Cognitive Science, Education, Technology, etc.

So, as I said, Mark Roosevelt called my baby ugly.. The baby's my daughter's school. The Pittsburgh school district hired Rand to rate all the schools in the district, as part of their plan to close some schools down (the population's been declining, so there are too many buildings).

Rand took a "value-added" approach. Basically, this means that, instead of just looking at schools' test scores, they looked at those scores, relative to what you might expect the schools to do, considering their student population. Rand looked at demographic factors and especially emphasized how much students who transferred to or from a school improved, relative to their rate of improvement at other schools.

After running the numbers, they rated schools from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best rating.

So, my daughter's school, Colfax Spanish Academy rated a 1, the lowest rating. This school is in the middle for Pittsburgh Public Schools on an absolute score level, and it has been making AYP.

That's tough to take. The school's population has been changing rapidly in the past few years, so perhaps there are factors that aren't being reflected well in the statistics. After all, only last year, Rand claimed that "The current research base is insufficient to support the use of VAM [value-added modeling] for high-stakes decisions." In fact, one of the issues mentioned in the earlier Rand report is the need to account for residual effects of, for example, previous teachers -- exactly the kind of thing that would be especially hard to estimate when a school's population is changing rapidly.

Still, I doubt that the result is greatly distorted by these factors. Perhaps Colfax should have rated a 2, but probably not a 4.

A couple of interesting aspects of this are worth commenting on:
- I spoke to the principal immediately after the ratings came out. He had exactly the right reaction. His first thought was that this might convince the district to give him the reading coach he's been arguing for.

- I'm not sure what this says about NCLB. By one measure (the one that counts - AYP), the school's doing well. By another (perhaps a more accurate measure), the school's failing. If you're going to live and die by the numbers, you have to make sure you've got the right numbers. I'm not sure we do.

- Parents seem to be taking this in stride. There's a strong desire to dismiss the rating (lots of people have said that it "must" be wrong). Although I do think we need to measure results and act on the measurements, I find myself thinking this way. I'm not sure if this is really being dismissive about the number or if its just (perhaps misplaced) confidence that we'll be able to "fix the problem."

Sometimes, you just fall into things.

I went to a meeting, discussing school closings in Pittsburgh. The guy sitting in front of me happened to be a reporter, so now I'm quoted in the "legitimate press"

Too bad the reporter talked to be before the meeting, not after. Mark Roosevelt, the new Superintendent, was very impressive. He knows how to give bad news: give it straight, don't pull punches and get it over with.

Sure, he called my baby ugly, but that's a topic for a different post.

I have a lot of respect for what Edison Schools are trying to do, but this report shows how hard it is to make a difference.

You might not think the title is particularly impressive ("Analysis Finds Gains in Edison Schools, But Model Is No Quick Fix"), but it actually gives an optimistic description of the results. Basically, the study shows that Edison can do as well as the management it replaces, if they're given time (5 years!) to overcome the drop in scores resulting from the transition. Given that, typically, schools select Edison because things are just not working, this is not exactly a ringing endorsement.