Taken from: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=272950882709&topic=15755 (this original thread has been removed and replaced with the link below)
Update 8-1-10: This topic thread and forum responses has been removed and replaced with this: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=272950882709&topic=15760
Original post: "Jim Babb For FBISD- You all know where I stand on the GSTC. Dr. Jenney recently advised me that he does still intend to build the center and indicated that it will be funded primarily by residual bonds from previous bond elections. However, 20% must come from private sector contributions. Of course, the cost staffing & maintaining the center, as well as transporting the students must also be considered. As proposed, the center will serve grades 2-8. Below is a link to the FBISD page, regarding the center.
http://www.fortbend.k12.tx.us/FeaturedItem/GlobalScienceCenter/default.cfm "
-This is the same central office museum plan that was extensively covered here and throughout the local media last year. As many of you remember the district has been undergoing a 3rd consecutive record budget deficit that also involved large "reductions in force". This 20-30 million dollar project has never been voted on by the public and was not on prior bond/debt elections.
Stay tuned for updates...(search this site for additional background on this hot button issue)
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
FB Sun: Teachers Federation Discusses Recent Court Fight
Federation makes push for step pay increases and information for members
By DIANE TEZENO
Updated: 07.16.10
The Fort Bend Employee Federation held a recent press conference to announce plans to issue several challenges to the Fort Bend Independent School District.
Among the issues are step pay increases for teachers, access to information used to terminate employees in the recent reduction in force and academic honesty in the classroom related to grading policies.
Top on the list of Federation concerns is step pay increases for teachers in the 2010-2011 school year.
“We are only talking about $400 to $800 per teacher for the year,” FBEF President Karrie Washenfelder said.
“Each district is allowed to determine their step on their own, it is not rendered by the state in any way, but teacher salaries are so compressed there is not a lot of room for advancement on the pay scale, so the step is just a built-in amount to provide for the cost of living,” Washenfelder said.
According to the district, the recent Attorney General Opinion will cause the FBISD budget to increase $3.5 million...
Get the full article at: http://www.hcnonline.com/articles/2010/07/19/fort_bend_sun/news/sws_-_teacher_federation_716.txt
By DIANE TEZENO
Updated: 07.16.10
The Fort Bend Employee Federation held a recent press conference to announce plans to issue several challenges to the Fort Bend Independent School District.
Among the issues are step pay increases for teachers, access to information used to terminate employees in the recent reduction in force and academic honesty in the classroom related to grading policies.
Top on the list of Federation concerns is step pay increases for teachers in the 2010-2011 school year.
“We are only talking about $400 to $800 per teacher for the year,” FBEF President Karrie Washenfelder said.
“Each district is allowed to determine their step on their own, it is not rendered by the state in any way, but teacher salaries are so compressed there is not a lot of room for advancement on the pay scale, so the step is just a built-in amount to provide for the cost of living,” Washenfelder said.
According to the district, the recent Attorney General Opinion will cause the FBISD budget to increase $3.5 million...
Get the full article at: http://www.hcnonline.com/articles/2010/07/19/fort_bend_sun/news/sws_-_teacher_federation_716.txt
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The "Texas Projection Measure (TPM)" In Trouble.....It Should Be!
See this OP/ED from a local blog:
Saturday, July 10, 2010
TEA to Dump TPM?
I’ve been following the series at the Chronicle by Rick Casey on how the TEA is using TAKS scores in their campus rating system, something called the AEIS. Casey is looking at something that we educators have all had our attention turned toward lately, the Texas Projection Measure or TPM.
This is because raw scores notwithstanding, how the TEA uses the TPM, especially in borderline cases, greatly influences which of the four categories your campus will fall into.
Will the campus be rated as Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable. And how will the district be rated?
This is because, depending on how your campus is rated, it is then determined how many or how few hoops you must jump through as the school year progresses. The higher the rating, the fewer the hoops.
State Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston) is also concerned with this measurement, as we read through Casey’s pieces. As he is chairman of a House education appropriations committee, he is a little worried about the jump in Exemplary campus ratings last year and wondered why that happened. As it happens, 73 of the 74 newly rated exemplary districts made that cut because of the TPM.
That is, actual student performance did not determine a district's exemplary status in 73 cases. Instead it was a statistical projection of the number of students who will eventually pass the TAKS test that did the trick.
And that is well and good if the TPM is an accurate predictor. The trouble is, that isn’t necessarily the case.
In his first piece, Casey revealed that a student could receive a passing TPM score after answering none of a TAKS test’s questions correctly. That is, a student who received a zero on a TAKS text could be scored as a student who would eventually pass the test.
Asked to defend this, Associate Commissioner in charge of the accountability system, Chris Cloudt claimed that the TPM was a “growth measure” of performance. One would assume that this was a comparison of performance from previous tests, and in doing so, one would assume wrongly. It is actually a formula applied to a student’s test score that looks back on “thousands of prior results.” It is, to use an industry term, a “fudge factor.”
The “fudge factor,” as it turns out, was devised by the national testing company Pearson Education. And when the “fudge factor” is applied to a theoretical student who scores a zero on a TAKS test, it transforms the zero to a passing score. Not based on the student’s own improvement but based on improvement of a pool of students.
It is, in short, fiction. Or better yet, it is, in short, wishful thinking.
The upside is that more and more campuses will be awarded Exemplary or even Recognized ratings, and teachers will be less beset by paperwork.
There is a downside, however. If the “fudge factor” skews all test scores upward, then schools that are actually in trouble with attaining an Acceptable rating will fly under the radar, and some necessary corrections and controls will not be applied that should be.
Politically, this could be disastrous. If public schools are viewed as having escaped poor ratings because of a state-sanctioned “fudge factor” that creates test scores that are more myth than fact, this only provides fodder to the rightwing that scream for school accountability by diverting public school funds to private, hopefully religious schools.
It gives those that raise a hue and cry for school vouchers the ammunition they need.
Ammunition that might penetrate Kevlar.
My guess, then, is that the TEA may be poised, as this article in the Austin American-Statesman suggests, to eliminate the TPM as a measure of student progress.
Unfortunately, old habits die hard as we see with what is being entertained by Education Commissioner Robert Scott, who lists three options: “the suspension of the measurement, continued use of the measurement for districts that choose to and modification of the measurement's calculation.”
Hochberg seems unimpressed:
“You don't make an invalid measure valid by doing less of it. I think we should start from scratch and develop a real measure of the progress students make in schools.”
Putting “lipstick on a pig” is how Hochberg characterized this....( get the full piece at http://halfempth.blogspot.com/2010/07/tea-to-dump-tpm.html )
FBW Comment: Almost 2 years ago when this controversy was still being debated we took a strong position against using "projection measures" (formulated guess-work) instead of actual outcomes. It would seem much of the bragging superintendents and school boards have been crowing about over the last year and a half has been more empty boasts than actual performing. With so many superintendent salaries tied to this key performance measure you'd think we would want it to have a baseline that could demonstrate sound statistical praxis for further measurement, which obviously is not the current case. Ask yourself which special interest push the "feel good" measure besides the assessment vendors...
Related:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/facebook/7096582.html
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/state-may-eliminate-use-of-student-testing-projection-794907.html
Saturday, July 10, 2010
TEA to Dump TPM?
I’ve been following the series at the Chronicle by Rick Casey on how the TEA is using TAKS scores in their campus rating system, something called the AEIS. Casey is looking at something that we educators have all had our attention turned toward lately, the Texas Projection Measure or TPM.
This is because raw scores notwithstanding, how the TEA uses the TPM, especially in borderline cases, greatly influences which of the four categories your campus will fall into.
Will the campus be rated as Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable. And how will the district be rated?
This is because, depending on how your campus is rated, it is then determined how many or how few hoops you must jump through as the school year progresses. The higher the rating, the fewer the hoops.
State Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston) is also concerned with this measurement, as we read through Casey’s pieces. As he is chairman of a House education appropriations committee, he is a little worried about the jump in Exemplary campus ratings last year and wondered why that happened. As it happens, 73 of the 74 newly rated exemplary districts made that cut because of the TPM.
That is, actual student performance did not determine a district's exemplary status in 73 cases. Instead it was a statistical projection of the number of students who will eventually pass the TAKS test that did the trick.
And that is well and good if the TPM is an accurate predictor. The trouble is, that isn’t necessarily the case.
In his first piece, Casey revealed that a student could receive a passing TPM score after answering none of a TAKS test’s questions correctly. That is, a student who received a zero on a TAKS text could be scored as a student who would eventually pass the test.
Asked to defend this, Associate Commissioner in charge of the accountability system, Chris Cloudt claimed that the TPM was a “growth measure” of performance. One would assume that this was a comparison of performance from previous tests, and in doing so, one would assume wrongly. It is actually a formula applied to a student’s test score that looks back on “thousands of prior results.” It is, to use an industry term, a “fudge factor.”
The “fudge factor,” as it turns out, was devised by the national testing company Pearson Education. And when the “fudge factor” is applied to a theoretical student who scores a zero on a TAKS test, it transforms the zero to a passing score. Not based on the student’s own improvement but based on improvement of a pool of students.
It is, in short, fiction. Or better yet, it is, in short, wishful thinking.
The upside is that more and more campuses will be awarded Exemplary or even Recognized ratings, and teachers will be less beset by paperwork.
There is a downside, however. If the “fudge factor” skews all test scores upward, then schools that are actually in trouble with attaining an Acceptable rating will fly under the radar, and some necessary corrections and controls will not be applied that should be.
Politically, this could be disastrous. If public schools are viewed as having escaped poor ratings because of a state-sanctioned “fudge factor” that creates test scores that are more myth than fact, this only provides fodder to the rightwing that scream for school accountability by diverting public school funds to private, hopefully religious schools.
It gives those that raise a hue and cry for school vouchers the ammunition they need.
Ammunition that might penetrate Kevlar.
My guess, then, is that the TEA may be poised, as this article in the Austin American-Statesman suggests, to eliminate the TPM as a measure of student progress.
Unfortunately, old habits die hard as we see with what is being entertained by Education Commissioner Robert Scott, who lists three options: “the suspension of the measurement, continued use of the measurement for districts that choose to and modification of the measurement's calculation.”
Hochberg seems unimpressed:
“You don't make an invalid measure valid by doing less of it. I think we should start from scratch and develop a real measure of the progress students make in schools.”
Putting “lipstick on a pig” is how Hochberg characterized this....( get the full piece at http://halfempth.blogspot.com/2010/07/tea-to-dump-tpm.html )
FBW Comment: Almost 2 years ago when this controversy was still being debated we took a strong position against using "projection measures" (formulated guess-work) instead of actual outcomes. It would seem much of the bragging superintendents and school boards have been crowing about over the last year and a half has been more empty boasts than actual performing. With so many superintendent salaries tied to this key performance measure you'd think we would want it to have a baseline that could demonstrate sound statistical praxis for further measurement, which obviously is not the current case. Ask yourself which special interest push the "feel good" measure besides the assessment vendors...
Related:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/facebook/7096582.html
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/state-may-eliminate-use-of-student-testing-projection-794907.html
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
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