Thanks for this...appreciate your lists and miss them when they don't come out.

It's probably worth noting that TfA does not send teachers to representative schools, and schools with more low-income students tend to have more diverse teaching staffs. So, for example, this morning Michael Pershan and I managed to find teacher demographics for schools with >75% of students on FRPL: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_2013314_t12n_001.asp In 2012, in low income schools were 63% white, 16.5% Hispanic, 15.2% black. The 2014 TfA corps is now *much* more racially diverse than teachers as a whole, but roughly as diverse as teachers in low-income schools.

Thanks, all. I'm sure I'll be around the internet in some form or another.

Thanks, Mike!

John - The entirety of their argument is, basically, if twice as many students are considered "below grade level" when they enter HS, twice as many students will drop out for academic reasons. That's crude, to say the least. Changing the standards doesn't actually change the distribution of abilities with which kids enter HS, so kids' perceptions of their abilities *relative to their peers* will probably remain mostly unchanged. If more kids start dropping out for academic reasons, that's probably because their perceptions of their abilities would change *relative to school and classroom standards*. But why should that change much? A certain percentage of kids drop out for academic reasons now largely because teachers and schools are comfortable pushing that fraction of kids out of HS by giving them work of a certain difficulty. But there's no reason to think teachers are suddenly going to raise their standards so suddenly and dramatically that twice as many kids get overwhelmed and quit. In other words, you seem to be assuming that teachers, schools, and states are basically robots who don't have the programming or ability to adjust *other* factors when the standards go up. (Note that the report technically does *not* assume this, since it stipulates that their numbers only apply if there is "no improved support" for students. This is an obfuscatory way for them to admit that the dropout rate will not, in practice, double.) In reality, educators and policy makers will handle things exactly as they do now: they will lower the practical bars for students until they are comfortable that not *too* many kids are being pushed out of school. That's why kids who are "below grade level" graduate now, and it's why they will almost certainly continue to graduate at very similar rates under the CCSS. (My guess is that the dropout rate is due for a bump anyway since we're at an all-time high and the economy is improving. That's probably inevitable with or without the CCSS.)

I've only scanned the report, but I don't understand the mechanism by which the CCSS are supposed to double dropout rates. To graduate students aren't "held to the standards", they just need some combination of passing grades in the relevant courses and adequate performance on exit exams. Graduation standards, in other words, aren't the CCSS, they're teachers' standards and exit exam standards, both of which are bars that can be relatively easily adjusted to graduate the desired number of students. Way more students graduate *now* than are "college & career ready" (or whatever). Why would that change under the CCSS?

@Harry - As I said to Educator, that's a very narrow definition of "collaboration", and while it would probably be discouraged for rock star teachers, it's not obviously ideal to just expect that sort of "collaboration" as a matter of charity. I don't think many rock star teachers exist to begin with, and even fewer are actively donating their time and effort today anyway. It seems to me if administrators want that sort of charity from them they should be paying them for it directly anyway, for both efficiency and fairness reasons.

@Larry - Whether performance pay schemes grade on a curve is a design choice, and I don't know whether most do or don't. But it mostly doesn't matter for present purposes. *If* collaboration is *usually* helpful for *most* teachers, then most forms of collaboration would probably be encouraged by a scheme that rewards effectiveness *even if effectiveness is graded on a curve*. It's always going to be possible to design a performance pay scheme to discourage collaboration if you really try, but most performance pay schemes - even if they grade on a curve - don't just compare you to the teachers with whom you collaborate. Rather, they put you on a curve with a much larger pool of teachers. It's an important distinction, because while collaboration may not improve your effectiveness *compared to teachers with whom you collaborate*, if it improves your effectiveness in absolute terms it will improve your effectiveness *compared to other teachers in the pool*, who are not benefiting from collaborating with you. More concretely: if you and I collaborate, there are a few possibilities. If you and I benefit and benefit equally, we are not advantaged relative to each other, but we're suddenly more competitive than our peers who didn't collaborate with us. The more likely scenario is that I would benefit much more than you, but if you think you would benefit at all, that would still give you a leg up compared to all of the others who didn't collaborate with us and reap some of the benefit. Now, if you think - entirely reasonably - that you would not actually benefit noticeably from collaborating with me, then it's true that a performance pay scheme would discourage you from doing so. After all, it would occupy some of your time and energy and nudge you a bit lower down on the curve. But that was part of my point: if we think that performance pay schemes discourage collaboration, it's because we think collaboration is very limited in its utility: perhaps useful in some situations, by no means universally valuable. As I said, I'm ambivalent about when collaboration is and is not helpful, and I don't really have a dog in that fight, but my point is that the more highly you think of collaboration in general, the less you should worry about performance pay schemes discouraging it. @Educator - It may be that self-assessed high performers tend to think they don't get much out of helping weaker teachers. I agree that such interactions would, in that case, be discouraged by most performance pay schemes, but I also don't think of that as "collaboration" so much as "mentorship" and if high-performers really don't get much out of such interactions we should probably be compensating them separately in any case.

@Ben - That's definitely another possibility. FWIW, that is not at all my (limited) experience with the public sector, at least as a teacher. My experience as a teacher is one of more-or-less constant pressure to 'carry your weight' as a colleague, and the only coworker I ever had who struck me as clearly ineffective was aggressively engaged by the administration. That said, I do often hear stories about obviously ineffective teachers who don't feel any external pressure to perform, so I'm sure they're out there.

Caroline: To clarify- 1) E4E does not require a 'loyalty oath' - whatever that means - as I can attest as a member. They are explicit about their core principles when you sign up - the sort of transparency we should expect - but it would be hilariously misleading to characterize that as a 'loyalty oath' or that it means that all members agree about any particular principle. 2) I didn't actually say what range of viewpoints E4E represents. 3) Not all E4E members agree with Menya on everything. I've seen the disagreements between members, even on issues of differentiated compensation, firsthand! So even if you weren't caricaturing E4E in several ways, I don't know what your point is supposed to be.

Frankly, I hadn't followed the case that closely. Where were the plaintiffs going to school such that they weren't subject to tenure statutes? Charters? I thought (maybe just assumed) they were in district schools.

I'm not entirely clear on the logistics of the New Orleans system, but the article linked above describes it this way: "All 33,000 students in the district must apply for a seat at one of the 58 public charter schools, relying on a computerized lottery to determine placement." That sounds similar to Oakland's system for district school choice. I'd guess that, like Oakland, they let families rank more than one school preference. In any case, it will be interesting to see the dynamics if some charters want to throw up more barriers to entry than others.

As I said, I think it's fine to point out study limitations, although I'd emphasize (again) that the body of research literature comparing teachers recruited/prepared in different ways is quite substantial at this point and the various studies all tend to reach roughly similar conclusions despite variations in context (e.g., state) and methodology. I certainly hope the field is moving toward more rigorous evaluations of prep program value, though I worry that the "traditional prep" camp (such as it is) might find it difficult to unify around them. Even in my own (highly-respectable!) prep program there was a strong vein of "teaching-is-ineffable-and-indescribable" among both faculty and students and it'll be interesting to see how that faction handles the push for more concrete program comparisons.

"Small" gains? That's 24-26pts for all three subgroups in a single generation.

Fair enough; standards are important in their own right, though we probably disagree about the amount of improvement we could expect from even the best standards. Still, my main point is that the "standards are not a curriculum" defense represents another front on which CCSS supporters are retreating. Once upon a time the CCSS were going to drive significant instructional changes. Now supporters are the first to point out that, actually, standards and curricula are completely separate things. As I said, it's not that that defense of the CCSS is "wrong" so much as it underscores the limits of standards per se as an education reform.

@David - What I'm saying is that it's far from established that an evaluation system that incorporates VAM is "the worst option and significantly counterproductive". Once we acknowledge that all evaluation methods have limits, it's simply a matter of determining - rather than assuming - which methods or combinations of methods work best for which purposes. I'm not sure why you think I'm "endorsing" VAM for evaluation. I'm simply declining to rule it out. (Indeed, in this respect - declining to endorse - I am in many respects hewing closer to the positions of many of those expert organizations than you are.) It's not just that "nothing is perfect", it's that (1) I see no reason to assume a priori that the limitations of VAMs are worse or more insurmountable than the limitations of other methods and (2) there is evidence that VAMs capture useful information with some reliability and (3) there is some preliminary evidence that evaluation systems incorporating VAMs have at least some positive effects. (I'm not nearly so quick as you to dismiss these studies out of hand, and I am typically suspicious when one "side" in a debate comes to the conclusion that all of the studies inconvenient for their position are "flawed" but the studies convenient for their position are mostly fine.) If I can't point out that "other methods are flawed, too" (even though you seem to agree with this), presumably it's unfair to just stipulate that the flaws of other methods can be overcome (or are worth the trade-offs) but the flaws of VAMs can't be. "Nothing is perfect" is obviously not enough to justify any particular evaluation method, but nor is "let's assume only the flaws of my preferred method can be worked out or are worth the trade-offs". It's not obviously the case that VAM can stand on its merits. But there are reasons to think it might be able to, so it's by no means obvious that it can't. You are clearly certain about your position but remember that I am merely arguing for agnosticism, which I think is the most justifiable position on the basis of the facts available.