NYTimes on teacher evaluation

Not sure why the paper ran this story, but I responded anyway.


To the Editor;

Jenny Anderson makes several comments that demonstrate the misperceptions and misunderstandings of the education reform movement ("Curious grade for teachers," March 30, 2013).  Some of the more unfortunate examples and the mistaken premises upon which they rest, include:

"The changes, already under way in some cities and states, are intended to provide meaningful feedback and, critically, to weed out weak performers" and, later, "Education reformers insist they help to identify and remove ineffective teachers, while offering more feedback for teachers to improve their practice." The premise is that these two goals are commensurate rather than in tension with and antagonistic upon the other.

"Principals, who are often responsible for the personal-observation part of the grade, generally are not detached managerial types and can be loath to give teachers low marks." The premise is that education relies too much upon the subjective, intersubjective understanding of human relations and not enough on the hard, empirical stuff of objective data.

"But because Leon County set the test-score bar so low, when their marks came out, all but one were highly effective, and the other was categorized as effective" and, later, "Grover J. Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, said variations in teacher quality had been proven to affect student academic growth. If an evaluation system is not finding a wider distribution of effectiveness, “it is flawed,” he said." The premise is that student test scores are a direct cause, not just correlated to, teacher effectiveness.

"“We are seeing improvements in practice,” he said, noting that 400 teachers had been fired as a result of the new system, and several hundred had left voluntarily after weak ratings." The premise is that the teachers left because they were ineffective and not due to the pressure to produce meaningless statistics rather than critically thinking and empathic people, to treat students like numbers rather than humans capable of autonomy and dignity, or to abide by a philosophy that treats education as a commodity and political tool rather than a process of living and engaging with the world.

Anderson did offer one insight that captured the reason for these mistakes, "In Florida’s first go-round with the new evaluations, for example, some teachers had to be rated based on students in their school, but not in their classrooms, because there was not enough data for their own students."  In other words, teachers recognize the harm that 'managerial' types of evaluations does to the act of education.  It is telling that she includes this insight as a parenthetical rather than a strong, objective claim in itself.  Until the media uncover the premises that ground this debate' on education reform from each side, only the public will be massively misinformed.  Our students, and the future of society, are at stake.

WSJ: History version

This one a book review, deserving a response.


To the Editor;

Amity Shlaes fizzles what is an otherwise honorable review of the life of Herbert Hoover when she declaims 'progressive historians' who, "... are eager to absolve a hero of government expansion, Roosevelt, from responsibility for the Depression that plagued his first two terms. If Roosevelt was good, they reason, then those who preceded him—Hoover especially, but also Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding—must be bad" ("He knew he was right" March 29, 2013).

With her new book extolling Calvin Coolidge, and a previous work attempting to deconstruct the historical record on Franklin Roosevelt, Ms. Shlaes by her own logic could be read as offering her own 'extreme' version of history.  

It works both ways, unfortunately. Either historians succumb to the group think narrative of their chosen partisan base, or they interpret the facts as they find them. Students deserve better than to be treated as ignorant and naive, unable to perceive the engine of bias. Seeing so much personal at stake in her scholarship, Ms. Shlaes should not be confused if one might be tempted to question understanding of the past.

WSJ: 'Til the Supreme Court do us part"

They speak; I respond.

To the Editors;

You raise a necessary concern of Federalism over redefining the meaning of marriage through the courts ("'Til the Supreme Court do us part" Thursday, March 27, 2013).

Yet this concern is hardly sufficient to the issue. The more essential question is not, as you indicate, "... that for the Court to transform the definition of marriage for one group fundamentally restructures it for all groups and makes it harder for society through its representatives to rule out anything that adults want to call "marriage.""  Rather, the concern is whether states can create conditions that benefit one group of people and not others. On what state interest should such conditions be allowed?

Perhaps the most prudent act would be for the state to abandon is sanction of 'marriage' and stick to civil unions.  Let churches, temples, mosques and other institutes of spiritual matters conduct marriage. The Fall of the West will not commence.

The war on entitlements

Thomas B. Edsall, in the NYTimes, makes clear, sound arguments about Social Security and Medicare reform:
"First, insofar as benefits for the affluent are reduced or eliminated under means-testing, social insurance programs are no longer universal and are seen, instead, as a form of welfare. Public support would almost certainly decline, encouraging further cuts in the future.

Second, the focus on means-testing and raising the age of eligibility diverts attention from a much simpler and more equitable approach: raising the payroll tax to apply to the earnings of the well-to-do, a step strongly opposed by the ideological right.  In this kind of conflict over limited goods, one of the most valuable resources that can get lost in the fray is the wisdom of the electorate at large.  

Third, and most important in terms of the policy debate, while both means-testing and eliminating the $113,700 cap on earnings subject to the payroll tax hurt the affluent, the latter would inflict twice as much pain."

I would have liked for him to analyze the Conservative view that any policy that supports those in need creates a cycle of dependency.  Together with the opposing view, that a civil, moral society takes care of those in need, these positions show the sharp, radical split that prevents sane, thoughtful actions.

Helping those in need can create dependency, particularly when the help does not enable beneficiaries out of their crises. Yet not helping those in the midst of a crises, no matter the amount of past help, is immoral. Policy is caught between competing visions of pragmatics, morals and ideals.

Raising the cap is my choice, though I recognize this action does not create conditions that enable rather than remediate.

Daniel Henninger critiques preventive strike?

Not in so many words.  So, I wrote a letter to help him understand.

To the Editor; 

I applaud Daniel Henninger for his line, "If I'm a 40-year old southerner, born in 1973 and raising a family in one of these states, this view by four justices on the Supreme Court in 2013 of what I might do is insulting and demeaning" (Is the South still racist? March 7, 2013).

By rebuking the argument that we must act in advance of potential harms, no matter how seemingly reasonable, he eviscerates a host of current policies, especially that of preemptive military strike.  I look forward to his advocacy of rigorous, sustained and multilateral engaged diplomacy as the foreign policy ideal.

A reply to Thomas Friedman

To the Editor;

Thomas Friedman makes a terrific point, "The world only cares, and will only pay for, what you can do with what you know."  He then contradicts himself, "We’re moving to a more competency-based world where there will be less interest in how you acquired the competency ,,, and more demand to prove that you mastered the competency" ("The professors' big stage" March 6, 2013).

Part of the crisis in education is this demand to have it both ways.  Competency is measurable precisely because it requires convergent, rote-like knowledge and skills. Creativity and entrepreneurship is often not measurable precisely because it requires divergent, radically different use of knowledge and skills.  The more schools insist on the former, the less they are capable of cultivating the latter.

Teaching the Bible in public schools

The editors of the WSJ let a live one through today.  I responded in its spirit:


To the Editor;

re: "Why public school teachers should teach the Bible," Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, March 1, 2013)

Imagine that public school teachers take the Supreme Court's 1963 Abington decision as rationale to teach the Bible.  How might a teacher present the Bible "objectively as part of a secular program of education"? 

Students would be asked to think critically about the claims being made. They would be asked to evaluate, challenge and debate the text in order to treat the evidence as objectively and secularly as possible.  Like all great literature, the Bible would be analyzed for motivation, subtext, metaphor and symbolism.  It would be presented as fiction, authored by humans for distinctly human goals.  Any literal truth would be abandoned in pursuit of aesthetic, moral and psychological lessons.

I second their notion.