Michelle Rhee

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:13 Can you say a bit more about IMPACT? My kids at JKLM have a lot of recess, a lot of free play time, spend a lot of time working in groups with peers, we've been very pleased. They have learned to read in K but their social skills have also really taken off. I fear that IMPACT is going to take away something that really worked for our family, and the test scores are already good at their school. One more left to send through. Are the few good teachers more likely to leave with IMPACT or do people think that they might wait Rhee out? Even if she leaves, she has installed a lot of crony principals...anyone have a crystal ball?

There is 20 or so different IMPACT groups covering every staff member in a DCPS building. My IMPACT manual is 64 pages of highly prescriptive pedagogy laced with threats and inscrutable language such as:

"Individual Value-Added (IVA) is a sophisticated statistical measure of your impact on your students' achievement as measured by the DC CAS. This component makes up 50% of your IMPACT score."

Part of what happens in the future, whether Rhee stays or leaves, depends on parents. Is this the educational model you support? If not, let your Councilmember know.

[Anonymous]

substitute "are" for "is" in previous post

[Anonymous]

How does IMPACT affect teachers of younger kids who don't take the DC CAS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:13 Can you say a bit more about IMPACT? My kids at JKLM have a lot of recess, a lot of free play time, spend a lot of time working in groups with peers, we've been very pleased. They have learned to read in K but their social skills have also really taken off. I fear that IMPACT is going to take away something that really worked for our family, and the test scores are already good at their school. One more left to send through. Are the few good teachers more likely to leave with IMPACT or do people think that they might wait Rhee out? Even if she leaves, she has installed a lot of crony principals...anyone have a crystal ball?

There is 20 or so different IMPACT groups covering every staff member in a DCPS building. My IMPACT manual is 64 pages of highly prescriptive pedagogy laced with threats and inscrutable language such as:

"Individual Value-Added (IVA) is a sophisticated statistical measure of your impact on your students' achievement as measured by the DC CAS. This component makes up 50% of your IMPACT score."

Part of what happens in the future, whether Rhee stays or leaves, depends on parents. Is this the educational model you support? If not, let your Councilmember know.

But this is where it gets sort of fuzzy for me. I am a parent so I don't have access to the IMPACT manual. If we all agree that kids need to learn certain things after they complete each grade and that testing is one way to figure out if they have learned certain skills, why shouldn't teachers be evaluated based on whether or not students are able to pass a specific test. In my job I have specific metrics I have to meet. Are you saying that IMPACT is so rigid that there is no way for teachers to be creative with how they deliver material AND still ensure kids do well on the testing portion? I guess by just giving us portions of what the IMPACT manual says its difficult for me as a parent to gauge what this means on a day-to-day basis for my kid.

I want to be supportive of teachers because ultimately they are the ones that are making the difference for our kids. If teachers want parents to advocate for them somehow, we need a clearer understanding of how Rhee's plans might change the classroom and we want real information not just assumptions or blanket statements. Are there parents out there who can speak about how IMPACT has affected the classroom so far?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:13 Can you say a bit more about IMPACT? My kids at JKLM have a lot of recess, a lot of free play time, spend a lot of time working in groups with peers, we've been very pleased. They have learned to read in K but their social skills have also really taken off. I fear that IMPACT is going to take away something that really worked for our family, and the test scores are already good at their school. One more left to send through. Are the few good teachers more likely to leave with IMPACT or do people think that they might wait Rhee out? Even if she leaves, she has installed a lot of crony principals...anyone have a crystal ball?

If your child is at a JKLMO, the school was likely already data driven, even before IMPACT. Your children just may be too young for you to realize this. Data is supreme here and our children who have been through upper grades at a JKLMO had loads of test prep. Ridiculously too much. When we have had concerns about the results of the standardized testing, we have had school personnel say anything from, the test scores are meaningless to "look what a good job we are doing with your kid" depending on which way they needed to spin it. We are disgusted by the testing. It is truly a narrow measure that carries way too much weight. DCBAS four times a year and then the DCCAS in the spring. Sigh! What IMPACT will likely do is to similarly label teachers as effective or not effective based on the same kind of narrow measures when the truth may be something else not measurable by the tool they are using.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
But this is where it gets sort of fuzzy for me. I am a parent so I don't have access to the IMPACT manual. If we all agree that kids need to learn certain things after they complete each grade and that testing is one way to figure out if they have learned certain skills, why shouldn't teachers be evaluated based on whether or not students are able to pass a specific test. In my job I have specific metrics I have to meet. Are you saying that IMPACT is so rigid that there is no way for teachers to be creative with how they deliver material AND still ensure kids do well on the testing portion? I guess by just giving us portions of what the IMPACT manual says its difficult for me as a parent to gauge what this means on a day-to-day basis for my kid.

The IMPACT Guidebooks are available here:

http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Success/IMPACT+%28Performance+Assessment%29/IMPACT+Guidebooks/IMPACT+Guidebooks

I hope you have broadband Internet if you plan to download them

[jsteele]

I haven't looked at the IMPACT Guidebooks before. Having spent a little time reading the "General Ed Teachers with Individual Value Added (IVA)" guide, I can see why teachers wouldn't like this system. If I understand correctly, the IVA counts as 50% of a teacher's IMPACT score. The IVA is entirely calculated by DCCAS scores. 40% of the IMPACT score comes from the Teaching and Learning Framework (TLF). I don't have the patience to delve into everything included in the TLF and I would love to hear what teachers think about it. But, it looks like a very structured approach in which the word "measurable" plays a large role. Teachers get evaluated on TLF five times a year for 30 minutes at a time. So, those are an important 2 1/2 hours. Of course, the evaluator's findings are all quantified. I can't believe this is really the best way to evaluate teachers. With 50% of their score hinging on DC CAS, I can see why test prep will dominate instruction time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:13 Can you say a bit more about IMPACT? My kids at JKLM have a lot of recess, a lot of free play time, spend a lot of time working in groups with peers, we've been very pleased. They have learned to read in K but their social skills have also really taken off. I fear that IMPACT is going to take away something that really worked for our family, and the test scores are already good at their school. One more left to send through. Are the few good teachers more likely to leave with IMPACT or do people think that they might wait Rhee out? Even if she leaves, she has installed a lot of crony principals...anyone have a crystal ball?

There is 20 or so different IMPACT groups covering every staff member in a DCPS building. My IMPACT manual is 64 pages of highly prescriptive pedagogy laced with threats and inscrutable language such as:

"Individual Value-Added (IVA) is a sophisticated statistical measure of your impact on your students' achievement as measured by the DC CAS. This component makes up 50% of your IMPACT score."

Part of what happens in the future, whether Rhee stays or leaves, depends on parents. Is this the educational model you support? If not, let your Councilmember know.

But this is where it gets sort of fuzzy for me. I am a parent so I don't have access to the IMPACT manual. If we all agree that kids need to learn certain things after they complete each grade and that testing is one way to figure out if they have learned certain skills, why shouldn't teachers be evaluated based on whether or not students are able to pass a specific test. In my job I have specific metrics I have to meet. Are you saying that IMPACT is so rigid that there is no way for teachers to be creative with how they deliver material AND still ensure kids do well on the testing portion? I guess by just giving us portions of what the IMPACT manual says its difficult for me as a parent to gauge what this means on a day-to-day basis for my kid.

I want to be supportive of teachers because ultimately they are the ones that are making the difference for our kids. If teachers want parents to advocate for them somehow, we need a clearer understanding of how Rhee's plans might change the classroom and we want real information not just assumptions or blanket statements. Are there parents out there who can speak about how IMPACT has affected the classroom so far?

Don't advocate for teachers. Advocate for your children.

Here some links on using tests to evaluate teachers

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/no-child-left-behind/why-not-link-teacher-pay-to-st.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uONqxysWEk8

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wherewestand/reports/2008-celebration-of-teaching-and-learning/video-kim-oliver-2006-national-teacher-of-the-year/119/

http://teachers.net/gazette/FEB09/haskvitz/

[Anonymous]

I'm a teacher who left DCPS before IMPACT; good teachers flub it routinely. It quantifies things like checking every five seconds to see how many children are paying attention and crunching that 'data' to prove 'something'. It's a load of hooey, and it's stressful, and it's one more thing on a public school teacher's plate that is not good PD or quality time to plan instruction as a member of a professional learning community. Just one more BS piece of quantification on the road to 'cloning' the perfect teacher. Think back on your best teachers...were THEY quantifiable? My father in law said it was a teacher who read to the kids at lunch. Mine was a teacher who told the 'story' of history and said "just get the dates in the right century and order...". How would THEY do on IMPACT I wonder?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher who left DCPS before IMPACT; good teachers flub it routinely. It quantifies things like checking every five seconds to see how many children are paying attention and crunching that 'data' to prove 'something'. It's a load of hooey, and it's stressful, and it's one more thing on a public school teacher's plate that is not good PD or quality time to plan instruction as a member of a professional learning community. Just one more BS piece of quantification on the road to 'cloning' the perfect teacher. Think back on your best teachers...were THEY quantifiable? My father in law said it was a teacher who read to the kids at lunch. Mine was a teacher who told the 'story' of history and said "just get the dates in the right century and order...". How would THEY do on IMPACT I wonder?

That teacher for me was my sixth grade teacher. She really bucked the system, using novels to teach reading instead of the reading books widely used by the school system and teaching foreign phrases instead of using the dry vocabulary books that the other teachers used. I don't remember the names of the majority of my elementary school or middle school teachers, but I remember her name. I was lucky to have her.

[Anonymous]

Mine was a high school English teacher who chased a girl name Katherine around the classroom as Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew. Imagine what MR would have done to him!

[Anonymous]

In DCPS, DIBELs assessment is used for preK, K, 1st, 2nd reading scores. Graphs of student achievement in the class were posted in the classrooms last year. Probably, DIBELs is used instead of DC-CAS at those grade levels.

[Anonymous]

As was written in an earlier post, there are different groups under IMPACT. The upper grade teachers (4th and 5th) in elementary school have the IVA component (50%) of their IMPACT evaluation. The lower grade teachers have the largest percent (80%) of their IMPACT score from the TLF framework (5 evaluations from the principal and master educators). They also have a NVA (non-value added) component, where they have to show student growth, but they can use DIBELS or anything else. BUT 5% of everyone's IMPACT score is based on DC CAS scores. This includes ALL teachers, custodians, educational aides, etc.

About DIBELS scores being posted. This was mandated from downtown. We were told that data needed to be posted with student names FOR ALL TO SEE! Thank goodness, our principal had some sense and realized that was a horrible idea and allowed us to not post names. My guess is that Rhee believes humiliation is a great motivator (for both teachers and students).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In DCPS, DIBELs assessment is used for preK, K, 1st, 2nd reading scores. Graphs of student achievement in the class were posted in the classrooms last year. Probably, DIBELs is used instead of DC-CAS at those grade levels.

Ok, totally naive mom of a K student here, but what is the point of posting the graphs in the classrooms? Is it supposed to motivate the students? The teachers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In DCPS, DIBELs assessment is used for preK, K, 1st, 2nd reading scores. Graphs of student achievement in the class were posted in the classrooms last year. Probably, DIBELs is used instead of DC-CAS at those grade levels.

Ok, totally naive mom of a K student here, but what is the point of posting the graphs in the classrooms? Is it supposed to motivate the students? The teachers?

My guess is it is to show that we are "data driven". I refuse to post any scores in my room. When the literacy coach brought it up, I told her to show me something in writing from DCPS to prove that I was required to do it. She doesn't bring up data walls any more but she does drive us all nuts with all this DIEBELS and TRC testing. It's just nutty.

Seriously, parents, you've got to look into this. Cause this is crazy stuff. And there's absolutely no research proving that this helps students to read and comprehend. Some of my most fluent readers have very low comprehension, while some of my least fluent readers comprehend more.