Thompson: Poverty's Effects And The MET Results

In his continuing disscussion with representatives of the Gates Foundation, Anthony Cody provides an excellent overview of the effects of poverty on student performance.  He then draws on personal experience to describe behaviors that the Gates Foundation has not adequately considered:

"Many of these students are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, and some are medicated so they can sit still in class. Often they are easily distracted, and this can create a steady stream of small disruptions in class, making it difficult for anyone to concentrate on the lesson at hand." 

Obviously, the value-added portion of the Gates preferred evaluation experiment can not control for such conditions.  I am equally suspicious of the human observation portion of their research.  After all, their Measuring Effective Teaching (MET) sample is only 58% low income.  I wonder how many of Gates' teachers serve in schools like Cody's where the principals can't provide disciplinary backing.  The MET should run a controlled experiment.  Evaluators should use their standard rubrics to rate instruction in classes like Cody's (and my old classes.)  Then similar evaluators should be fully briefed on the histories of each child in such a class, as well as the actual operation of the schools' disciplinary, attendance, and academic policies.  I'd like to see if the evaluators who are fully briefed on classroom realities would rank instructional quality the same way as those who are blissfully ignorant of the effects of intense concetrations of poverty and trauma.-JT(@drjohnthompson)Image via.

Comments

[Mary]

John, this is the weakest description of Cody's latest broadside I've seen anywhere. Is that a deliberate failure to comprehend Cody's magnificent work on the question of poverty? This isn't just another squabble about teacher evaluation, it's about how poverty hurts children. his point in discussing teacher evaluation is that it can't be our focus in addressing poverty.

Also, you didn't post the link. Read it here:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/can_schools_defeat.html

and (incredibly) here:
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/Can-Schools-Defeat-Poverty-by-Ignoring-It

[John Thompson]

Sorry about forgetting the link. For the record, Anthony's piece is outstanding. Many others have written longer posts stressing its excellence. My purpose in this one was to stress one overlooked point and explain why I was particularly impressed with that.

Changing the subject, what will the poverty deniers think when they read Anthony's fantastic explanation of why their overlooking of poverty is a fatal flaw?

[Sarah]

As a bit of an amateur statistician/nerd, I’d actually surprised the Gates foundation didn’t set up their program with controls. I think that’s what bothers me: they seem alarmingly sure they have the answer when this is, by definition, experimentation they’re doing.

[Mary]

John asks, "what will the poverty deniers think when they read Anthony's fantastic explanation of why their overlooking of poverty is a fatal flaw?"

Whatever they think, they don't have to answer because their own pundit stable is in no position to hold them accountable to reason.

So, they'll, they'll probably just change the subject and talk about the MET study instead. Then, like Russo, they can bemoan their own "side's" failures without connecting those to the policies they support, adding dodgy claims like "reform critics generally focus on mistreated or laid-off teachers."

I think he means you, John. Are you going to let him get away with that?

[John Thompson]

Mary,
I once was a liberal legislative lobbyist in a state with the motto, "Thank God for Mississippi," because it kept us from being last in so many issues. Now, the Democratic president who I support is doing profound damage to my profession, students, and the values of public education. He's doing so, I suspect, by using us as a bone to throw to the billionaires.

Somehow, not letting people "get away with it" is not a phrase that I use a lot.

[Mary]

Don't let him get away with it, either. He needs opposition to the left of him, even to run in the center.

[konkursy dla dzieci z nagrodami]

I can't understand this article, please explain in detail.Thanks for your information.Keep on updating.

[Art]

It should be obvious that "fully" briefing evaluators on children's personal histories would violate their rights of privacy, if not from the outset certainly at the point where children are personally identifiable.

And why assume that the MET project would automatically work to the detriment of teachers? It seems that if anything identifying good teaching for children with lots of problems in schools that are not well-run would speak in praise of teachers, not in criticism of them.

Finally, repeatedly trotting out poor children and traumatized children as a kind of Patronus charm against reformers may not be accomplishing what you hope it does.