Gary Rubinstein wondered how the “reform” sector reacted to the two big events of the past two weeks: the Vergara decision and the Gates Foundation’s advice to suspend test-based evaluations for teachers for two years. Reformers like Arne Duncan, StudentsFirst, and The New Teacher Project were delighted by the Vergara decision, which strikes at job protections for veteran teachers (more openings for newbies). Teach for America was unusually silent.
But what about the Gates moratorium? He found some confusion among the usual cheerleaders for high-stakes testing. Again, Teach for America stayed out of the fray. Reformers split into two camps.
Gary writes:
“You’ve got Bill Gates, who is essentially the Secretary of Education in this country, saying to slow down on this. And you have StudentsFirstNY, though not yet StudentsFirst, saying that slowing down is a mistake. And maybe this is all for show, some good cops and some bad cops — as long as things continue to move in the ‘reform’ direction.
“But I do think that the fact that any ‘reformers’ support a slow down is a big deal. You see, if I were a ‘reformer’ and I had confidence in the golden calf known as value-added, I would be against the slow down. Since the concept of value-added is that if it was already accurate enough to be 35% or 50% (in Denver) for teacher evaluations, then the harder (more ‘rigorous’) Common Core exams would not make it any less accurate. This is the whole point of value-added. It shouldn’t matter, to a value-added believer, if the new tests are more difficult. Everyone is working under the same handicap so the value-added formulas should, in theory, account for that.”
Two years is about all the time left to Duncan. What happens next? Maybe by then even the politicians will realize that VAM is a failed idea.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I look at it this way.
Even though VAM is wrong—totally wrong—as a way to evaluate teachers, a two-or-three year moratorium gives the resistance that much more time to educate America about the truth behind the fake education reform movement, because at this point, (according to the most recent polls) at least half of America hasn’t heard of Common Core and has no idea of what is going on.
But half is a dramatic improvement over 2013 when Gallup discovered that 62% of Americans had not heard of Common Core.
In 2013, only 22% of those polled by Gallup thought that increased testing helped school performance and 58% rejected using student test scores to evaluate teachers.
As more American’s become aware of the truth and the facts through the resistance to the fake education reformers, I think those numbers will shift dramatically in our favor, and this is the reason that the billionaire oligarchs have no patience for moratoriums or anything that slows up their juggernaut as it rolls over public education.
The fake education reform movement is racing the clock and to win, they have to achieve tier Machiavellian goals before a majority of Americans—who vote—learn what’s going on and act.
We can’t slow our job of educating America. No relaxing. No vacations. Not until the last of the fake education reformers are long gone and buried. That means, the younger generation has to take up this fight as my generation checks out.
Here’s my take on VAM, given in a talk to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL:
I like that – Sec. Gates.
Reformers like to use doublespeak and changes in the education vernacular to doop the public. Let’s do the opposite. Let us all learn from our enemies and use language. This time to educate the public rather than to deceive them.
I believe it was someone on this blog that renamed “reformer” to “deformer”. From now on I am going to say, “Secretary of Education Gates” and Arne Duncan is his government appointed public relations representative.
quoting from Chalkface about the Jennings, Deming, et al study:
“But, Jennings et. al did not contribute to a chorus of non-educators proclaiming that they proved that test-driven accountability worked. In contrast to Chetty, the authors did not tell the New York Times that their work shows that it is better to fire teachers earlier. Neither did they testify in court that their study shows that the due process rights of teachers must be eliminated. In other words, their study was done with integrity. It was released with integrity.”
and notice her latest is a powerful expose on problems with testing in Texas
John, and I am agreeing with your when you speak of future hope…
quoting John: ” I just hope the Vergara judge has the inclination to look deeply into both the testimony of expert witnesses and how it is very different than the evidence and logic they have presented in written documents.” there will be appeals, soon, I hope.
yes, I knew. I just wanted to second your implicit praise of Jennings.
Wouldn’t be nice if Chetty et. al were borrowing from her scholarship, as opposed to the situation today where they drive too much of the discussion?
references for Jennings et al.
Jennings, Jennifer L. and Heeju Sohn*. Measure for Measure: How Proficiency- Based Accountability Systems Affect Inequality in Academic Achievement. Sociology of Education.
2013 Jennings, Jennifer L. & Heeju Sohn*. “A Tale of Two Tests: Test Scores, Accountability, and Inequality in American Education.” In S. Rutledge, R. Jacobsen, and D. Anagnostopoulos, The Infrastructure of Accountability: Data Use and the Transformation of American Education. Harvard Education Press, p. 183-198.
2013 Holcombe, Rebecca*, Jennifer Jennings, and Daniel Koretz. “Predictable Patterns that Facilitate Score Inflation: A Comparison of the New York and Massachusetts State Tests.” In G. Sunderman (Ed.), Charting Reform, Achieving Equity in a Diverse Nation.
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Jennings often writes with David Deming and Christopher Jencks. The 2013 SREE conference has a video available with Christopher Jencks as keynote; he didn’t have data from the NAEP 2012 cycle but I expect his work that is more recent will update the tables.
I sure that the only use for VAM is to replace TP when our budgets have been blown on nonsense. However, I’m suspicious that Gates knows gain momentum if we use them right now. If everyone has lousy scores, maybe parents will notice. So can we not use them for evaluation, but publicize them?
The reformers problems with CCSS and value-added are even worse. As the NYT showed last week, the drop in test scores is uneven, only about 16% in affluent NYT schools, by 2/3rds, if I recall, in high-challenge schools. That makes it impossible to set cut scores that are fair to all, and it makes it even more unfair for teacher evals in poor schools.
I don’t think that has sunk in to them yet. But, it will as different urban districts follow different paths.
I was just thinking…. Bill Gates calling for a moratorium on the testing component of teacher evals was tantamount to saying states should reneg on the promises they made it their respective RTTT applications, no?
good point. That explains Duncan’s response.
Hmmm interesting thought.
this article is not behind a pay wall (the copy at Sage is)
Click to access APR14SOEFeature.pdf
article by Jennifer Jennings on accountability systems
What is disturbing about this article is that “educational triage” is actually directly mandated in my district. I was directly told by my administration to not invite my lowest performers to night school, so as to not distract or under serve the “bubble kids”. I invited them all anyway: it pisses me off though, to be told by my principal that I am only supposed to focus on certain kids.. What about getting me a TA so that I don’t have 45 kids at night school? Why not invite them all and get some parents to help… Oh wait, no funds, and not a lot of parents either willing nor/ or able to help… Wait maybe my principal could help? Nope, she is at her daughters dance class…
I know just how you feel, Titleone. I teach at a similar school. I see kids over the summer, they can’t tell me what to do on my own time. I do it, as do others like you, because the kids need the help. Fortunately for me, my kids are grown. Admin is no help at all.
J. Jennings states “this is to be sure, a complex set of results” and she details the consequences. I like to follow Helen Ladd’s work and she has a recent study of the testing data in North Carolina at : “The Academic Achievement Gap in Grades 3 to 8
Charles T. Clotfelter*, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor Duke University
April 13, 200where she is one of three authors.
Also, this week , Jack Hassard at the Art of Teaching posted information on the Georgia state testing….
@Old Teacher
Thanks for caring enough for those kids who are not “deserving” enough to get “triage”…even the medical terminology upsets me. What in the world? I had no idea that this cold blooded practice was common: I thought it was just my heartless isd!
It is like they are referring to the lower ones as brain dead and beyond help.
This is important…
I’m not sure that a two-year “moratorium” on testing makes any difference regarding the Common Core. It’s already here.
Most states have adopted the Common Core standards, and worse, the top testing behemoths in the country –– the ACT and the College Board –– are publicly touting the fact that they’ve “aligned” their products with Common Core. Naturally they have, since they were instrumental in developing the Common Core. So, EVEN if there’s a two-year delay in Common Core testing, the Common Core will remain embedded in the ACT, the PSAT, the SAT, and Advanced Placement.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates and others (like Randi Weingarten and Denis Van Roekel) can make the claim that they helped to “slow down” Common Core testing so that it could be “done right.”
Sorry, that doesn’t wash.
The Common Core is a “reform” that is unnecessary, that is incredibly expensive, and that will result in greater inequality in public schooling. And it’s based on a rationale – “economic competitiveness” – that is completely bogus.
In effect, Bill Gates bought his way into becoming the de facto education secretary in the United States. But he’s been aided and abetted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, by spineless politicians, by testing organizations that produce mostly worthless tests, and by the AFT and the NEA.
It will take much, much more than a short two-year testing reprieve to undo the chicanery.
democracy; yes, this is accurate. quoting democracy “The Common Core is a “reform” that is unnecessary, that is incredibly expensive, and that will result in greater inequality in public schooling. And it’s based on a rationale – “economic competitiveness” – that is completely bogus.”
Throughout my professional career this is how they found money for education; when I first entered teacher’s college it was Sputnik and we must “beat the Russians.” At the teacher’s college we had no lab for physics but the professors (who were actually kind and knew what was going on politically) said to us “either learn your physics or learn Russian.” We still didn’t get any funds to build a physics lab and we had a mediocre biology lab. Then when I was teaching in the 70s they came out with propaganda of reform and repeated with “beat the Japs” and I went to a federal official and asked “why do we have to word it this way to get funds for education?” Today, we are hearing that same old verbiage.
These policies will be mediated through the states. If there is no money to be found in the state budget then they can’t buy into the next round of tests where the states are expected to put up more of the cash . Even if the board of ed votes in the project the state budget will have to absorb the cost and where will they go to get the funds? take them out of other programs? I don’t know how many times they can go to Bill Gates or philanthropy to come up with the funds. Duncan diverted a lot of federal money into this agenda but they are expecting it will “devolve” to the state budgets and that will be different in every state. I feel badly for my grandkids that are in OK because funding for the schools there was never on solid footing. When Romney was Governor in MA he refused to provide state funds adequate for school budgets and the cities and towns all had to come up with more and the towns with less of a tax base had to proportionally tax themselves more. This is where we are now it seems in every state? and I don’t know if the equalization formulas actually work because we still have huge inequities in MAss among/between the districts (and Mass has no county system ).