A Small Request for My Friends at Gates
by Frederick M. Hess • Mar 7, 2014 at 8:32 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
 Print |  Send |  RSS |
Share
At an Al Shanker Institute forum a few weeks back, at the AFT's DC headquarters, I aggressively defended the good intentions and fair-mindedness of foundation staff working on education (you can see the eventhere). I offered my own criticisms, but I mostly told an audience very skeptical of Gates/Walton/Broad/et al. that the people I know at these foundations are smart, well-intentioned, and entirely willing to hear and benefit from criticism, so long as it's offered up constructively and in a spirit of mutual respect. The problem, I said, was how rarely skeptics reached out in that spirit.
Indeed, I said that if critics did so and hit a wall, I'd be willing to see if I could help. Well, John Thompson, blogger and award-winning teacher, wrote to say he has a few suggestions for the Measures of Effective Teaching team at the Gates Foundation but doesn't know how to connect with them. I've known Thompson for a while now and, throughout our various disagreements, I've found him smart and thoughtful. He asked if I'd share his ideas. Because I thought the whole exercise a healthy one, I thought I'd do it this way.
Thompson, in his words, "respectfully proposes" that Gates consider the following, when it comes to determining whether good teaching looks the same in high- and low-poverty schools. He writes:
1. "[Gates] should follow their standard procedure and observation rubric in high-challenge classrooms. That will be the control. They'd then follow the same procedures with other evaluators, but only after briefing those evaluators on the students' disciplinary and criminal justice records, IEP and ELL status, and the school's policies on enforcing its code of conduct. The question is how much that would change observation outcomes.2. Run the value-added of schools, controlled by the hour of the day. Then, compare the value-added of the same teachers, with the same students, and compare them by hour. Do they achieve the same value-added first hour and after lunch, as during the middle of the morning?
Hey, folks, so I've got an interesting opportunity to announce as we leave this snow behind and head into the spring season. I just had an unexpected opening emerge, creating a rare and potentially very cool opportunity for a new research assistant to...
