Data hounds continue to search for a measuring stick to identify teacher quality.
They can’t believe they are on a fruitless hunt, like trying to find a barometer or yardstick to say which piece of art is best, which doctor is best, which…… as though human judgment means nothing.
Here is Matt Di Carlo summarizing the research on the instability of VAM, meaning that the best teacher this year might be only average next year, or vice versa.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
1) Put cameras in the classroom and let experts see how they teach.
2) Test the teachers for subject familiarity.
3) Test the children to see if they are comprehending what they are being taught.
4) Evaluate homework assignments and follow up.
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Vete, EBer.
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Out of curiosity, Duane, what does that mean? I agree that Terry is whatever it is you say he is, though.
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Vete is a Spanish affirmative second person command using a reflexive pronoun to change the meaning/add emphasis. It means leave/go. With “aquí” it means get out of here. With ‘al diablo” it means “Go to hell” (diablo meaning devil).
I’ve decided it is the simplest best response I can give to him/her/heshe. Although heshe did actually make a comment that wasn’t based on union bashing.
Yeah, I can be crude. Así es la vida.
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Please don’t let these people give data hounds a bad name. True data hounds, and I know whereof I speak, know about construct validity and stuff like that. What we have here are data ho’s, if you’ll excuse the expression, folks with no real standards or training in scientific integrity who prostitute numbers for anyone who pays them.
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Exacto.
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More Junk Science!!!
We need to be on guard for states using student growth percentiles, SGP,.to evaluate teachers. It’s just as bad as VAM, It’s a benchmark that is arbitrarily set that sets kids off in a race with each other
http://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/CP693z5-2012-09.html
http://www.ctb.com/ctb.com/control/researchArticleMainAction?articleId=17020&p=ctbResearch
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Go to bed Michelle…it’s getting late.
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Lee lo que te dije arriba, sin verqüenza.
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y hazlo.
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Here are some easy ways to document incompetence:
1) check the online grade book to make sure teachers are entering grades in a timely manner and are using a variety of assessments.
2) check your school’s website to see if the teacher is uploading homework assignments and notices of quizzes and tests on a regular basis
3) if a parent has complained that a teacher never responds to their email, document the lack of correspondence.
4) administrators need to get out of their offices and casually drop into classrooms to see who is teaching and who is letting students have “free time” and playing irrelevant movies. Document it. I haven’t had an administrator walk in my room all year. I could have been playing “Finding Nemo” for the last six months and no one would know the difference.
I was hired replacing a tenured teacher that was fired. It can be done. Maybe you should be blaming lazy incompetent administrators rather than union thugs for poor teachers remaining in the classroom.
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