, 2008) analyzed transcripts of 40-minute “critical friends groups” in which teachers used a protocol to present and discuss evidence of student learning and effective teaching practices: describing the student work while refraining from judgment; interpreting the work; and considering implications for classroom practice. One of the key things Little and Curry noticed was how important it was that teachers understand what they were teaching – in this case, the genre of the persuasive essay. </span></p>
<p><span>The fourth paper (Lasky, 2008) described teachers working on the “data wise” process and found that conversations tended to focus on procedures and process rather than the meaning of the student results. </span></p>
<p><span>The fifth paper (Barrett, 2009) describes four “small learning communities” working with the Teacher Leadership Model to create a coherent curriculum and a data-driven system of accountability. Barrett did more than 50 observations of teacher teams over an 18-month period and was struck by the fact that teachers were more likely to speak up when they were engaged in “kid talk” – frequently superficial, laden with stereotypes, and focused on explanations for student failure outside teachers’ control. In Little’s words, “The presence of a facilitator and the availability of tools for displaying and reviewing data appeared to offer limited purchase on the tenor and direction of the discourse and especially on what appear to be deeply ingrained ways of classifying students according to perceived effort, motivation, and ability.” </span></p>
<p><span>The final paper (Kazemi and Franke, 2004) followed eleven elementary teachers over a one-year period as they examined their students’ responses to agreed-upon mathematical tasks and activities. “Teachers’ inferences from these written records of student work – inferences about what students ‘must have been thinking’ – were challenged when the teachers started more systematically to elicit students’ verbal explanations of what they had done and how they were thinking and to report those classroom conversations alongside the work that students produced,” says Little. “Teachers’ understanding of mathematics teaching and learning deepened, and their classroom practices shifted, when they attended to the details of student thinking and problem-solving practice as those were revealed in a combination of student work samples and narrative accounts of classroom interaction.” </span></p>
<p><span>What made this last study so rich and helpful was the use of audiotape to capture the details of teacher meetings, including:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span>Uncovering the gradual shift in teachers’ orientation to the specifics of student thinking;</span></li>
<li><span>Linking that shift to the change in the nature of classroom evidence considered by teachers;</span></li>
<li><span>Tracing the contributions of individual teachers to the group’s deliberations;</span></li>
<li><span>Identifying how the facilitator’s specific moves and interventions furthered teachers’ development.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span>Open-ended analysis of a small sample of student work on common instructional tasks proved more helpful than looking at all-class data; the latter tended to focus “on the correctness or incorrectness of student responses with little attention to evidence of the reasoning behind the response,” says Little. </span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span>“Understanding Data Use Practice Among Teachers: The Contribution of Micro-Process Studies” by Judith Warren Little in <i>American Journal of Education</i>, February 2012 (Vol. 118, #2, p. 143-166), <span><a href="http://bit.ly/Hb2ktu">http://bit.ly/Hb2ktu</a></span> </span></p>
<div><span><br/></span></div> Three Ways Student Data Can Inform Your Teachingtag:schoolleadership20.com,2012-01-05:1990010:Topic:856952012-01-05T15:45:32.716ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
<p><b>Three Ways Student Data Can Inform Your Teaching</b></p>
<p><span>BY <a href="http://www.edutopia.org/user/91"><span>REBECCA ALBER</span></a></span></p>
<p><span>Edutopia</span></p>
<p><span>12/6/11</span></p>
<p><i>In her work with UCLA's Graduate School of Education, Rebecca Alber assists teachers and schools in meeting students' academic needs through best practices. Alber also instructs online teacher-education courses for Stanford University.</i></p>
<p></p>
<p>The job of a teacher…</p>
<p><b>Three Ways Student Data Can Inform Your Teaching</b></p>
<p><span>BY <a href="http://www.edutopia.org/user/91"><span>REBECCA ALBER</span></a></span></p>
<p><span>Edutopia</span></p>
<p><span>12/6/11</span></p>
<p><i>In her work with UCLA's Graduate School of Education, Rebecca Alber assists teachers and schools in meeting students' academic needs through best practices. Alber also instructs online teacher-education courses for Stanford University.</i></p>
<p></p>
<p>The job of a teacher is to be faithful to authentic student learning. Currently, our profession is fixated on results from one test, from one day, given near the end of the school year. And, yes, that is data that can be useful, however, we teachers spend the entire year collecting all sorts of immediate and valuable information about students that informs and influences <i>how</i> we teach, as well as <i>where and what</i> we review, re-adjust, and re-teach.</p>
<p>So when we speak about student data, here's how teachers collect it and some of the ways we use it.</p>
<p><b>#1 From the Classroom</b></p>
<p><i>Formative Assessments</i></p>
<p>Checking for understanding with low-stakes assessments are really the most important and useful of student data. Using <a href="http://its.guilford.k12.nc.us/act/strategies/Exit_Slips.htm"><span>exit slips</span></a>, brief quizzes, and <a href="http://teachingthroughthearts.blogspot.com/2011/07/formative-assessment-thumbs-up-thumbs.html"><span>thumbs up/thumbs down</span></a> are a few of my favorite ways to gather information on where students are and where we need to go next.</p>
<p><i>Observations</i></p>
<p>The beauty of having a constructivist, student-directed classroom? The kids are comfortable with you walking around and sitting with them in their groups -- your "guide on the side" role. In other words, they don't freeze up when you step away from the podium or your teacher-directed spot by the whiteboard. This freedom allows you to be a fly on the wall, gathering data on individual students -- how well are they making sense of the content? Interacting with others? Are they struggling with a learning activity? Observation data then allow us to adjust pacing for the whole class or scaffold for those students who are still struggling.</p>
<p><i>Projects, Essays, Exams</i></p>
<p>Summative assessments, such as a literary analysis essay or an end-of-unit science exam, allow us to measure the growth of individual and whole-group learning. If a large number of students don't do well on a high-stakes assessment, we need to reflect back on the teaching and make necessary adjustments in the future.</p>
<p><b>#2 From Cumulative Files</b></p>
<p>It's difficult to find the time to do it, but if you haven't before, trust me it's well worth it. Much information is found in a student's file. Just from trekking to the counseling office, sitting down with a cup of coffee after school and reading through files belonging to students I had deeper wonderings about beyond the data in hand, I've discovered over the years, to name a few, some of the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>A girl who often missed class was homeless</li>
<li>Several students identified as gifted but inaccurately placed in my general education English class</li>
<li>A boy struggling to fit in had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia</li>
<li>More than a dozen students who never wore eyeglasses in class (or contacts, I checked) had prescriptions</li>
</ul>
<p>From a child's cumulative files you can sometimes see a dramatic grade change somewhere along the road during their school journey. Perhaps prior to eighth grade, the child was an A student, then from there, D's and F's. You can express this concern, sharing this data with them. Students may then share with you a reason: parents divorced, they moved to a new city/community. I had one student share that she just gave up on school when her dad went to prison.</p>
<p>You then have an opportunity to provide empathy, acknowledge their hardship, and then set some goals together for the child to improve academically.</p>
<p><b>#3 From the State Test</b></p>
<p>Taking a look at previous standardized test scores for your current students is beneficial in several ways. <i>A disclaimer: just as one grade does not determine all that a student is or isn't, nor does one test score. Use standardized test data results</i> along <i>with other data (i.e. in-class assignments, observations) when making instructional decisions.</i> That said, here are some suggestions for using standardized test data:</p>
<ul>
<li>First, you can share the testing results with students individually and set some obtainable, realistic goals for them to work towards before the next test. (By the way, I don't agree with making this data public to all students <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/school-issues-illegal-student-ids_n_998753.html"><span>as was done at one Orange County, Calif., high school recently</span></a>).</li>
<li>It reveals which of your students performed <i>advanced, proficient, basic</i> and <i>below basic</i>. This could help inform how you choose student groups, create seating charts, and differentiate for individuals. If I have a student who has historically scored <i>below basic</i> and she exhibits other signs of a struggling student, I like to place her in the front of the class so that I can easily access her when she needs extra support</li>
<li>If you have a high number of students who scored <i>advanced</i> in your third period class for example and a high number of students who scored <i>basic</i> in period two, this may give insights as to why period three may be moving more quickly and more deeply through content. You can adjust the learning and support accordingly</li>
<li>How about those ace students who didn't do so well on the standardized test? Possibly a nervous test-taker? Or it could simply be low motivation (since many students never hear hide nor hair about their standardized test results from previous years). Prior to the test, a brief pep talk or quick review of test strategies for lowering anxiety could be all that she or he needs</li>
</ul>
<p>What are ways in which you collect student data and how has this benefited the instruction and learning in your classroom?</p>
<p></p>
<p><i>If you like this, you might also like</i></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/formative-assessments-importance-of-rebecca-alber">Why Formative Assessments Matter</a><span> by Rebecca Alber</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teacher-effectiveness-measuring-test-scores-elena-aguilar">Measuring a Teacher's Effectiveness Goes Beyond Test Scores</a><span> by Elena Aguilar</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/formative-assessments-checking-for-understanding-strategies">Do You Check for Understanding Often Enough with Students?</a><span> by Elena Aguilar</span></li>
</ul> Student Data Project Moves Ahead in N.Y.tag:schoolleadership20.com,2011-12-15:1990010:Topic:835522011-12-15T14:30:06.229ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
<div class="col10wide wrap padding-left-big"><div class="articleHeadlineBox headlineType-newswire"><h1>Student Data Project Moves Ahead in N.Y.</h1>
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<div class="col10wide wrap padding-left-big"><div class="articleHeadlineBox headlineType-newswire"><h1>Student Data Project Moves Ahead in N.Y.</h1>
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<div id="article_story_body" class="article story"><div class="articlePage"><h3 class="byline">By <a href="http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=LISA+FLEISHER&bylinesearch=true">LISA FLEISHER</a></h3>
<p>WSJ12/14/11</p>
<p>New York is moving forward with a plan to build a database to track the academic lives of students statewide, restarting a process halted by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli over privacy concerns.</p>
<p>The database, approved Tuesday by the state Board of Regents, is part of a larger system that will connect several states and allow educators to share curriculum materials, applications and student data from transcripts to individual test answers.</p>
<p>The project stalled this summer when Mr. DiNapoli, citing concerns about the privacy of student data, canceled the state's $27 million contract with Wireless Generation, a News Corp. subsidiary. The move came at the height of a phone-hacking scandal involving editors and reporters at several of the parent company's British newspapers. News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>Wireless Generation already is building software that will be used by at least nine states as part of a $44 million project called the Shared Learning Collaborative, which is funded by the Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York. States will get free access to the open-source software to use as the foundation for their own systems, which they will start using as early as next year.</p>
<p>New York, which plans to participate in the project, had hired Wireless Generation to build on the framework. Mr. DiNapoli killed that contract in August, which officials said set back New York's participation by a year.</p>
<p>Still, Wireless Generation could have access to student data if the system needs maintenance or upgrades, company and state officials said.</p>
<p>When he canceled the deal, Mr. DiNapoli said he was concerned with the project in general, not just with the company.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, the New York Board of Regents authorized the Education Department to hire one or more companies to finish the job for New York. A spokesman for Mr. DiNapoli declined to comment.</p>
<p>Wireless Generation has not decided whether it will resubmit a bid, company spokeswoman Joan Lebow said.</p>
<p>"We lost the contract due to concerns raised about, not Wireless Generation, but our parent company's role in past events," she said. "Wireless Generation is an education company that follows strict privacy procedures handling student data for schools and districts in all 50 states where we provide tools to help teachers teach."</p>
<p>The New York State United Teachers, the state's largest teachers union, initially had strong concerns with Wireless's involvement, urging the comptroller over the summer to cancel the contract.</p>
<p>But in November, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, became an adviser to the project.</p>
<p>"That leaves us in the position of monitoring the contract and monitoring the developments and watching and waiting," NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn said. Mr. Korn said the union would monitor how the state uses the data.</p>
<p>New York officials said the data will help teachers figure out what's working well on a classroom or with individual students.</p>
<p><strong>Write to </strong>Lisa Fleisher at <a href="mailto:lisa.fleisher@wsj.com">lisa.fleisher@wsj.com</a></p>
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</div> Counting on Graduation: Most States Are Setting Low Expectations for Graduation Ratetag:schoolleadership20.com,2008-10-28:1990010:Topic:95202008-10-28T12:54:04.280ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
From The Education Trust:<br />
<br />
"Among industrialized nations, the United States is the only country in which today's young people are less likely than their parents to have earned a high school diploma. Reversing this trend could hardly be more urgent."<br />
<br />
Read the full release and report <a href="http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Press+Room/countingongrad.htm">here</a>.<br />
<br />
From Education Week:<br />
<br />
Look up graduation rate by district or location using…
From The Education Trust:<br />
<br />
"Among industrialized nations, the United States is the only country in which today's young people are less likely than their parents to have earned a high school diploma. Reversing this trend could hardly be more urgent."<br />
<br />
Read the full release and report <a href="http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Press+Room/countingongrad.htm">here</a>.<br />
<br />
From Education Week:<br />
<br />
Look up graduation rate by district or location using <a href="http://apps.arcwebservices.com/edweekv3/default.jsp">this tool</a> from Education Week. Performance for Students with Disabilities in Grade 4 Math Educationtag:schoolleadership20.com,2008-08-25:1990010:Topic:85432008-08-25T16:54:33.938ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
The Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education released a report entitled <i>Performance Patterns for Students with Disabilities in Grade Four Mathematics Education in New York State</i>.<br />
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The report summary reads -<br />
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"This report describes the mathematics performance of grade 4 students with disabilities across schools categorized by need-to-resource capacity and compares their performance by school with that of general education students across New York State…
The Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education released a report entitled <i>Performance Patterns for Students with Disabilities in Grade Four Mathematics Education in New York State</i>.<br />
<br />
The report summary reads -<br />
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"This report describes the mathematics performance of grade 4 students with disabilities across schools categorized by need-to-resource capacity and compares their performance by school with that of general education students across New York State from 2003 to 2005. It finds that the percentage of students with disabilities scoring proficient increased over time and that the proficiency gap between this subgroup and general education students narrowed by 1 percentage point."<br />
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To review the report, you can download the attached file or <a href="http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=158&productID=107">click here</a>. Science cannot be secret!tag:schoolleadership20.com,2008-06-22:1990010:Topic:76102008-06-22T16:32:03.256ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
In a recent contribution to the growth/value-added discussion on the DATAG listserv, it was stated that "We invite comment from any of our DATAG Colleagues but are especially interested in the opinions of our resident statisticians." The arc of this discussion is exactly what I had feared - and predicted in my initial posting on May 31.<br />
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It runs like this: Growth and value-added models are extremely technical. Here, try to read these extremely technical articles. If you do not understand them,…
In a recent contribution to the growth/value-added discussion on the DATAG listserv, it was stated that "We invite comment from any of our DATAG Colleagues but are especially interested in the opinions of our resident statisticians." The arc of this discussion is exactly what I had feared - and predicted in my initial posting on May 31.<br />
<br />
It runs like this: Growth and value-added models are extremely technical. Here, try to read these extremely technical articles. If you do not understand them, defer to the judgment of the statisticians.<br />
<br />
The adoption of a growth or value-added model is a public policy decision, informed no doubt by the recommendations of mathematicians, statisticians, and research scientists, but ultimately made by elected and appointed public officials. Any adoption must be supported by a tax-paying public.<br />
<br />
Let me offer an example of why we must always question the opinions of experts. It was stated with authority via the DATAG listserv that "The Rand Corporation, one of the country's most esteemed think tanks, have expressed that Sanders' methodology is the 'most preferred' model for value-added calculations."<br />
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The Rand report, in fact, concluded that "Full multivariate analysis of the data is flexible and uses correlation among multiple years of data. This approach is likely to be preferable but is computationally demanding" (p. xvi). The Rand report is endorsing a methodology (i.e., "full multivariate analysis" with "correlation among multiple years of data") not any particular brand (e.g., Sanders or TVAAS).<br />
<br />
On page two of the full report (not distributed via the listserv), the Rand authors speak of the Sanders model as "The most prominent implementation of this approach . . ." but acknowledge that other folks have attempted similar solutions (e.g., Webster and colleagues). On page 63 of the report, they state "The primary disadvantage of the multivariate models is extreme computational burden . . . While progress is being made to overcome these computational challenges (Rasbash and Goldstein, 1994; DebRoy and Bates, 2003), widely available and flexible solutions are still lacking."<br />
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Further evidence that current solutions were "still lacking," is the fact that the authors of the Rand report came out with their own model a mere year after the "endorsement" referenced in the DATAG posting. (This Rand model can be found in McCaffrey D., Lockwood J.R., Koretz D., Louis T., Hamilton L. (2004), Models for Value-Added Modeling of Teacher Effects, Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 29(1), 67-101).<br />
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Finally, this DATAG statistical authority acknowledged that the Sanders model does have a proprietary element - "The only proprietary part of Sanders' work is his team's solution for seeding the estimation algorithm so that the procedures used for calculating the covariance parameters converge. Otherwise, the computer would likely choke, given the model's utilization of all student test data across subjects, time, and grades."<br />
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Although no one seems to like the word "Secret," Sanders and his colleagues are charging a fee for the very same reduction of "computational burden" that the Rand report says is critically necessary. The avoidance of paying this fee is, I assume, at least one reason why the authors of the Rand report came up with their own solution.<br />
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There is no doubt that the Sanders model works and can help schools improve. As long as schools understand what they are purchasing, I think the Capital Region BOCES is providing a great service to its customers. But the New York State legislature has mandated the adoption of a growth/value added model. I am not comfortable with the mandatory adoption of any state-wide model that, because of its secret elements, can never be subject to independent replication and verification. I am not alone in my concerns.<br />
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Johanna Duncan-Poitier, New York's Senior Deputy Commissioner of Education, stated in her June 23 memo to the Board of Regents -<br />
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"The interim growth model should be based on an open architecture; that is the New York State Education Department (NYSED) will publish exactly how it calculates growth decisions and the result will be a single, clear, unambiguous determination of AYP for each English language arts and mathematics accountability criterion" (p. 6).<br />
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The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) stated in their 2005 report, Policymakers' Guide to Growth Models for School Accountability: How do Accountability Models Differ?, that<br />
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"Further, due to proprietary estimation procedures, broad applications of this model [Sanders's TVAAS model] independently by states are not possible. Hence cost is an additional factor. Further, using models that contain complex (and proprietary) computations which are inaccessible to stakeholders may make it harder to build consensus and a sense of confidence around the validity of the results" (p. 16).<br />
<br />
These are pretty clear denunciations, at both the state and national levels, of large-scale implementations of a "secret" model.<br />
<br />
(To be fair, it appears that New York's testing program already uses two proprietary programs - "ITEMWIN" for test item selection and "FLUX" for scoring tables. Perhaps these sneaked under the political radar!)<br />
<br />
Finally, this discussion must be anchored in the role that science plays in crafting public policy. A mathematical model is useful only to the extent that it informs decisions. Educational decisions must be subject to empirical verification of equity and efficacy. The scientific method operates via independent and public replication, as well as potential falsification.<br />
<br />
Sanders, Saxton, and Horn (1997) declare that "research initiatives are a priority for TVAAS [the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System]. The enormous, longitudinally merged database . . . is a unique resource for research into educational issues" (p. 141). Indeed, the ability to conduct research on the so-called "teacher effect" - the instructional value added by an individual educator during a specified period of time - is one of the primary justifications for the adoption of a value-added model.<br />
<br />
Sanders now sells his model via a company called SAS. Their website features an appealing (or appalling) pitch for Sanders's new model, SAS EVAAS (see <a href="http://www.sas.com/govedu/edu/services/effectiveness.html">http://www.sas.com/govedu/edu/services/effectiveness.html</a>) -<br />
<br />
"Schools can benefit from SAS EVAAS analyses without having to invest in new hardware, software or IT staff. Instead, states or districts send electronic data directly to SAS, where the data is cleaned and analyzed. The results are then reported via a secure Web application, a powerful but user-friendly diagnostic tool."<br />
<br />
The secrecy at work is buried in a "Pay Us" because you can "Trust Us" marketing campaign. That approach may be convenient, powerful, even helpful, but it is not scientific. That approach can never contribute to science, because secrets can never be publicly replicated or falsified by independent investigators.<br />
<br />
Anyone who tells you different is either mistaken - or selling something.<br />
<br />
What do you think? Free Pilot Partner opportunity webinar from Discovery Education Assessment and RtI Solutionstag:schoolleadership20.com,2008-06-10:1990010:Topic:73242008-06-10T20:06:16.214ZWilliam Brennan, Ed.D.https://schoolleadership20.com/profile/BillBrennan
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Learn how to predict K-8 student ELA and Math proficiencies and AYP preformance with up to 97% accuracy for FREE by joining the webinar below. Hope to see you there!<br />
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