I received a letter from a teacher in Florida. He explains how the evaluation system works and why it is absurd:
Dear Florida Parents,
I want to call your attention to a serious and destructive policy that will have dire consequences for your children. Due to Florida’s ill-conceived merit pay evaluation system, your children may be subjected to inferior teaching.
Although Governor Scott proclaimed, “The teachers that are the most effective are the teachers that are going to do well.” These sound bites are a far stretch from what is actually occurring with this evaluation system.
As you probably know, the merit pay system bases one-half of a teacher’s evaluation on standardized test scores. If you want your children to have highly-effective teachers, understand this is not the way to accomplish this goal. Even if you agree that this is a fair evaluation system, I want you to understand that this is not what is happening. The truth is teachers are being evaluated based on students that they do not teach and sometimes not even on the students theydo teach. Does that sound like a system in which you’ll know which teachers are the best?
Let me explain how this system played out for me this year. I teach a gifted enrichment class for four elementary schools. Each day one grade level of students is bused to my center school. As a teacher outside the “regular” classroom, no district official was even able to tell me which tests my evaluation was tied too. That’s right; I taught a whole year and didn’t know how I would be evaluated. Towards the end of the year, I inferred my evaluation would be based on students’ FCAT scores; however, I quickly learned that only about 10 out 80 of my students would be counted! Why you ask? The DOE, which we are relying on to use a VAM equation only mathematicians can understand, could not figure out how to include my students who were bused to my center school. I tried to correct the measure with my district and union; however, there was no recourse. I was told “the next time around the state would fix it.” This year, my score will be based on the tests of just over 10% of my students. Once again I ask you, “Does that sound like a system in which you’ll know which teachers are the best?
The lunacy of this system does not stop there. My evaluation will be based on the performance of students I did not even teach! As part of my evaluation, groups of teachers were formed and given a list of some of the school’s lowest performing students. These students were tied to our evaluation scores, and our charge was to bring their test scores up. I pride myself on being a team player, but to determine my effectiveness as a teacher based on students I do not teach is not what this system was intended to do. No time was provided to work with these students. Somehow we were supposed to make time to mentor and tutor these kids. In essence, I was to spend my time working with the lowest students instead of dedicating myself to my giftedstudents. Even more preposterous is that my evaluation will be based on the performance of astudent who never set foot on my school’s campus this year. Does that sound like a system in which you’ll know which teachers are the best?
I commend your efforts to hold the Florida Department of Education accountable for policies that are ill suited for our state’s children. You called the DOE out on the FCAT Writes debacle and started a serious conversation with our misguided politicians. I call on you again to defend the best interest of your children. Demand that the merit pay system is repealed and replaced with a system that truly identifies effective teachers.
Sincerely,
A concerned teacher
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Insane. I am a parent in Georgia confident that the hocus pocus of value -added measures will not identify good teaching even when student scores are assigned to the teacher who teaches them. A teacher evaluation system that ties student test scores to teacher pay will never result in better LEARNING for students, and it is likely to be detrimental to students. One horrific consequence, cheating by administrators and teachers, already occurred in a neighboring system (Atlanta Public Schools, as you certainly heard). Yet, our idiotic state continues to chase RTTT money and pursue this unbelievably stupid idea. I couldn’t be more disappointed and disgusted with Arne Duncan, aggressively pursuing systems that are beneficial to corporate interests but unsupported by research and clearly bad for children.
Great letter, by the way. I hope it influences Florida parents. I read about FL parents angry about writing test scores. I hope the tide is starting to turn there. But it takes concerted effort to keep up the fight, doesn’t it?
Many will dismiss this teacher’s experience as an anomaly. In fact, it is typical. In every school there are teachers whose assignments make it impossible to link student test performance to their classrooms. Some examples are librarians and facilitators, and teachers of subjects not tested, including music, art, physical education, family and consumer science, fine arts, journalism and social studies. Good research exists that shows that teachers of these subjects add greatly to a child’s learning, but they cannot be linked easily to student test scores.
I am afraid the deformers will only say that more tests need to designed for those classes. Didn’t I read somewhere that some states have already developed bubble tests for PE, art and music classes? Parents have to speak up!
Yes Michele- in Florida that is already what is happening! Kids will soon be sitting down for written tests in PE, art, band, yearbook, ROTC, and any other class where their work is based on activity and/or performance. And the state still has no idea how to evaluate media specialists, deans, literacy coaches, etc. Every time they realize one part of their brilliant plan isn’t going to work, they backpeddle and change the rules in the middle of the game. There are going to be many lawsuits over the next few years. FEA already has one going.
Great letter. I’m a Spanish teacher in Florida and I’m being evaluated on my students performance on the Reading FCAT. Remind you, I teach Spanish :s
You made a good case, but please correct the grammatical mistakes in your blog. It’s important as a teacher that you do not provide fodder to the detractors.
Agreed. The font is too small and the spacing is too wide as well.
Really not an anomoly; At my school, the same thing happened. About a month and half before FCAT was to be administered, each teacher was given a list of “lowest 25% students” to make an impact on in order to bring up their test scores. In most cases including my own, these weren’t students I currently taught. Additionally, the students couldn’t be forced to even come to your classroom to see you and no extra time was given. Consequently, I sent a letter to each of my students to come by enticing them with breakfast I paid out of my own pocket. I never even saw one of them. Tell me, how in the world can I have an impact on test scores of a student I have never taught, much less laid eyes upon or how that implemented in an evaluation would be even remotely fair? Unlike the post above, these students WERE at my home school.
I had a similar experience. As a science lab teacher of k-5 students, I expected the 5th grade science scores would be used for my evaluation, even though the students’ classroom teachers teach them the majority of the science content. I was wrong, though. At the end of the year I found out that my evaluation would be based on reading test scores, but no one was sure which students’ scores. Really?
Of course the parents complained about the FCAT Writing scores- that’s because, based on the “new rubric”, their kid’s writing score was a 3 when it should’ve been a 5. Anything that effects THEIR KIDS SCORES, they will complain about. Do you think they give a crap for the teachers down here? (I’m a Florida teacher, too- and I’m in the same boat as this guy- I teach MUSIC. There’s NO FCAT for MUSIC! So how am I evaluated? I have to give a county mandated test that, last year alone, the average score was 53% of all the 5th graders in the county. MY test, however, is given in grades 1-5, rather than FCAT’s 3-5 for elementary. Pretty stupid, huh? Sadly, nothing will ever be done about this because there aren’t enough teachers to say something and make a difference, and not enough parents who CARE ENOUGH about teachers to do so. Also, most of the counties in Florida have non-striking teacher’s unions. The only way we could get our point across is to go on strike- and we can’t even do that!
Solution: Move out of Florida. ASAP.
If you move out of Florida, don’t move to Louisiana.
Good luck moving. Almost every state on the east coast is a Race to the Top or NCLB waiver state and they are passing similarly absurd policies.
If anyone hasn’t read Todd Farley’s book, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, you should. He also blogs quite regularly; I googled him and read some posts that are of immediate interest.
Let’s not forget that Kindergarten teachers are also being evaluated on test scores of students they have not taught. And God forbid that the powers that be, who have never met a 5 year old, let alone spent the day with 23 or more 5 and 6 year olds, make up these tests that will determine half of our pay. The people who are writing the teaching manuals don’t even have a clue about what is developmentally appropriate for Kindergarten students, so I can only imagine what the standardized testing companies will expect of our youngest students.
No doubt, you will be hearing these same kind of stories coming out of Louisiana in the next year or two as VAM is unfolded in the Bayou State. I know it’s said life isn’t fair but VAM doesn’t even come close to trying to be fair.
Our DOE’s first stab at evaluations based on state test scores was so crazy that I just giggled. As an English teacher, my evaluation was going to be based on the reading test results. That’s reasonable. The same went for math. The social studies, science, and exploratory teachers, however, were to choose 25 students from our team which they thought would make improvement, because evaluations are based on improvement, right? So we made a list of those we thought would “help” those teachers on their evaluations. I giggled because it felt like we were betting. By February or so they let us know that we would not be doing it that way this year. I wonder what they have in store for us this year.
Great letter. I am a Florida teacher and work with teachers all across Florida. These VAM are nice in theory (have lots of elements to incorporate into the evaluation) but are not working. We try to make teaching a complete Science with measurable data when so much of good teaching comes down to relationships you create with students, your personality, your art of teaching.
This evaluation system also has the potential to make bad teachers look good. If you are doing nothing but test practice to raise scores, your students are not learning.This happens.Some teachers live and die by their students’ scores all year through benchmark tests going on throughout the year. Day to day they live by this. Not good.
Part of the problem is that people with complaints about testing, and even those who tout it is a necessary evil, don’t truly explain the details of WHY these tests are not valid and reliable. I agree with 2old2tch who mentioned Todd Farley’s book–a great read.
I recently created a video to explain and SUPPORT in detail why there is a problem with these tests. This video is about the Florida Writing Test.
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/Tamaradoe-1449450-writing-florida
I teach English in a Florida high school. Although I taught all juniors last year, my VAM score was based on the school average for 9th and 10th grade. Why? Because they cease testing in 10th grade except for those who don’t pass. Of my juniors who didn’t pass FCAT as sophomores, I had a stellar retake pass rate–but that’s not going to count for me. Only what other teachers are doing with other kids I couldn’t identify if you paid me big bucks.
Don’t even get me started about what they’re doing to my colleagues in the arts, JROTC, or other electives. Data selection is arbitrary. Considering that we were in a high-needs, inner-city school, none of us came out looking good.
I’m all for evaluation, but to conflate test score results with teacher quality is wrongheaded, misguided, and downright crazy. Unfortunately, better ways of doing this take money and time and won’t enrich outside providers’ wallets, so it’ll never happen.
For the love of Pete, folks, get noisy. Talk to everyone, and vote for sane candidates in November!
In a sick and twisted way I kind of want them to print teachers’ VAM rankings in the newspapers (which they probably will do because of Sunshine State transparency laws). Hopefully parents will see the names of teachers they know were great being ranked as “needs improvement” or “unsatisfactory.” Then people will realize how flawed and misleading the data can be. Florida VAM scores should be released this month so we’ll see what happens. I’m dying to see how they inform us of our VAM rankings. Will they just hand us a piece of paper that says we’re “unsatisfactory” and be asked to sign it without seeing any actual data? I know we can’t strike in Florida, but one act of collective resistance across the country would be if teachers refused to sign any evaluation based on VAM. Any other suggestions for how teachers can fight back against this absurd system? I’m thinking of wearing a sign on across my chest on “Back to School Night” with my value added ranking. What if every teacher did that? That would get parents talking.
On second thought, if I have to wear a “needs improvement” or “unsatisfactory” sign across my chest they may think I’m talking about my breasts and not my value added ranking.
I appreciate this article in that it points out some serious problems with this system but completely ignores the most serious problem with any evaluation system that is considered. Teachers are teaching different curriculum so how are you going to compare them? Does anyone try to compare a dentist to an MD or a gynecologist or psychiatrist?
However the greatest problem with this idea of evaluating teachers on the behavior of a child, every teacher has a different set of students. Students are not heterogeneously grouped. I teach students with significant cognitive disabilities and I do not want the gains of my students compared to those of the gifted teacher of this article. Even within the general population you cannot compare one class to another.
When you figure out how to make all children equal and make all teachers teach the same thing, then it will be reasonable to judge the teachers on students’ performance on a test.
Evaluating teachers in this manner is absurd.
Why not get back to the issue of paying teachers a fair salary and get rid of those that do not belong in the education system.