September 7, 2007
Numbers Don’t Lie, But . . .
Filed under: Education NYC DOE by CitySue @ 6:53 pm
. . . those who attempt to explain them often do. The so-called Learning Environment Survey the city released today is a case in point.
For teachers the results were gratifying. Nobody — not even Mike the Master of Spin — could do anything to diminish a statistically astounding 90 percent approval rate!
Curiously, although the DOE apparently wanted to know what parents thought about “the quality” of their child’s teacher, it didn’t ask parents what they thought of the school principal. Though maybe it’s not so surprising considering the fact that Klein is betting the farm on them to bail him out of the first and second reorganizations.
But teachers, on the other hand, did get to voice what they thought about their bosses, and the results weren’t very pretty. Here again, the spinmasters were flummoxed by the clear consensus. Although two-thirds of principals came out OK, a significant quarter to a third were charged with being ineffective, untrustworthy, unsupportive, unhelpful, discouraging of honest communication, and uninviting of collaboration with teachers. Need I say more?
On the issues, however, the spinning got frantic. Under pressure from the UFT, parents and the State Ed Dept to get serious about reducing class size, Mike could not let go by a finding that parents chose smaller classes as the single most important school improvemnt they wanted by a substantial margin. (The next most popular choice was “More or better enrichmnet programs,” chosen by 19% of parents.) So, what does he do? He lumps four other choices together — enrichment, hands-on learning (13%), more challenging courses (8%) and arts programs (5%) — and comes up with the conclusion that “double the number of people (actually just parents; the question was not in the teacher or student survey) wanted more money spent on enriching programs as opposed to class size.” He must have been dizzy from getting that statement out.
Finally, he and the number crunchers at DOE committed a more serious statistical no-no by implying a question was asked when it wasn’t. If someone told you that “Ten times as many parents strongly prefer more test preparation over less test preparation,” you’d conclude that parents were asked if they wanted more or less test prep and 10 times as many chose “More.” Not so. In fact, parents were given 10 choices of school improvements and told they could choose only one. Both “more test prep” and “less test prep” were on the list, but they were not posed as choose one or the other. Most people chose neither. Obvioously test prep was not high on their list of priorities; only 11% chose test prep at all, combining both the “more” and “less” choices.
Also an important point: a disproportionate number of respondents were in early childhood grades, K-3. Other than grade 3, there is not much test prep in those grades. In fact, any pollster could challenge the representativeness of the entire survey, whether by grade level or by almost every other demographic.
Still, no skepticism about the validity of the survey can undermine a result so overwhelming as a 90% vote for teachers. We can savor that with complete confidence.
More important are the individual school results. Are they informative? Helpful? Accurate? I’d love to hear some opinions from schools on that.
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Individual schools? Samples are too small, and too many questions are the wrong questions.
How do you put a number on getting e-mails home instead of letters instead of phone calls?
When things are running well, would you really expect weekly contact? Well, maybe, but wouldn’t that depend on the school?
The people who flog us for failing to differentiate instruction don’t know how to differentiate a lousy survey.
Jonathan
Comment by jd2718 — September 7, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
I have a question for my union. Why don’t you ever publicize these blatant mistruths Bloomberg & Klein are constantly spinning? They are obviously anti-teacher and want to further erode our union protections, so why do we (our union) seem to never do anything? Opportunity after opportunity seems to present itself to build community support beyond just parents by pointing out Bloomberg and Klein’s rather serious misrepresentations (or as I would teach my students LIES). If we were more active in “calling out” Bloomberg and Klein, maybe by now there credibility would be in serious doubt and perhaps this latest reorganization (mess) wouldn’t have been possible. Maybe parents as well as the UFT might actually of found a real voice in the school system? But, we will never know because it seems we are afraid to dissent? I don’t get it?
Comment by ILuvteaching — September 9, 2007 @ 11:04 am
Many of the teachers gave my principal a high rating for being collaborative when she is not and never has been. In fact their is a running joke in the school about lack of respect for us.
When I asked a teacher about it, she told me she did not want the principal to get angry.
It’s amazing when given the opportunity to make a change, their are teachers still afraid to make waves.
Comment by Schoolgal — September 9, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
ILuvteaching, did you read the post you’re commenting on? Might be a good idea. Because it calls out Bloomberg and Klein on their spinning.
Comment by mevans212 — September 10, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
Sorry about the misspelling of their when I meant “there”.
I understand that there are changes being made to the SLT bylaws that take away any meaningful input by teachers and parents. Why isn’t the UFT talking about that on the radio?
Comment by Schoolgal — September 10, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
For those who don’t know, School Leadership Teams bring together the principal, parents, teachers and staff at a school to create the school’s education plan. As schools become more autonomous, SLTs become more important.
Successful schools are collaborative. A school is much stronger when everyone involved is on the same page and working together. That’s what SLTs are for.
But now there’s a proposal to make a statutory change to SLTs so that they’re consultive instead of collaborative. I think that’s a step backward. Principals need to work with parents and staff to succeed. Changing the SLT bylaws won’t change that.
This is all pretty inside baseball stuff that doesn’t fit into a 60 second radio ad. But if there’s interest, I’ll work to get a blog post up on SLTs.
Comment by Steve Perez — September 11, 2007 @ 6:24 pm
At my school, some teachers were afraid to fill out the survey, thinking they really wouldn’t be anonymous. This must have been a widespread concern because I recall receiving a letter from Klein addressing this issue specifically.
I’d still like to see the UFT design its own online survey. We could ask all the questions we wished Klein had asked, including ones about the integrity of the grading process.
Comment by MichaelB — September 11, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
Let’s be careful not to confuse what the SLTs could be with what they actually are.
And in successful schools, teachers have voice and share in decision making. The SLT could be one vehicle for that.
Comment by jd2718 — September 11, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
Fair point jd2718.
What do you think of the SLT at your school?
Comment by Steve Perez — September 12, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
[...] that lowering class size is the top parent priority in the Learning Environment Survey. See this Edwize post for [...]
Pingback by Teacher News of the Day | Edwize — September 12, 2007 @ 5:38 pm
I’m fairly careful about not writing publicly about the sorts of details in my school that might be locally negotiated or contentious. If things are good, they are good; if things are broken, it is my job to try to help fix them (I am Chapter Leader). And while I do not use my last name on line, I am hardly anonymous. It would hardly be advantageous to put these details into a blog post.
However, you seem to have a fairly positive opinion of SLTs. What experiences helped you form your view?
Comment by jd2718 — September 12, 2007 @ 8:03 pm
[...] the recently-released Learning Environment Survey proves interesting. It was originally posted on Edwize and written by Edwize blogger CitySue.]. . . those who attempt to explain them often do. The [...]
Pingback by Numbers Don't Lie, But . . . | Room Eight — September 17, 2007 @ 10:26 am
MichaelB, many in my school were also afraid that the surveys weren’t anonymous enough…a few of us tried to make them more anonymous by not filling in the sections inquiring of the subjects that we taught and the amount of time we had been teaching (could the levels that we taught also been a category of which we were wary? I don’t remember).
However, I am not so sure that doing the survey on-line would be any more anonymous; in fact, I think taking the survey on-line would be LESS anonymous. I am fairly certain that there is a way to trace e-mails (paranoid as that may sound).
Comment by firebrand — September 17, 2007 @ 11:35 pm
[...] Numbers Don’t Lie, But . . . | Edwize [...]
Pingback by Just another WordPress weblog — September 26, 2007 @ 8:07 pm