posted by Joe Polk at 12:57 AM /
The Mt. Lebanon School District discussed two changes at its meeting this week that could move the high school higher in local, state and national rankings.
The first change would require students to achieve a proficient or advanced score in the 11th grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessments in order to graduate. The other proposed change would make the high school a participant in the National School Lunch Program.
Read more: www.post-gazette.com/pg/10168/1066354-298.stm
The first change would require students to achieve a proficient or advanced score in the 11th grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessments in order to graduate. The other proposed change would make the high school a participant in the National School Lunch Program.
Read more: www.post-gazette.com/pg/10168/1066354-298.stm
Labels: dr. timothy steinhauer, PSSA, school board, school district
19 Comments:
As I understand it, the students are not taking the PSSA seriously. And the lunch program makes it a numbers game. I guess it doesn't have anything to do with administration or staff.
Elaine Gillen
Like it or not, society pressures schools to improve their rankings on various celebrated lists. A school can improve its ranking by teaching better or by gaming the system better; either will work.
While we would hope that schools would climb the rankings only by the first method, logic suggests that this hope is misplaced. If any school starts gaming the system, the schools ranked near it must start gaming or be left behind. And as these schools start gaming the system, the schools ranked near them must follow suit, as well. Pretty soon, everyone must game the system. The top schools, then, must not only educate well but play the game well.
Now we can begin to understand what Dr. Steinhauer is doing. (I'm speculating here, but the evidence supports me.) Soon after arriving at Mt. Lebanon, he figured out that Mt. Lebanon wasn't playing the game as well as other schools. Their students were motivated to do well on the influential PSSA tests; ours weren't. Their rankings benefited from a poverty-rate bonus, ours didn't.
Of course, he can't just come out and say so. Gaming the system isn't much of a secret, but it's not something that schools talk about. Still, if he doesn't bring Mt. Lebanon's game up, the district's rankings will be penalized.
So, like everyone else, we are forced to play the game to the fullest.
What a despicable lesson we're teaching the children....maybe the *mission* of the District should be amended to say : to provide the very best gaming education possible.
Then the children would have the credentials to join the rest of a dysfunctional society of scammers, con artists, Ponzi-schemers and plain ol' every day cheaters.
Bill,
I wouldn't say that gaming the system in this particular case is the result of faulty ethics. Rather, it's an inevitable consequence of the pressure that society places upon schools to perform well in measurements that are possible to game and for which there are no enforcement mechanisms to prevent gaming.
If you're a school administrator and know that your school will be rewarded (or penalized) based on how it compares to other schools, and you know that those other schools game the system, how can you choose not to game? The only way you can (rationally) choose not to game is if you believe that everybody will abstain from gaming. But once you suspect that somebody will decide to game, you must do so as well to avoid being penalized in the rankings.
It's a prisoner's dilemma. Everyone would be better off with a universal agreement not to game, but each individual school would be better off if it defected from the agreement. So, lacking a mechanism to enforce a no-gaming agreement, everybody is forced to game the system.
Somewhat fortunately for society, when everybody games the system, the effects of gaming mostly cancel out. Once everybody learns the big, easy tricks, the big, easy tricks no longer affect the rankings much. Then all that's left for schools that want to step up their gamesmanship are smaller, harder tricks that, being smaller in effect and harder to employ, don't affect the rankings much, either.
Over time, system-gaming becomes an arms race in the margins for ever-diminishing returns. Ultimately, it wastes a lot resources and provides little benefit – even to the system gamers – but everybody is forced to do it nonetheless.
Cheers,
Tom
Yes, Tom ...the key words are "over time"...say 10, 20, 30 years...how long has "No child left behind"...how long since PA's creation of PSSA was instituted have they been *gamed*..."teaching to the test" and like *gaming* with ever increasing sophistication...almost FROM DAY 1 !
And where is the character, the credibility, the integrity, the honesty, the fairness of the so-called professionals we entrust our children to...the Steinhauers and his ilk...who fail to stand up and object to this legislated and administrative fraud ? Where are the school boards, the PTA's, the parents ?...the children see this and conclude to *game* & scam is cool.
So lets wait 10, 20, 30 years for the *gaming* to play out and ever so slowly self destruct. Then what do we have....thousands of Lebo students, millions of PA students and tens of millions of American students who have learned it's OK to cheat, lie and scam society...and do so.
No wonder our society is coming apart at the seams.
I don't know, Bill. It's not so much a problem of ethics as it is unintended consequences. The problem of measuring school performance is inherently tricky. We must do it – not measuring is not an option – but legislators are not game theorists. They lack the analytical sophistication to see that almost all "sensible" performance-measurement schemes create incentives that, in the long run, have unintended, nearly perverse side effects.
Further, I can't fault school administrators for playing the game they have been given. Imagine an administrator who decided not to play the game. He would score a point for ethics, but the community would suffer as rankings fell. Students would miss out on college placements and scholarships; property values would no longer benefit from a top-ranked school district. How long do you think the community would rest satisfied with the new policy?
Cheers,
Tom
Tom...do you honestly believe that politicians and legislators are not game theorists ? They are the very ones..with lobbyists and staff..who have created, aided and abetted some of the biggest "gaming" (polite for fraud, scam, cons, flim-flams, etc.) schemes of all time !
And, regarding your example of an individual school administrator...there is strength in numbers, and are you suggesting that all other similiarly situated administrators are ignorant, oblivious to the "game" ? Or lack courage and integrity to stand up, band together and say *NO* ? In the case of PA alone, has the PA Assoc. of School Administrators (PASA)and/or the PA School Boards Assoc.(PSBA)and/or the PA State Education Assoc.(PSEA)individually or even better collectively objected to the "gaming" in education taking place...and demanding that it cease ? Where are the PA PTA chapters and Commonwealth leadership ?
Yeah, Tom, sadly you're probably right...it will eventually, years from now, self destruct. We have met the enemy, and it is certainly our very selves...apathetic, too self centered and *busy* to care.
And by the time the current "games" self destruct, there will be a host of others in place to take up the slack.
Bill,
By game theory, I mean the mathematical science of game theory. It's unfortunate that the theory has the word "game" in its name because that term is also used to describe gambling and, as we are also discussing here, exploiting a system's flaws. When I say "gaming the system," then, I'm referring to the last use (exploiting flaws), but when I say "game theory," I'm talking about something else entirely – the mathematical science. Sorry about not being more clear about which sense I meant.
To your point, while I would expect legislators to be adept at system gaming, I don't think they are particularly skilled at game theory. Probably the closest most of them have gotten is seeing the movie "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash (he won a Nobel prize for his work on non-cooperative equilibria in games).
Cheers,
Tom
Two thoughts:
To Tom's point about administrators not necessarily being savvy to game theory:
Sure, but, they should certainly understand the nature of why they are proposing the action in question. And there's no reason not to be honest about why you're doing it, if it's obviously a good call.
It would be wonderful to have the board or the staff say "We should institute a school lunch program, because it will increase our ranking in (poll XXX) and will cost essentially nothing to do. We don't believe this is something that directly affects the performance of our students, and we would rather be measured on that performance, but given the ranking system this is the best move for the students and the community."
The rub (thought #2) is what happens when these actions do take something else away from the students. If the cost of the lunch program means the loss of an extra-curricular activity (or worse, an educational program), then I think to Bill's point it would be very wrong to engage in making those calls in favor of rankings.
I don't know enough about the specifics of the calls being made to know which situation we are in.
The major complaint about the National School Lunch program is, the commodities meat and cheese provided by the program cause the overweight and obesity problem in kids.
Now we'll rank higher in U.S. News but we will have other problems.
There is a tradeoff.
I noticed that the National School Lunch Program was taken off the agenda for last night. I am hopeful that the Administration has decided not to play the game. If so, Bravo!
Elaine Gillen
Here is what I dont understand. People dont want the school to play the games they have to to get ranked higher. But then when the rankings come out everyone complains that the ranking is to low. Look on this same blog last week when the Newsweek rankings came out. Every post on there is complaining about why we rank so low. You cant have it both ways.
@Chris Musuneggi Yes, you are right. We can't have it both ways. We are asking for higher rankings without the gamesmanship. The Strategic Plan, a.k.a. The Balanced Scorecard, is an embarrassment to the community. You can see the strategic plan on the school district website as well at lebocitizens.com. You can hear School Director Ostergaard talk about this if you go to the recording link on lebocitizens. It is all about accountability and educating our kids, not about trying to beat the system through gaming.
Elaine Gillen
Chris,
What specifically is your solution or resolution ?
I think Chris' point is pretty clear: either push for higher rankings and accept that as a district we need to play the game as it has been defined by Newsweek or accept the lower ranking that we will get by not playing the game. Mind you...there are probably good ways to increase the ranking. But if we want the quick fixes than play the game AND work on the sound ways to increase the results. Who knows...maybe we'll suck less?! (That last sentence was just a joke and was not meant as a criticism of athletics.)
The hard reality is that you can't get top rankings without playing the game. There is no option of "let's stop playing the game and make up the difference by educating better."
The top schools are already educating better. At the top of the ladder, each school is both educating and gaming to the limit of its ability. You don't get into the top otherwise.
So if a school at the top gives up its gaming boost, which is probably pretty big, it will fall off the celebrated lists. For good. It can't compensate by educating better; at that level, nobody knows how to educate better. If they did, they would already be doing it.
Thus the difference between gaming and not gaming is that between accolades and irrelevance. It's the difference between "top 2%" and "not even on the list." How many communities will pay that price?
If you want to solve the problem of gaming the system, you can't do it locally. You need to change the rules across the state and nation so that nobody benefits from gaming.
Cheers,
Tom
Another problem is, what happens if the school district makes a permanent change to "game" and achieve a higher ranking, but the rules for the game change?
I think we have to remember that the newsweek list says that making the list means you are in th top 6% of all school. So it is not like we are not educating the kids. It's not right that something like offering reduced lunches should determine who gets to be number one. But those are the rules of the game, and you either follow the rules or live with the lower ranking. And if the rules change you adapt to the new rules. At least until we can make the game not include these kinds of things. For some reason we forget just how good of a school we have.
I was saving this for a school board meeting, but I might as well say it here. My comments made here make their way into school board meetings anyway. According to a Pennsylvania Department of Education study released in January 2009, 23% of Mt. Lebanon School District graduates required remediation in mathematics and/or reading before they were prepared to take college level courses in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education or community colleges.
In that study, five districts did better than us (listed in alphabetical) order:
Baldwin-Whitehall 19%
Deer Lakes 22%
North Allegheny 20%
Pine-Richland 21%
And of course, Upper Saint Clair had the lowest at 17%
What is the latest game we need to play to bring up THESE numbers?
Elaine Gillen
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