If I were a classroom teacher today I would be furious and I can’t figure out why most teachers I know don’t even know what to be concerned about. Why as a retired educator am I so upset that I am spending countless hours trying to educate the public and especially the teaching force about current educational policy at the state and federal level? It is because I foresee the loss of public education in the U.S. as the impending Tsunami of corporate takeover inundates the local schools.
The KSD Citizens group has attempted to inform Kennewick citizens regarding these trends through a series of articles on these pages as well as by showing local impact through Board Reports and op-ed pieces by teachers and others. The accompanying note from a colleague, Stan Karp, describes a recent symposium that examined the latest threat, Value-Added Modeling (VAM). After reading this we hope you will take the time to write your legislators and include a link to the full report. Additional information regarding the use of VAM can be found at our national website http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/School-District-Citizens/129808317079224 in the discussion section.
Here are Stan Karp’s notes:
On January 19, the Educational Testing Service held a symposium on the use of “value-added assessment” (VAM) measures to rate “teacher effectiveness.” VAM systems of various kinds have being proposed as a basis for making decisions about teacher tenure, compensation and retention.
A NJ Spotlight report on the symposium is here, with links to some of the research. (ETS plans to post video of the event soon.)
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/0119/2331/
Governor Christie has endorsed this approach and created a 9-member Educator Effectiveness Task Force charged with developing a new evaluation system for NJ teachers and school leaders that “must include identified measures of student achievement” as 50% of such evaluations. The Task Force is scheduled to report to the Governor by March 1.
At the ETS symposium several nationally prominent researchers discussed the research behind VAM systems. Generally, there were two sets of issues:
o the reliability of the assessments in measuring teacher effectiveness
o the implications of attaching “high stakes” consequences to the data VAM systems generate
The researchers identified numerous problems with VAM approaches including high margins of error, the difficulty in isolating the effects of a single teacher and difficulty accounting for variables like student mobility and tracking (grouping students by ability levels). They also said VAM systems would require large new investments in data systems and new assessments, including a major expansion of testing in subjects beyond literacy and math.
All of the researchers cautioned that while such systems potentially could provide some useful information, by themselves they were an unreliable basis for making high stakes decisions about teachers and schools and, if misused, had the potential to do serious damage to the teaching profession, school curricula and instructional practice.
For a discussion of related issues involving the public release of test-based teacher ratings in NY, see:
Fact Or Opinion?
by Aaron Pallas, Teachers College, Columbia Univ.
http://gothamschools.org/2011/01/20/fact-or-opinion/
It is entirely a matter of opinion as to whether the particular statistical analyses involved in the production of the Teacher Data Reports warrant the inference that teachers are more or less effective. All statistical models involve assumptions that lie outside of the data themselves.
Thanks for this information, plan to share it with as many as possible!
Wayne Au’s article about VAM is a thorough explanation of how inappropriate it is for teacher evalution yet VAM has taken on a political life not merited by its worth to education.
The current plan for teacher evaluation before the Washington State legislature is a ludicrous parody on the failed VAM technique. How can you design a blunt instrument that is more blunt than a bloody club? Teacher bashing, the new team sport.