Twitter Feed Analysis March 13th-20th
Twitter Feed Analysis Week March 13th through 20th
By: Tiernan Donohue
This week on twitter the discussions spanned from debates on teacher quality and evaluations to the ways in which American education can learn from international school models.
Beginning on Tuesday, March 13th, a lot of the discussion on twitter centered on the controversy regarding the Khan Academy in response to a 60 Minutes story on the program which aired on Sunday, March 11th. The Khan Academy was founded by Sal Khan to help a family member with homework through “a collection of video lectures” (http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.in/2012/03/khan-academy-not-good-pedagogy-and-not.html ). The discussion on twitter to the Khan Academy continued through the middle of the week, but the reactions were generally mixed. Criticisms argued that the Khan Academy’s program of video lectures was bad pedagogy which lacked the interactive and student centered learning necessary for effective education reform . Those on twitter who favored the Khan Academy noted the “Flipped Classroom” model, in which students watch videos and lectures at home while the teacher does other work in the classroom such as answering questions
Towards the middle of the week, March 14th and 15th, the conversation on twitter turned to addressing Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s address to the Louisiana House Education Committee following passage of a voucher reform bill, HB 976, and a teacher tenure reform bill, HB 974, by large margins. These bills represented part of a larger education reform package Governor Jindal proposed which includes “which includes vouchers for students in under-performing public schools, performance-based tenure, and tax credits for individuals and businesses to sponsor tuition for the schools that best meet a child’s educational needs” (http://www.freedomworks.org/press-releases/governor-jindal%E2%80%99s-school-voucher-and-tenure-reform ). The response to this legislation varied on twitter, with initial support expressed earlier in the week. As the twitter discussion in #edpolicy and #edreform shifted to teacher qualification, however, responses became more critical of the legislation.
Towards the end of the week, March 16th through 18th, the discussion began to focus on the question of state tests and teacher evaluation. These discussions sparked in reaction to a twitter posts in #edpolicy regarding South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard signed a new teacher evaluation law that would “will eventually eliminate state teacher tenure provisions, and that will award bonuses to top teachers based on student achievement” (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2012/03/sd_governor_signs_new_teacher_evaluation_law.html). The reaction to twitter regarding this legislation was mostly negative, and perpetuated similar themes on twitter this week regarding teacher quality and the relationship between state achievement tests and teacher performance.
A new conversation gained traction on the twitter feed yesterday afternoon and continuing today regarding high school dropout rates in the U.S. The discussion represents an offshoot of the international theme on this week’s twitter feed. The tweets on U.S. dropout rates lament the U.S. falling short of international standards, noting that the U.S. formerly had the highest percentage of high school graduates. The discussion also focused on the state of so-called “Dropout Factories,” such as those found in Ohio, as “schools that fail to graduate more than 60 percent of students on time” (http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/03/20/dropout-factories-grow.html).
The discussion on twitter this week largely concentrated on the subjects of teacher evaluation and teacher quality. Following the passage of a new teacher evaluation law in South Dakota, twitter responses began focusing on methods of teacher evaluations and the implications on teacher quality in American education. The National Association of State Board of Educators (NASBE) began tweeting on March 16th regarding this issue and helped perpetuate the debate on the best method for evaluating teachers in today’s school environment. Their tweets regarding the New York Times “Sunday Dialogue: How to Rate Teachers” and tweets calling for ideas on how to raise the teaching profession helped facilitate this discussion on twitter. Meanwhile, the Louisiana Teachers decision to protest the legislative proposals on teacher quality in the state house was retweeted.
Additionally, the twitter discussion on teacher evaluations and quality created a twitter debate regarding the relationship between state achievement tests and teacher performance in public education. The Scholastic survey, funded by the Gates Foundation, of 10,000 teachers found that “teachers don’t trust annual state skills tests” in increasing numbers. The study revealed that “only 16% believe linking student performance and teacher pay is “absolutely essential” or “very important” in retaining good teachers” which was down 28% from 2010 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-03-15/survey-teacher-pay-linked-to-test-scores/53554210/1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=206567). While this discussion continued throughout the end of the week, the main focus on twitter was less so on problems with state achievement tests than on the state of teacher quality and evaluation today.
Another theme I found in this week’s twitter analysis, was an emphasis on education reform in an international context. These tweets responded to the second International Summit on the Teaching Profession which met in New York City this week. The conference brought together educators from twenty-three different countries and the theme of the conference was how we “can learn from other countries with such different contexts and cultures” (http://www.freedomworks.org/press-releases/governor-jindal%E2%80%99s-school-voucher-and-tenure-reform). This theme carried over to twitter, with the Gates Foundation tweeting on the ways in which American education can learn from East Asian education systems, which boasts four of the top five highest-performing education system’s in the world according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). This was consistently retweeted, as was Diane Ravich’s post on the Norway education model.
This week’s twitter patterns varied from the last two week’s discussion. The discussion of NCLB waivers and charter schools subsided in favor of a greater focus on the teacher evaluation. This week’s discussion was directed by events from this week such as the International Summit on the Teaching Profession, South Dakota Teacher Evaluation law, and Governor Jindal’s education reform proposals.
Some anomalies this week included a post by the University of Chicago from the beginning of the week stating that Virginia parents were being tried in court for “too many tardies” with fines up to $3,000 (http://ht.ly/9EDrW /). Also, singer John Legend called for national education reform at the at the NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education Conference in Phoenix as part of his Show Me Campaign which works toward education reform (http://www.statepress.com/2012/03/11/singer-john-legend-calls-for-national-education-reform/). Also, an anomaly this week which had been a pattern in previous weeks on twitter was mention of parent trigger laws. Parent trigger laws were briefly mentioned at the beginning of the week but failed to attract a real debate or discussion on twitter this week.
My overall assessment for this week was that the twitter discussion focusing on teacher evaluation and quality echoes contemporary questions of how best to measure teacher achievement and to what degree state tests help or hurt. Furthermore, the discussion stressed the various opinions on this subject which are affecting education reform policy. Moreover, this week the twitter feed demonstrated the role of education in global competition. The emphasis on learning and improving American education based on different international models stressed how the U.S. was falling behind. Also, this emphasis implied the importance associate with the U.S. reclaiming primacy in global education standings as not only an education issue but a matter of national reputation.
Policy Paper Recommendation:
My recommended policy paper for this week is “Teacher Evaluator Training & Certification: Lessons Learned from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project” part of the Practitioner Series for Teacher Evaluation. This policy paper looks at over 23,000 lessons collected from more than 3,000 classrooms as part of the Gates Foundation’s MET project in order to offer policymakers and district leaders’ insight for improving teacher effectiveness thereby improving student learning.
