Secretary Duncan wants to rate colleges of education by the test scores of students taught by their graduates.
Read this post by VAM expert Audrey Amrein Beardsley to learn why this is a very bad idea and how you can register your protest against it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He was introduced yesterday as “The Honorable” Speaker of the Assembly, he’s 1 of the 3 “men in a room” that decide how much funding will be provided to our schools, he’s directed the Assembly on who should be elected (selected) to the Board of Regents… And he turned himself into the FBI this morning.
And Cuomo called off the Moreland Commission last year investigating ethics fraud.
The Wheels on the (Albany) Bus go Round and Round..
http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-state-assembly-speaker-sheldon-silver-faces-arrest-1421909938
Damon Buffum Cisco Systems Senior SE Manager Security Sales – Commercial East Single Number Reach:585-249-1804 Mobile Mail sent from my iPhone
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Shocking. Maybe he is a few degrees from Cuomo being indicted as well? Thanks for sharing. Here is a free one (no pay wall):
http://nypost.com/2015/01/22/sheldon-silver-arrested/
Arne couldn’t teach his way out of a paper bag. So I’m wondering where this is going: doctors and nurses and patient mortality? Accountants? By tax audits? Lawyers: criminal convictions/dismissals and disbarment? Yikes, the possibilities to muck things up are endless. One of these days they’ll see the real problems and issues. Until then, they’ll do what I did in the 1960’s when I was in Kindergarten. Pretend play.
I wrote about the perverse incentives in the CAEP standards back in 2013 when this idea officially surfaced, using a medical analogy: http://alexandramiletta.blogspot.com/2013/09/teacher-preparation-standards-add-new.html
The misuse of students’ test scores is out of control. We must stop these proposed regulations.
The CAEP standards were written to please Arne. I have also commented on that facet of the proposed teacher evaluation process. CAEP standards are a perfected example of language that should be purged from education.
I appreciate Audrey Amrein Beardsley’ great work on the VAM problem, now at the threshold of becoming a major component of evaluation for teacher education programs.
Even so, equal attention needs to be given to the use of SLOs for evaluating teacher education in so-called untested and non-tested subjects.
It has been estimated that about 65-69% of teachers have job assignments for which there are not state-wide tests. SLOs (and variants) are the proxy of choice for VAM. An SLO is a writing exercise for teachers required in at least 27 states SLOs must include pretest-posttest and/or baseline to post-test reports on student growth.
Four reports from USDE (2014) show that there is no empirical research to support the use of the SLO process (and associated district-devised tests and cut-off scores) for teacher evaluation.
The template for SLOs originated in Denver in 1999. It has been widely copied and promoted via publications from USDE’s “Reform Support Network,” which operates free of any need for evidence and few constraints other than marketing a deeply flawed product.
SLO templates in wide use have no peer reviewed evidence to support their use for teacher evaluation…not one reliability study, not one study addressing their validity for teacher evaluation.
SLO templates in Ohio and other states are designed to fit the teacher-student data link project (funded by Gates and USDE since 2005). This means that USDE’s proposed evaluations of specific teacher education programs ( e.g., art education at Ohio State University) will be aided by the use of extensive “teacher of record” data routinely gathered by schools and districts, including personnel files that typically require a teacher’s college transcripts, degree earned, certifications, scores on tests for any teacher license and so on.
There are technical questions galore, but a big chunk of the data of interest to the promotors of this latest extension of the Gates/USDE’s rating game are in place.
I have written about the use of SLOs as a proxy for VAM in an unpublished paper titled The Marketing of Student Learning Objectives (SLOs): 1999-2014. A pdf with references can be obtained by request at chapmanLH@aol.com
Laura, great point. I’ve found SLOs scarier and nastier than VAM. VAM can be attacked on its documented issues, in large part because VAM has a statistical base, even if only as a research tool.
SLOs were just made up, and the arguments for them don’t have enough substance to go after. They also do more to tie up teachers in make-work, while providing great job opportunities for consultants. Perhaps VAM is just the red herring.
Read all of the proposed regulations before commenting there, because SLOs are also included and should definitely be addressed as well.
Laura’s paper is well worth reading. do not pass it up.
I just read through part of the rules and regulations. My head was ready to explode. Oh my….Look at the ‘research’ they cite and the names of the committee members. Time for some direct action and re-education. I’m praying. Real hard!
Yes apparently Doug Lemov now counts as “research based practice” so that one is an easy target for comments in the federal register.
Sorry – this is off point but:
Big victory for Phila. teachers!!
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/District-cant-impose-contract-court-rules.html
We in K-12 know from experience that VAM Has no place in evaluation.
However, far too many in higher ed and teacher prep programs have been quiet about VAM in K-12.
It’s time they pay the full fare; we can form a powerful force working together, but we all have to carry the water.
Smaller government we can believe in, wind down NCLB and the DOEd.
He should be rated on the test scores.
Pick another profession besides teaching.
Beardsley is a heroine that deserves great praise for the work she is doing fighting these benighted authoritarian mandates. I posted my response to these NPRM for Duncan at the Dailykos and my own blog.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/20/1358972/-Comment-on-Awful-NPRM-for-Teacher-Training
The posted, “Teacher Prep Issues” document, states that the 18 negotiators couldn’t reach unanimity, as required. And, that was even with some stacking of the panel, IMO. (The only teacher on the panel was “nominated by colleagues at the Gates/Walton- funded Data Quality Campaign”). So, what are the names of the people who wrote the document?
Based on comments at the site, the report’s authors reflected an incredibly small minority view.
In scanning the public comments, I don’t see an attempt by sponsors, to astroturf some favorable comments, which means, either the Dept. of Education has given up on ramming the plan through or, they don’t care what people, who pay taxes for federal and state funding of universities and
federal departments, and/or work in education, think.
I honestly thought VAM would not get as far as it has. It is truly crazy. Nothing surprises me anymore.
VAM = toxic derivative
Let’s see…if the test scores are so bad, shouldn’t we blame Duncan for not overseeing the whole education system in the country in a way that would improve the scores? Let’s hold the head guy accountable. See how he likes that.
Nava, great idea. What is Duncan’s VAM score?
Hold Harvard accountable for this Sociology major, because Duncan has very little appreciation, if any, for the value of qualitative research methods or even a clue about when they are more appropriate than quantitative methods. He also has truly abysmal social skills for dealing with “underlings” he perceives to be in his charge.
There really ought to be additional points deducted for schools, like Harvard, with grads who have used the prestige associated with name of the college on their diploma to catapult themselves into careers in fields for which they have no formal training, experience or expertise.
Double points off for colleges with graduates who are imposters serving as the blind leading the sighted, in highly paid positions on the public dime!
We should do a retrospective analysis of all the TFA teachers, and the test scores of their students. And then tie those results to the Ivy Leagues from which they came.
This might go away real fast if we did that.
Yes.
The regulations do not call for examining and linking teachers to anything but Teacher Education programs. This means that, even though Education majors typically take most of their courses from professors who teach Liberal Arts and Science (LAS) classes, those programs and profs are off the hook (at least for now).
The college where teachers took their LAS courses is irrelevant, too. It does not matter that many teachers took LAS courses at schools other than where they studied Education, such as transfer students and graduate students. ALL blame is being MISplaced on Teacher Ed.
For education “reformers,” this is a matter of gaming the system to their ideological and economic advantage, not about revealing the truth and using valid information to inform and improve education for children. Follow the money. Reformers have already begun to establish their own teacher prep programs, like Relay and Match, and seek to expand them while supplanting existing Teacher Ed programs.
Since those are effectively employee training programs for No Excuses charter schools that implement ONE approach, which consists of draconian, military-style Behavioral-based discipline and instructional strategies, which focus on “eye control,” a narrowed curriculum and test-prep for poor children of color, we are probably looking at an intent to expand that for the masses, not just for low income minority kids.
People should not fall for the smoke and mirrors about these “reforms” being in order to get kids “college and career ready,” because, as it is today, we already don’t have enough decent paying jobs for college graduates. This is about feeding the need for compliant low wage workers at Walmart, McDonalds et al., as well as increasing the number of ignorant people who will vote against their own best interests and curtail democracy, to the advantage of the robber barons in both parties who are behind all of this, such as the hedge fund managers in DFER, Bill Gates, the Waltons, the Koch Brothers, Broad, Bloomberg, etc.
How will they justify all this when data demonstrate that most graduates of charter schools and TFA “teachers” from Relay, Match etc. end up in low paying jobs? Just like they do now: Pay people in their belief tanks to do their own research, so they can skew the data and continue to lie to the public.
“80 people now have the same wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, down from 388 in 2010.” http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/ib-wealth-having-all-wanting-more-190115-en.pdf Since robber barons are not content to just go and bathe in the lap of luxury on their own private islands, it’s going to take huge throngs of ignoramuses behaving as sheep that are grateful for pennies and unwilling to stand up to them.
But look at the data and charts provided in the document above. Time is not on the side of billionaires, as that demonstrates the inequitable distribution of wealth is RAPIDLY worsening across the globe. Which country do you think will be the first to ignite world-wide revolution?
Reblogged this on peakmemory and commented:
Why value added measures should not be used to evaluate education schools.