Encouraging students to think critically and teachers to collaborate

 Source: LA Times --Singled-out L.A. Unified teacher shares skills with colleagues

The LA Times wrote an article about an LA Unified school teacher who had a great rapport with students, encouraged them to develop and use critical thinking skills, and eventually ended up sharing his techniques with the rest of the teachers in  his building.   At first the collaboration with other teachers was slow, but it quickly picked up and the teaching and learning environment at the school has improved. Due to budget cuts, this teacher may lose his job.

It was the first time anyone at Broadous Elementary School in Pacoima could remember a teacher there being singled out for his skill and called upon to share his secrets school-wide."A teacher coming forward … that hadn't happened before," said Janelle Sawelenko, another fifth-grade teacher.

This is surprising and saddening.  Collaboration and communication are critical parts of any profession, and teaching is no different.

When the article appeared — followed soon after by a database ranking about 6,000 Los Angeles elementary school teachers — it ignited debate nationwide. Educators, teachers unions and experts warned that publicly rating teachers would pit one against the other.
Seven months later, Broadous teachers and the principal say the opposite has occurred. They've noticed a new openness to talking about what works, an urgent desire to improve. "It's encouraged them to collaborate," said Eidy Hemmati, the school's intervention coordinator.

Administrators at the school should be monitoring their teachers and scheduling regular meetings where teachers can collaborate.  The methods by which the rankings are generated do not tell the full story, they measure only the students performance on standardized tests. These rankings cannot and do not quantify how well a teacher connects with or inspires his or her students.  These rankings cannot and do not quantify how well a teacher encourages and brings out critical thinking or any thinking skills beyond memorization and matching.  These rankings cannot and do not quantify how well a teacher inspires students to love learning, etc.

Many educators, including many at Broadous, were skeptical of The Times' statistical approach, known as "value-added analysis." In essence, it estimates a teacher's effectiveness by measuring each student's performance on standardized tests compared to previous years. Because it measures students against their own track records, it largely controls for socioeconomic differences.

Firstly, standardized tests are usually multiple choice and measure only memorization / matching of disjointed facts.  Secondly, to address the highlighted point -- students are measured against themselves, but to suggest that this "controls for socioeconomic differences" is absurd.  Students are still at tremendous disadvantage, and even if they are improving against their own scores on a meaningless test, they are still behind better-off students at the same meaningless tests.

Like most districts, L.A. Unified historically hasn't distinguished between its stars and its stragglers, often rating the vast majority of teachers "satisfactory." And the culture of the teachers union values solidarity — during a protest against The Times last year, one of the union's speakers shouted, "We are all John Smiths."
By singling out Aguilar, the Times article had put him under an uneasy spotlight.
"Little by little I felt like I had to prove I was respected not just because of my test scores," he said, "but because of what I'm teaching in my classroom."

This is a stab at teacher's unions and the culture of educators.  Firstly, it implies that teachers unions want all their teachers performing at the same level.  (They should want everyone to be excellent, so that's a fair statement, but certainly not what is implied here.)  "We are all Johns Smiths." is a statement of solidarity with the people -- it's saying that teachers are part of the community and just as invested in the success of the children as their own parents.   They are like any other working man or woman on the street in your neighborhood -- they are your neighbors and friends.   "We are all John Smiths." does not mean "We want all of our teachers to be mediocre, and we don't like outstanding teachers!"   The highlighted quote by Aguilar speaks volumes -- teachers don't care about meaningless test scores, and don't respect teachers who "teach to the test" because (due to the way the tests are constructed) that is an abomination unto teaching and a disservice to the students.   The teachers grew to respect Aguilar because he displayed excellence in teaching by encouraging his students to think critically, introduced innovative, engaging, and appropriately challenging exercises for his students, and then carefully monitored their progress and moved forward making sure they mastered the material as much as possible.

On visits to his classroom, Principal Stannis Steinbeck quickly concluded that Aguilar was not simply "teaching to the test" — a concern among critics of the value-added approach. He had an uncanny ability to connect with his students while commanding their respect.
When she learned later that Aguilar had devised his own method for teaching reading and comprehension, she asked for a demonstration. Steinbeck was impressed: Aguilar forced students to slow down and think before answering questions. Without dumbing down lessons, he broke down key concepts in a way that his fifth-graders, among the grade's least fluent in English, could readily understand.

It is important to note that none of this was made obvious by the Value-Added Assessment.  The VAA didn't have a column or checkbox that said "Innovative methods" or "Genuine bond with students", etc. This is why teachers are fundamentally critical of the VAA method of assessments -- schools pay for these tests, which reveal nothing that could not have been revealed by a simple (free) classroom visit from a principal.  

That night at home, Aguilar made a chart of which students got which type of questions wrong. The next week, he would put them in groups to focus on that particular comprehension skill. 

Sal Khan is perfecting the art of "monitoring for mastery" on an individual level (to coin another educational phrase) with his free software designed to help teachers with the impossible task of "differentiated instruction". Watch Khan's TED talk and demo then give it a try.