Compass Point
A Weekly Collection of Data, Articles and Insights from the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute
A project of the Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Public Policy
L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
Recent State and Local Education News
New statewide school information website goes live

The Daily Press
November 29, 2016

If you're seeking pretty much any piece of data about your child's school, a new Virginia Department of Education website has you covered.


The new School Quality Profiles, located at schoolquality.virginia.gov, are a comprehensive look at how students at a school, school division and across the state are performing.

Data about accountability, assessments, enrollment, finance, teacher quality and more are easily available, displayed in pie and bar charts. Some of the data is displayed over the past three school years, while other data compares statistics, like Standards of Learning performance, to all Virginia students.

Student subgroups are listed below each chart. Clicking on 'Students with Disabilities,' for instance, will show how those students performed. Explanations and context, plus the data itself, is also readily available.

The state has been working on the quality profiles since 2015 legislation required the 'school report cards'to be reworked. The report cards present much of the same data, but it is presented in chart form — columns and rows of numbers that lack contextualization. The new profiles, VDOE spokesman Charles Pyle, should be more intuitive to use.


4 with ties to Virginia named Rhodes Scholars
Roanoke Times
November 22, 2016

A senior at Howard University with Richmond ties, two University of Virginia students and one from Washington and Lee University have been named 2017 Rhodes scholars.

They are among the 32 American students who won full scholarships to study at the University of Oxford in England. 

Cameron D. Clarke, a double major in community health education and biology at Howard, grew up in New Jersey, but his parents moved this year to Richmond.

Clarke will study public health policy for two years at Oxford before entering medical school.

“Medicine has always been a passion of mine,” said Clarke, a certified EMT. As co-president of Howard’s chapter of the Peer Health Exchange, he leads health education workshops for students at Washington public and charter schools.

That experience, he said, has galvanized his interest in public health and medicine.
The other Rhodes scholars are fourth-year U.Va. students Aryn Frazier of Laurel, Md., and Lauren Jackson of Little Rock, Ark., and Pasquale “Paqui” Toscano of Kettering, Ohio, who will graduate in December from W&L.

Jerry Falwell Jr.: I turned down Cabinet position
CBS News
November 26, 2016

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. says president elect-Donald Trump offered him the job of Secretary of Education, but he turned it down for personal reasons.

Falwell told The Associated Press on Saturday that Trump offered him the job last week during a meeting in New York. He says Trump wanted a four- to six-year commitment, but Falwell says he couldn’t leave Liberty for more than two years.

Virginia Tech signs collaborative deal with Lockheed Martin
Roanoke Times
November 25, 2016

Virginia Tech and Lockheed Martin have signed a new research agreement.

The agreement will allow for increased collaboration, and more recruiting and technical engagement between the two entities.

Over the past four years, Lockheed Martin has hired more than 80 Tech graduates and given internships to more than 100 students, according to a news release sent out by the company.

The company has also established several scholarships and sponsored student teams in engineering competitions.

In the past Lockheed Martin has partnered with the university on projects related to electrical and computer engineering and on research to do with wireless communications, cognition and signal processing.

Recent National Education News
SEVEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT EDUCATION PICK BETSY DEVOS
Newsweek
November 28, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has selected billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos, a relatively unknown figure on the national scene, to head the U.S. Department of Education.

“Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate,” Trump said in a press release. “Under her leadership we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families.”

Although she has little name recognition, DeVos is well known in the education world, having donated and served on the board for a number of school choice nonprofits.

“I am honored to accept this responsibility to work with the president-elect on his vision to make American education great again,” DeVos said in a statement. “The status quo in education is not acceptable. Together, we can work to make transformational change that ensures every student in America has the opportunity to fulfill his or her highest potential.”

DeVos is a relatively safe pick for conservatives who favor school choice programs such as vouchers that would enable low-income families to send their children to a private school of their choice. However, she is a polarizing figure for those who support the traditional public school system.

Here are seven things to know about Trump’s pick for education secretary:

1. She does not support Common Core, “period.”


Singapore tops global education rankings

BBC
November 29, 2016

Singapore has the highest-achieving primary and secondary pupils in international education tests in maths and science.  But primary school pupils in Northern Ireland were ranked sixth at maths, the highest of any in Europe.

England's performance has not advanced since tests four years ago.

The top places in these rankings are dominated by East Asian countries, such as South Korea and Japan, which are pulling away from their competitors.

These international rankings - Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) - are published every four years, based on tests taken by more than 600,000 students, aged nine to 10 and 13 to 14 in 57 countries.

International competition has been a major focus for changes to England's school system - and researchers say the "most surprising feature of England's 2015 results is how little they've changed since 2011".

"The period between 2011 and 2015, under Michael Gove, saw major changes to school structures, the curriculum, teacher training, and assessment, and so one might have expected to see some impact from these changes," said Ben Durbin at the National Foundation for Educational Research.

Secondary maths top 10

  1. Singapore
  2. South Korea
  3. Taiwan
  4. Hong Kong
  5. Japan
  6. Russia
  7. Kazakhstan
  8. Canada
  9. Ireland
  10. United States
  11. England

 

What is the Student-Teacher Ratio in Your School?

If you haven't heard about it, the Virginia Department of Education has a new School Quality data portal available.  The portal provides user friendly visualizations of a wide range of metrics aggregated at the individual school level as well as a whole school system level. Metrics are grouped into areas such as Accountability, Assessments, Enrollment, Teacher Quality, or College and Career Readiness.  Here's a screen capture of looking at the Teacher Quality tab for Henrico County Public Schools.


It's been a while since we looked at the question of instructional staffing, but given our publication the past few weeks of Dr. Vacca's Education Law Newsletter on Teacher Effectiveness, student-teacher ratios seemed worth revisiting.  Pedagogically, because of an increasing focus on tailoring education to the needs of the individual student, keeping at a manageable level of students each teacher must connect with, evaluate and encourage is perhaps even more important today than it was several decades ago.  From a policy perspective, as this 2011  briefing on the topic from Brookings points out, "class size is one of the small number of variables in American K-12 education that are both thought to influence student learning and are subject to legislative action. Legislative mandates on maximum class size have been very popular at the state level. In recent decades, at least 24 states have mandated or incentivized class-size reduction (CSR)."    

The Center for Public Education also published a review of 19 scientific studies conducted over several decades on the topic of class sizes in early elementary years.  They summarized their findings in the following way:   

From this review of the research, we can scientifically document several important findings about reduced class size, which local school districts may find useful:

  • Smaller classes in the early grades (K-3) can boost student academic achievement;
  • A class size of no more than 18 students per teacher is required to produce the greatest benefits;
  • A program spanning grades K-3 will produce more benefits than a program that reaches students in only one or two of the primary grades;
  • Minority and low-income students show even greater gains when placed in small classes in the primary grades;
  • The experience and preparation of teachers is a critical factor in the success or failure of class size reduction programs;
  • Reducing class size will have little effect without enough classrooms and well-qualified teachers; and
  • Supports, such as professional development for teachers and a rigorous curriculum, enhance the effect of reduced class size on academic achievement.
As noted above, the Virginia Department of Education tracks and publishes data on the student (or pupil) to teacher ratio in each school system in it's annual Superintendent's report.  It's important to remember that this number is generated not by counting how many students are in a given classroom, but by dividing the average daily membership (ADM) for the school system by the number of teaching positions reported for the school system. Likewise, the state reports these numbers for grades K-7 and grades 8-12 separately.  We pulled the most recent numbers from FY 2015 and mapped the variation in both these categories using Tableau Public (click here or on the maps below to access an interactive version.)

 

Several things jump out immediately.  First, the variation in student-teacher ratios is significant across the state, ranging from 5.1 students to each teacher in grades 8-12 in the small school system of Highland County (ADM for grades 8-12 was 77) to 18.14 in Prince William County (with an ADM for the same grades of 30,756).

Second, the ratios are not necessarily consistent between the lower grades and the higher grades.  For example, Brunswick County has a K-7 ratio of 15.06 but an 8-12 ratio of only 7.94.  

Additionally, we were interested to see whether there was a consistent shift in the student-teacher ratio across the state.  Below, we mapped the change from FY2014 to FY 2015, shading the school systems red if their ratio had gotten larger (meaning each teacher was responsible for more students) or green if the ratio came down.  

The shift was very mixed.  At the grade 8-12 level, 69 (52%) of the 132 geographically defined school systems saw their ratio increase while in grades K-7, there were 64 (or 48%) of the 132 school systems that saw their ratio increase.  

We hope you'll take a look at the interactive maps and also hop over to the VDOE School Quality portal and see what student-teacher ratios are like in the school closest to you (you can do a zipcode search to identify nearby schools).  

Below, we also share a final excerpt from Dr. Vacca's November Education Law Newsletter.   We hope you have a great week and start to December!

Sincerely,
CEPI
Education Law Newsletter - Teacher Effectiveness and Student Learning Outcomes

Excerpted from the November edition of CEPI's Education Law Newsletter.  This issue is written by Dr. Richard Vacca and looks at Cook, et al. v. Bennett, et al. (11th Cir. 2015).  Read the full newsletter on our website.

Cook, et al. v. Bennett, et al. (11th Cir. 2015)
Recently, I reviewed a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in which teachers challenged a newly implemented state system of teacher performance evaluation. Student academic achievement test scores were included.

Court of Appeals Rationale and Decision
The Eleventh Circuit Court first dealt with issues of standing and mootness. Regarding standing the Court held that because “the evaluation scores affect the teachers’ future employment outcomes, including their eligibility for raises, which are statutorily tied to performance evaluations,” and since “this sort of injury is concrete, imminent, and directly traceable to the defendants’ evaluation policies,” and “the injury is redressable by injunctive relief,” plaintiffs have standing to bring the law suit. Regarding mootness, the Court held that “[t]he changes in the Florida law and the districts’ evaluation policies are insufficient to render the case moot, because it is not ‘absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur’.” Thus, because “[t]he government has not carried its burden to show that the case is moot…we will consider the merits of the plaintiffs’ appeal.”
The Eleventh Circuit Court analyzed plaintiffs’ substantive due process claim. Viewing the claim as not infringing on a “fundamental right,” the Court applied the rational basis test. Under this test, said the Court, “the school districts’ evaluation policies ‘must be rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose.’” The plaintiffs argued that the evaluation policies fail rational basis review because the policies “arbitrarily and illogically evaluate teachers based on test scores either of students or in subjects they did not teach.” They claim that “the evaluation policies are not rationally related to, and in fact run counter to, the purpose for which the FCAT VAM was developed—that is, to attribute student learning growth to specific teachers by controlling for variables such as student demographics or school-wide factors like the principal.”
On the other hand, said the Court, the defendants do not justify the evaluation policies in relation to the FCAT VAM’s purpose. They argue “that the policies are rationally related to the purpose behind the Student Success Act itself, which is to ‘increas[e] student academic performance by improving the quality of instructional, administrative, and supervisory services in the public schools of the state’.” As such, the plaintiffs have failed to carry their burden “to refute this justification of the law.” Recognizing that using the FCAT VAM scores in the evaluation process might have some “unfair results,” the Court concluded that it might be possible that using the scores would incentivize teaches to pursue more school-wide improvements, which would in turn improve student academic performance. The Eleventh Circuit agreed with the district court that the policies pass rational basis review.
Turning to the plaintiffs’ equal protection claim and the legislation itself, and the fact that the Florida legislation and statutory scheme for teacher evaluations had been improved since its inception in 2014, the Court reiterated the rule regarding application of rational basis review. Legislation “is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn is rationally related to a legitimate state interest…. Rational basis review in the context of equal protection is equivalent to rational basis review in the context of due process.” Because the challenged evaluation procedures were rationally related to the purpose of improving student academic performance, the Court held that “plaintiffs’ equal protection claim also fails.”

Decision
Because the state and district defendants “could rationally believe that the challenged evaluation policies would improve students’ academic performance,” the Eleventh Circuit Court upheld, “the district court’s entry of summary judgment in the defendants’ favor.”

********

Policy Implications
Valuable information can be gleaned from the Eleventh Circuit Court’s rationale reviewed above. What follow are suggestions to keep in mind as local school officials reexamine existing teacher evaluation policies and consider the adoption of new ones—especially where states are moving in the direction of requiring the inclusion of statewide student academic testing results (outcomes) as criteria in evaluating teacher “instructional effectiveness.”

Local school system policies must make it clear that:
  • Teacher evaluations and job performance assessments are directly related to the measurement of teacher on-the-job effectiveness in meeting the school system’s goal of improving student academic growth and proficiency.
  • Teacher evaluations and on-the-job performance assessments include valid and reliable criteria for making judgments regarding on-the-job performance and instructional effectiveness.
  • Teacher evaluation and on-the-job measurement procedures are rationally related to the specific purpose of judging teacher instructional effectiveness in carrying out the school systems goal of improving student academic growth and proficiency.
  • Teacher evaluation and on-the-job assessments are intended as developmental and not punitive.