I recently sent a letter to my beloved Times about a pseudo-study that a trio of their contributors foisted upon The Times reading public — which I entitled: “The L.A. Times Gets a ‘D-.‘” Needless to say, they didn’t publish my article. After re-reading my letter(a-few-times), I can safely say that my tone was rather haughty; arrogant; and, a bit pompous.
But I’m learning daily, that to break through the walls of bullshit surrounding the average American, and, the average American bureaucracy – you had better have a big mouth, and, pack a few facts.
My letter to The Times was a response to yet another article that bashed teachers, and, the Los Angeles Unified School District. For any readers not residing within L.A. Times circulation reach – three reporters (because they sure as heck were not researchers or social scientists) – decided that it would be OK for them to evaluate teacher efficiency by using the California Standards Test for students as they moved through 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. If the student(s) showed improvement from one-year-to-another (or not), their aggregated scores were incorporated into (what I assume was being called): a “value-added teacher efficiency measure” (through ‘value-added analyses’ [I’m assuming]). These neophyte social scientists (and dangerous journalists) thought that with the aid of a Rand statistician – that they might just possibly be measuring the efficiency of a teacher.
Since I am a fairly patient fellow – I dare not call these journalists and wannabe social scientists “Stupid”: I guess I have to suggest that they are misguided; naïve; and, generally uninformed. As I suggested in my letter to my beloved Times: “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
One of my CSUN colleagues sent me a rather brilliant, satirical piece — by a fellow named Jon Taylor (God! I wish I could write like this guy!!) — about a test to measure the efficiency of dentists. The dentist’s efficiency was to be measured by the number of cavities his/her patient had at ages 10, 12 and 14. Like the arbitrary measure levied on teachers – there is so much that goes into a cavity (or into a test) that is beyond the practitioner’s control.
I could expose the plethora of fallacies and nonsense in The Times article by Felch, Smith & Song, but the commitment of the atomistic fallacy seems the best to-zero-in-on in this essay. In short, the atomistic fallacy is committed when the observation of One – is generalized to a group that the One is comparable to. Our intrepid journalists interviewed a young(ish), highly motivated, Latino teacher whose students seemed to do better on their math tests as a consequence of being with him. They also interviewed a 63-year-old, White, male teacher who had also been teaching for approximately 13 years (I guess the 13 years of teaching must have served as their leveling constant for their comparison) whose students appeared to regress on their math scores while under this fellow’s tutelage.
What I quickly discerned (and some of my clever college students as well) was the obvious: teaching was the 63-year-old’s second or third choice of career – so naturally, he wasn’t nearly as committed to the enterprise of education as the younger fellow (who probably had a long-standing passion for the ‘calling’). Factor in the fact that it is exceedingly difficult to find good math teachers (and always has been), and, that the LAUSD provides lifetime medical for their service members after 15-years-of-service, then, one begins to see why some teachers are more efficacious than others.
Of course, I’m not against valid and reliable measures for measuring teacher efficiency to root out shitty teachers, but I’m also for evaluations for every single profession to root out shitty performers…including, shitty journalists.