To the parents in "good schools"

[Anonymous]

Yeah we know the teachers at my highly rated elementary school are coasting and they still bitch about how are they have it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The pullouts began after the first quarter marking period ended in early November. They we're done by Jan. I knew the specialist who was involved in the pullouts. We were told help was needed with SOLs. My child qualified for AAP the following year. So you think they liked to let us down more easily?

Newsflash, that AAP teacher wasn't teaching anyone from Jan-spring break. She was putting together files for the committee and doing a massive amount of paperwork/sitting in meetings where each of the 100 or so kids GBRS is put together. She was probably also creating extensions for teachers to use directly on identified students. Here's the valid point post-spring break. The state does require a licensed teacher to proctor SOL tests. AAP teachers, ESOL teachers are often pulled to proctor small student groups, etc. This kills their ability to see groups as well.

I hate when parents don't understand that there are many different things all happening at once in a school.

[Anonymous]

It wasn't the AART doing the pullouts in the first place. We had a choice that following year to either stay at the Title 1 base for level 3 pullouts or go to the center for full-time level 4. After what happened to the prior year's enrichment, I thought the same would happen with the level 3 pullouts so we opted for the center. Thanks for confirming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It wasn't the AART doing the pullouts in the first place. We had a choice that following year to either stay at the Title 1 base for level 3 pullouts or go to the center for full-time level 4. After what happened to the prior year's enrichment, I thought the same would happen with the level 3 pullouts so we opted for the center. Thanks for confirming.

So who was this licensed teacher that was pulling your kid out? Because it sure wasn't a classroom teacher, or a Math/Language Arts specialist. Classroom teachers have actually classes of kids they all have to teach. Sure they might run a station with more challenging work, but that isn't what you are describing. And specialists, particularly in Title I schools, are focused on students who are struggling so that makes no sense.

Based on staffing requirements, the only person who would pull kids for AAP would be the AAP teacher. Since they are trained in gifted education, most hold a certification in gifted education from the state and well...it's part of their job. So, I don't know who was with your kid or what the heck they were doing.

Level II and III services vary dramatically based on the school's staffing. There's so much parents don't see. They aren't consistent and while they are something they differ dramatically from a level IV classroom experience. I do hope your kid is doing well this year, fwiw.

[Anonymous]

It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

So, then we probably need to quit it with the whole high test scores = better teachers thing huh? Maybe tell every politician this.

[Anonymous]

I agree growth is a better factor of good teaching than scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

So, then we probably need to quit it with the whole high test scores = better teachers thing huh? Maybe tell every politician this.

I think this is really the big point. The past 20 years, it's been test score, test score, test score. People have gone to prison for screwing with testing because the incentives were there. But in reality, it seems as though test scores really don't matter. Growth does. Engagement does. But those are expensive, difficult things to measure. So, what do we do when the system is baked in one way but it doesn't actually serve students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

So, then we probably need to quit it with the whole high test scores = better teachers thing huh? Maybe tell every politician this.

I think this is really the big point. The past 20 years, it's been test score, test score, test score. People have gone to prison for screwing with testing because the incentives were there. But in reality, it seems as though test scores really don't matter. Growth does. Engagement does. But those are expensive, difficult things to measure. So, what do we do when the system is baked in one way but it doesn't actually serve students?

Growth is not that hard to measure. Just measure it from year to year or measure it from the beginning of the year to the end.
Engagement can be done through a survey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

So, then we probably need to quit it with the whole high test scores = better teachers thing huh? Maybe tell every politician this.

I think this is really the big point. The past 20 years, it's been test score, test score, test score. People have gone to prison for screwing with testing because the incentives were there. But in reality, it seems as though test scores really don't matter. Growth does. Engagement does. But those are expensive, difficult things to measure. So, what do we do when the system is baked in one way but it doesn't actually serve students?

Growth is not that hard to measure. Just measure it from year to year or measure it from the beginning of the year to the end.
Engagement can be done through a survey.

The tricky part about growth is that it slows. So, schools who have a lot of kids who are doing well are not going to grow as quickly as kids who are way behind.

To judge engagement, surveys isn't going to cut it. You actually need to see teachers teach, you need to see their lesson plans, and you basically have to do what OP said she had to do when she worked in a Title I school. I don't see that going over well, fwiw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Nope. There are plenty of slacker teachers in lower-performing schools. The fact that those schools also, at times, may have to focus intensely on SOLs just to get their kids to pass doesn’t mean the teachers are especially passionate about teaching or committed as professionals. It just means the teachers are more likely to live in fear that they’ll be blamed if their kids don’t pass the SOLs. That’s a non-issue in the top pyramids, where the kids easily pass the SOLs, and it frees the best teachers up to go beyond the standard curriculum. The teaching at our GS 9 high school was better than at our GS 6 school, and the expectations were higher as well.

OP here. I have to respond to this because it's not really true.

Title I schools in FCPS tend to get many, many new and new-ish teachers. These teachers tend to struggle. Not only because it's a hard population of students to serve, but because the expectations are much, much higher. Maybe that was the point I was trying to make? A Title I school teacher is expected to have records of her or his efforts to reach every single student. And they are challenged, pushed and held accountable if they aren't doing more to reach their kids.

In my experience, all of these new and new-ish teachers run for the hills and transfair to a higher achieving school. They usually bail because they clear the 3-year review cycle barely and decide that they don't want to deal with the extra work. People who don't do this and can't handle the work are actually de-staffed. I've seen it many times, fwiw. I work with a woman who left my old school after three years in a different grade and she's chilling. She tells "horror stories" about how hard it was to work at our old school. Spoiler: It wasn't the kids. It was the paper work, the extra observations, the extra oversight that she complains about. I don't say anything, but the lack of rigor is something I see as problematic.

One interesting point. I had a really great admin team and talking to friends in other schools it seems that the county puts a lot into putting strong admins into Title I school, struggling schools. I can't speak about the process for schools like mine (we haven't had a principal search), but admin is much more hands-off. The expectations around here are lower.

Looks like you answered your own question and points. Title 1 schools are tougher environments. Why would any teacher want to put up with all the extra issues. The salary is the exact same in both environments. It's not a question of teacher quality. If anything the poorer teachers are at the Title 1 schools because they can't get a job at the schools with higher performing students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

So, then we probably need to quit it with the whole high test scores = better teachers thing huh? Maybe tell every politician this.

I think this is really the big point. The past 20 years, it's been test score, test score, test score. People have gone to prison for screwing with testing because the incentives were there. But in reality, it seems as though test scores really don't matter. Growth does. Engagement does. But those are expensive, difficult things to measure. So, what do we do when the system is baked in one way but it doesn't actually serve students?

Growth is not that hard to measure. Just measure it from year to year or measure it from the beginning of the year to the end.
Engagement can be done through a survey.

The tricky part about growth is that it slows. So, schools who have a lot of kids who are doing well are not going to grow as quickly as kids who are way behind.

To judge engagement, surveys isn't going to cut it. You actually need to see teachers teach, you need to see their lesson plans, and you basically have to do what OP said she had to do when she worked in a Title I school. I don't see that going over well, fwiw.

There are schools that successfully measure both grown and achievement. In fact, some of the websites out there already do that. Wasn't that a big argument at the federal level that DeVos acted as if she didn't even understand the question?

The principal is supposed to be judging the engagement already, no? Does the principal not turn in anything on this already?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

So, then we probably need to quit it with the whole high test scores = better teachers thing huh? Maybe tell every politician this.

I think this is really the big point. The past 20 years, it's been test score, test score, test score. People have gone to prison for screwing with testing because the incentives were there. But in reality, it seems as though test scores really don't matter. Growth does. Engagement does. But those are expensive, difficult things to measure. So, what do we do when the system is baked in one way but it doesn't actually serve students?

Growth is not that hard to measure. Just measure it from year to year or measure it from the beginning of the year to the end.
Engagement can be done through a survey.

The tricky part about growth is that it slows. So, schools who have a lot of kids who are doing well are not going to grow as quickly as kids who are way behind.

To judge engagement, surveys isn't going to cut it. You actually need to see teachers teach, you need to see their lesson plans, and you basically have to do what OP said she had to do when she worked in a Title I school. I don't see that going over well, fwiw.

There are schools that successfully measure both grown and achievement. In fact, some of the websites out there already do that. Wasn't that a big argument at the federal level that DeVos acted as if she didn't even understand the question?

The principal is supposed to be judging the engagement already, no? Does the principal not turn in anything on this already?

Ed researcher here: growth is difficult to measure, though there are competing models for doing it. In my view, we should measure growth but not assume it's telling the full story. The problem is once there's a number, people tend to reify it as truth--or at least that the error is evenly distributed rather than systematically distorted. Some challenges 1) kids are growing all the time at different rates from different experiences and none of these thing are randomly assigned to school or to class/teacher, 2)There are substantial ceiling effects in most educational measures used so low-performing kids have much more room to grow, whereas high performing kids hit a ceiling. Raising the ceiling on a measure is challenging and creates more error throughout making the overall measure less reliable.3) Similarly, there's a regression toward the mean in all measures as just part of statistics, so below average will regress up to the mean and above average will regress down to the mean 3) Some of the most valuable growth in education is in small amounts across dispersed areas that suddenly coalesce into growth--some of this age-related, some of this just the dynamics of skill development. So a teacher who laid the groundwork for growth could have little evidence of it and then the teacher who happened to be there when things all came together would get credit.

Youg children's engagement is not best measured by a simple survey but rather observational reports (e.g. via things like CLASS assessment at the early grade level) but those are labor intensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not that no one cares about teachers and principals coasting. It's that there aren't a lot of better options. The trade off for better teachers and more farms students isn't a huge draw and private school require you to pay taxes and pay out of pocket. Some of the mid level schools are nice, but often have run down houses or aren't close to jobs. For any complaint about a high achieving school, administrators in FCPS will tell parents that they have it fine and there are other schools with higher needs. The only way there would be more pressure is if more magnet schools were created like ATS. That might push some other schools to work a little harder to keep their children. But generally the population is increasing in Fairfax, so if one child leaves, they are soon replaced with another child.

So, then we probably need to quit it with the whole high test scores = better teachers thing huh? Maybe tell every politician this.

I think this is really the big point. The past 20 years, it's been test score, test score, test score. People have gone to prison for screwing with testing because the incentives were there. But in reality, it seems as though test scores really don't matter. Growth does. Engagement does. But those are expensive, difficult things to measure. So, what do we do when the system is baked in one way but it doesn't actually serve students?

Growth is not that hard to measure. Just measure it from year to year or measure it from the beginning of the year to the end.
Engagement can be done through a survey.

The tricky part about growth is that it slows. So, schools who have a lot of kids who are doing well are not going to grow as quickly as kids who are way behind.

To judge engagement, surveys isn't going to cut it. You actually need to see teachers teach, you need to see their lesson plans, and you basically have to do what OP said she had to do when she worked in a Title I school. I don't see that going over well, fwiw.

There are schools that successfully measure both grown and achievement. In fact, some of the websites out there already do that. Wasn't that a big argument at the federal level that DeVos acted as if she didn't even understand the question?

The principal is supposed to be judging the engagement already, no? Does the principal not turn in anything on this already?

Ed researcher here: growth is difficult to measure, though there are competing models for doing it. In my view, we should measure growth but not assume it's telling the full story. The problem is once there's a number, people tend to reify it as truth--or at least that the error is evenly distributed rather than systematically distorted. Some challenges 1) kids are growing all the time at different rates from different experiences and none of these thing are randomly assigned to school or to class/teacher, 2)There are substantial ceiling effects in most educational measures used so low-performing kids have much more room to grow, whereas high performing kids hit a ceiling. Raising the ceiling on a measure is challenging and creates more error throughout making the overall measure less reliable.3) Similarly, there's a regression toward the mean in all measures as just part of statistics, so below average will regress up to the mean and above average will regress down to the mean 3) Some of the most valuable growth in education is in small amounts across dispersed areas that suddenly coalesce into growth--some of this age-related, some of this just the dynamics of skill development. So a teacher who laid the groundwork for growth could have little evidence of it and then the teacher who happened to be there when things all came together would get credit.

Youg children's engagement is not best measured by a simple survey but rather observational reports (e.g. via things like CLASS assessment at the early grade level) but those are labor intensive.

None of these things measure a specific teacher's work terribly well, but they do measure a school fairly well. If there are a lot of gaps showing up for a school, it brings focus to resolving issues which is what OP is saying isn't being done at certain schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Students graduating from FCPS are not very bright.

There's too much emphasis placed on sports and not enough on quality comprehensive instruction.

And sort of compulsive video watching in the classroom