Carol Burris went to Albany to attend the trial of Sheri Lederman’s case against the state of New York, which rated her “ineffective” based on her students’ growth scores. Many other educators attended the trial, which has national implications.
Sheri is an outstanding fourth grade teacher in a high-performing district. When she learned of her poor, computer-generated rating, she was devastated. But her husband Bruce, an attorney, determined to sue the state. He gathered affidavits from some of the mation’s leading experts on teacher evaluations, as well as students, teachers, and her principal.
At the trial, the judge recognized that grading teachers on a curve made no sense.
Burris reports:
“The exasperated New York Supreme Court judge, Roger McDonough, tried to get Assistant Attorney General Galligan to answer his questions. He was looking for clarity and instead got circuitous responses about bell curves, “outliers” and adjustments. Fourth-grade teacher Sheri Lederman’s VAM score of “ineffective” was on trial.
“The more Ms. Galligan tried to defend the bell curve of growth scores as science, the more the judge pushed back with common sense. It was clear that he did his homework. He understood that the New York State Education Department’s VAM system artificially set the percentage of “ineffective” teachers at 7 percent. That arbitrary decision clearly troubled him. “Doesn’t the bell curve make it subjective? There has to be failures,” he asked.
“The defender of the curve said that she did not like the “failure” word.
“The judge quipped, “Ineffectives, how about that?” Those in attendance laughed.
“Ms. Galligan preferred the term “outlier.” Those who got ineffective growth scores were “the outliers who are not doing a good job,” the attorney said. She seemed oblivious to the fourth-grade teacher who was sitting not 10 feet away from where she stood.
“Did her students learn nothing?” Justice McDonough asked. “How could it be that she went from 14 out of 20 points to 1 out of 20 points in one year?” He noted that the students’ scores were quite good and not that different from the year before.
“Back behind the bell curve Ms. Galligan ran. As she tried to explain once again, the judge said, “Therein lies the imprecise nature of this measure.”
Burris demonstrates the irrationality of the state’s measures. Teachers in some of the lowest-performing schools were rated “effective” or “highly effective,” while more teachers is some of the state’s best schools were rated “ineffective.” Crazy!
Burris writes:
“At its core, this story is a love story. It is the story of a teacher who loves her students, her profession and justice so much that she is willing to stand up and let the world know that she was “an outlier” with an “ineffective” score.
“It was love that compelled teachers, retired and active, driving from all corners of the state to be in that courtroom to listen on a hot summer’s day. It was love that compelled her principal to drive to Albany to be there. It was the deep and abiding love of a husband for his wife that compelled Bruce Lederman to spend countless hours preparing an extraordinary defense. And it is love that nourishes and sustains the good school, not avatar score predictions for performance on Common Core tests.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My kids are watching the movie “THe GIver” right now. Ms. Galligan’s statements, it reminds of obfuscating doublespeak from a Sci-fi movie.
I LOVE The Giver. Scary society we live in.
Give that judge some extra credit and a national virtual hug from all teachers.
Thank you Diane for sharing. Sheri is a hero who had the courage to come forward and it has not been easy. The defense of the state was so weak either they do not care if they lose or they are certain that the legal bar is so high she cannot win. We shall see. The judge got the idiocy of VAM
Thanks for the coverage, Carol!
Your coverage was outstanding, especially the final paragraph which I read over and over, reminding myself why I’m a teacher all these years, and feeling once again that we occupy the moral high ground in this ugly war on public education, and from that ground we will win.
“It was love that compelled teachers, retired and active, driving from all corners of the state to be in that courtroom to listen on a hot summer’s day. It was love that compelled her principal to drive to Albany to be there. It was the deep and abiding love of a husband for his wife that compelled Bruce Lederman to spend countless hours preparing an extraordinary defense. And it is love that nourishes and sustains the good school, not avatar score predictions for performance on Common Core tests.”
I just had to add it, Ira. I already had it ready to go before I saw your comment.
What an inspiration! The system relies on shame that silences. Just like in Los Angeles with the draconian practice of teacher jail, the whole system will be put on trial only when brave teachers make their cases public.
Yes, it is so important for victims to speak up. Yesterday a friend was telling me that teachers don’t speak up because they are terrified of harassment, or dismissal if they are not tenured, and that is true, but those who are courageous enough to say “enough” help so many others. That goes for teaching and for almost all areas of life.
Wow, Carol, I see you don’t quite understand the math behind the VAM. The growth scores of the students fit on a pre-determined curve but not the growth scores of the teachers. In theory, every single teacher could get the exact same growth score. Or teachers could be bunched right in the middle of the growth scores. But they are not. Teachers’ growth scores generate a bell curve because that is the nature of teachers just like other populations. A minority are great. A minority are ineffective. Most are good.
The true “love” is the love of teachers in hiding their ineffective peers. Teachers would simply rather protect a teacher who has an 85% of being ineffective than giving her students a true chance at success. VAMs allow disadvantaged students to have a chance at a great education. Reverting back to the anachronistic evaluations methods that result in 99% effective teacher ratings are the real bane for these students.
We need more data before we can truly classify Sheri as a good or ineffective teacher. NY didn’t even take actions based on the FY15 scores. Duncan and Gates recommended we gather more data to ensure the reliability. But rather than wait and improve the system, Sheri wanted to take a preemptive strike to prevent any teachers from being accountable. For this she is “proud”?
Virginiasgp, it is not clear to me from the descriptions that the New York evaluation model is a true VAM. It sounds more like an SGP model. Regardless, in an SGP or VAM growth model the estimate describes the gain in relation to a measure of central tendency so there is a distribution. For every teacher to have the same growth score, their students in the aggregate would have to have the same growth (however growth is calculated in the model). In theory, you could have a population where all the teachers were good or better but individuals would still be above or below the central tendency of the group.
Stiles, agreed. NY sounds like an SGP model just like Virginia uses. For each group of similar students, there is an equal spread of percentiles from 1-99%. Those are relative growth scores. The SGPs are only calculated at the student level. In fact, if the students can’t be matched to teachers, you can generate SGPs but not teacher-level median growth scores.
Say teacher 1 has kids with growth percentiles of 5%, 49% and 99%. Teacher 2 has growth percentiles of 41% 50% and 59%. Both would have a median growth score of 49-50%. The point is there is nothing that requires a teacher to have a really high or really low growth score.
That said, the bottom 7% of NY teachers are classified as ineffective. If the teacher distribution of MGPs went from 45% to 55%, then one could argue most teachers are about the same. But they don’t. No state’s MGPs look like that. They naturally form a bell curve. It’s not a requirement if you had equally effective teachers, but because the teachers are not equally effective a bell curve results. You get most teachers’ MGPs between 40-60%. But you have some at 80%+ and some at 20%-. Those are clearly less effective than the average just like the 80%+ are miracle workers.
I’m not sure why NY didn’t bring this up. Maybe they didn’t hire the right expert witnesses and don’t truly understand the data. If they simply showed a picture of the natural distribution of teacher MGPs (not the forced student SGPs), the judge would understand that some teachers are clearly far below their peers. If anybody can show me a state’s chart with teacher MGPs closely grouped between 40-60%, I’ll seriously consider changing my opinion. I haven’t seen it yet.
Chris in Florida, I agree not much has changed yet. Virginia officials signed off on their ESEA waiver with the “assurance” that SGPs would be given to teachers. Virtually no district has downloaded the data much less given it to teachers. That is called fraud. Rather than prosecuting the state superintendent who knowingly lied to the US DOE to receive $40M+/yr, they are defending the VDOE against releasing even aggregate information. The depth of their unethical behavior knows no bounds. Once these teacher-level data are released, there will be huge public pressure for districts to take action. Nobody even knows who our superstars are. You can look at the LA Times data to see that Rafe was a great teacher. But some others are ineffective. If schools would take of this for us, I wouldn’t need to push for the data to be released. Why don’t they do their jobs so I don’t have to waste my time enforcing the rules?
That is if there is even any teacher who is a “superstar”. Ahhh, I feel the stench of American love of fame and fortune in the air.
VirginiaSGP, one of the fundamental issues is that in a norm referenced system, which SGP models are, there will always be a set number of students at each SGP and when one calculates a MGP there will always be a ranking of teachers. In the New York system 7% of teachers would be deemed ineffective regardless of the overall effectiveness of New York educators. A teacher’s rating does not depend wholly on their student’s results, but depends on their results in relation to those of other teacher’s.
In Shari Lederman’s example, it sounds like we also have a case of a highly regarded veteran teacher who scored “ineffective” after scoring effective the year before. I don’t know her at all, but it is unlikely that her work in the classroom is that variable.
Another issue with educator effectiveness scores is that even when the model is defensible and the data quality is good (i.e. none of this art teachers being accountable for the math scores business), the process of combining measures is complicated. If one measure, like NY’s growth model, contributes most of the delta its effect on teacher ranking is more substantial that its stated weight in the formula.
Just because you won an FOI suit against your local school district doesn’t mean that you have any say over whether any other teacher is ‘good’ or ‘ineffective’ by your limited, unscientific, disproven standards.
Your ego is amazingly large, granted, but your prowess as a reformster is sadly localized and lacking.
Prove your lies about teachers. Prove your methodology is scientific, fair, and reliable enough to determine a teacher’s career and livelihood prospects.
You can’t. Nothing much happened after your nuisance suit in VA and nothing much will happen elsewhere because of your hubris.
I don’t fear you, respect you, or even acknowledge you. I pity you.
” They naturally form a bell curve.”
No, they don’t unless you consider a man made construct to be “natural” (which I don’t think is your intent).
So Duane, does a 40m-dash time constitute a “man-made construct”? What about marathon times? Or human height? Or human weight?
We see bell curves in everyday life all the time. The raw scores on these tests form bell curves. They don’t have to manipulate the data to get bell curves. There are some artificial distributions such as SGPs (equally distributed across 99 percentiles). But those have no correlation to teachers since SGPs are calculated at the student level without any teacher data involved. I know this because it came up in our Richmond trial on July 31. Some lawyer without a clue – Julia Judkins (the same lawyer who said there was “nothing to see here” when teachers blew the whistle on a principal) claimed that SGPs were by definition teacher performance indicators. If SGPs are calculated without teacher data, and could be calculated before teachers could even be mapped to students Julia was either lying or completely clueless, or more likely both. She has obviously been known to misrepresent facts in the past.
In any case, please show me any teacher MGP distribution that does not follow a bell curve profile. It is possible, it just doesn’t naturally exist.
Perhaps the fallacy is in assuming that anyone whose students do not receive “average” or above growth scores is performing poorly. We have yet to see a body of research that validates these methods of evaluation. I think it highly unlikely that a method of evaluation that treats all students and teachers as if they were popped out of a single mold and therefore should perform at or above some predetermined, arbitrary standard is likely to be giving us useful information. We already have identified groups of students that we know as a whole will or will not produce approved growth scores, which makes such measures suspect. As a former special education teacher, I find such attempts at standardization highly destructive. Trying to create some approved, standardized “product” does nothing to improve our society. I have yet to meet such an exemplary individual, thank goodness. I prefer my human beings in all their random glory.
Blasphemy, Duane. We all know that the precious bell curve has come down from the Heavens, and applies to everything.
” Nobody even knows who our superstars are.”
Yes, most everybody does. Walk into a school and survey the students, teachers and admins and you’ll find out who they are.
Funny even a court judge asked explanation because he couldn’t understand the effect of VAM and the defense attorney had trouble explaining what it is all about.
Highly doubtful if VAMpire language is understandable to human beings–unless you get bitten.
If you need more data to truly classify Sheri, then the evaluations violate the law’s requirement to be transparent and available prior to the start of the school year in question.
The judge also commented that the decision to use a bell curve, reliance on the performance of other teachers and the ‘ineffective’ quota made the evaluations subjective, not objective.
The state also argued that the VAM formulas were not ‘predictive’ because they relied on actually realized student scores, but we all know they are predictive because they also rely on projections of expected student growth.
This is not so complicated as to require advanced statistical knowledge – the judge was applying common sense and could see the prevalence of level of human discretion all throughout in the NY system, before we even talk about manipulated cut scores or test elements withdrawn after the scoring.
No one can say how student characteristics turned Lederman’s students exam scores into the 1/20 or 15/20 ranking she received. Can you? If not, then the law is not transparent, but the refusal to make public the SWD-ELL-poverty formulas should also trouble anyone on either side of this debate.
Amerigus, you are incorrect on multiple points.
1. NY uses an SGP algorithm. As such there is no enforced “bell curve”.. In reality, there is an even distribution across every percentile. For example, if you take all the students with the same score history, there will be an even number of students (1%) who are assigned each percentile from 1-99%. It literally looks like a straight line across these 99 percentiles. That is not a bell curve. It is also not “predictive”. It simply takes similar students and compares their growth against each other. There is no teacher data assigned to those SGPs at this point at all.
2. The bell curve arises because that’s how distributions naturally form. You could have a bimodal distribution with teachers clustered at the top and the bottom (MGP of 60 and MGP of 40). You could have a few great teachers (MGP of 75) and everybody else clustered around the 30-45% range. There could literally be any type of distribution from these student SGPs. But just as math is developed to explain natural phenomenon, a bell curve almost invariably results because that’s the true nature of teacher effectiveness.
3. The fact that NY chooses 7% as ineffective is an arbitrary number. I would probably choose 15-20% after looking at the data, but they chose 7%. I don’t have access to NY’s teacher distributions of SGPs (I do have Virginia’s). If NY has a bell curve distribution like nearly every other instance of SGPs, and the bottom 7% is at the low end of MGPs (say 30th percentile results and lower), then absolutely that 7% makes sense.
I don’t know exactly how Lederman went from 14 to a 1 on the SGP index. I’m guessing her FY13 score was too high and the FY14 score might be a little low. But if her best defense is that a bright student went from a perfect score to missing two questions, then she is not a “great teacher”. That was her best defense remember. Did any of her students actually increase? A fellow reformer in Richmond graphed SGPs of a teacher in his district to show the abysmal results sometimes. I’m guessing Lederman’s graph would look a lot like this (see teacher #74415)
Stiles you hit on some key points. I will admit that VAMs/SGPs can have much greater influence than their weighting suggests. If an observation score ranges from 75%-100% of its total points and counts 50% of the total eval, it will have a lot less influence than a VAM that ranges from 1-100% of its total points but also contributes 50% of the overall eval. You could solve this in two ways: (1) making observations much more accurate by using a large range of its total points (not giving everybody essentially a B+ to start) or (2) lowering the VAM percentage of the overall evaluations from 50% to a lower number. This happens in college sports polls as well. Since each voter counts the same, an opposing coach can screw his top-ranked rival by voting them 20th instead of #2. The abnormally low rank of 20th when everybody else had the team in the top 2 or 3, skews the results. In the end, we need to be transparent in what is going on. I am extremely doubtful that you can’t find 7% of folks in any profession would not be deemed ineffective.
As for the arbitrary nature of norm-referenced systems, that could be a problem. Once again, look at the actual distribution of teacher SGP/VAMs. If they are highly bunched toward the 45-55% range, then you could be correct. All teachers are essentially the same. But if they are anything like what I found in Virginia (download see slides 10+), then there are some high and low performers. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure this out. You can’t tell me the teachers with MGPs of 80+ are not head and shoulders above those with MGPs of 20-.
I hope teachers will refuse to “classify” themselves according to any of these ridiculous evaluation systems no matter what the world tells them they are.
So you are saying “the decision to use the bell curve” should be changed to “the decision to use the system that produces a bell curve”. But you win that one on “splitting hairs over technical nomenclature”.
On the validity of NY’s VAM law it seems you are agreeing that it’s indeed invalid, noting the formula that produced Sheri’s score is not transparent when you said “I don’t know how her score went from a 14 to a 1”. That’s essential – the law as practiced is depriving teachers of their right to a transparent formula in this case if they cannot understand how ELL/SWD/poverty considerations massage her numbers into 14s or 1s.
Another violation is demonstrated in the pre-determined quota to punish the lowest 7% based on comparison because the law states teachers must have a chance to ring every bell, but “rank and yank” guarantees some fall by the wayside no matter what they do or do not do.
Also, there are practical considerations that replacing these “ineffective” teachers with brand new teachers does not guarantee any improvement, as are few applicants for struggling schools.
Statistical knowledge is great for working with pen and paper but if you also acquired experience of working in an inner city school, you would see that the very concept of using VAM to make staffing decisions is miserably flawed because so many students are not actually invested in taking the tests, filling out random guesses on the bubble sheets year after year.
This means that misleading, useless data is being mixed in with the data from the students who do try, tainting the results to a degree that no one can even measure.
VAM supporters cannot discern an answer that came from great teaching from an answer that was simply guessed, or discern a low score achieved because the teacher is bad from a low score resulting from a student who can’t read English, didn’t attend class, didn’t apply themselves, or just bubbled in circles without reading them.
How much does an ELL count versus a SWD in Sheri’s formula? Do ELLs count the same whether they have been here 1 or 10 years? Are all SWDs counted as the same regardless of functioning ability?
If you don’t know, then it’s okay to admit the formulas are kept secret and therefore violate the law. It’s better for your side to defend VAM on the merits, not because nine billionaires supported pro-VAM candidates in last year’s elections and shove this crap on people in order to expand privatization.
amerigus, let me try to answer your questions one by one:
1. You object to a “system which produces a bell curve”. Do you object to natural phenomena like human height (produces a bell curve), human athletic ability (produces a bell curve), human weight (produces a bell curve), aptitude tests (produces a bell curve) as well? You see, math explains natural phenomena. The fact that median growth percentiles of teachers (MGPs) fall on a bell curve is not preordained. You can have bimodal distributions where teachers are clustered at the 60th and 40th percentiles. But you do not. We see that just like every other scoring system devised, there is a natural distribution of teachers along a bell curve. At the district level, it may be more lumpy and not symmetrical. But when you aggregate it in large numbers, it almost always produces a bell curve. That’s called “nature”.
2. I’m guessing Sher’s change in score was due to a host of factors. She likely had a better year teaching in 2013 than 2014. Her score in 2013 was probably overestimated. Her 2014 score might have been slightly underestimated. Throw all of those in together and you can explain the drop. But no teacher will be fired based on one year of data in 2014. If Sheri’s scores continue to fall in the bottom 20%, she might get remediation or eventually be let go. But yes, folks do have bad years. It’s not the end of the world. The system is still transparent. Her students simply did not achieve as much growth as similar students around the state. Thus, relative to her peers, she greatly underperformed.
3. First, there will always be some teachers at the bottom of a relative scale. We agree on that. If NY students scored off the charts and 50% were proficient instead of the mid-30% range, then maybe the officials could say nobody gets the lowest ranking this year. If the distribution didn’t look like a bell curve, but had teachers clustered in the 40th-60th percentile range, then officials could say that all teachers did about the same. But when you have outcomes equal predictions including (a) a wide bell curve from the 20th to the 80th percentile in MGPs and (b) only a fraction of the students achieving proficient on the test, then there is absolutely no reason to believe 7% (or even a higher number) of teachers are ineffective. If you want a “non-arbitrary number”, you can definitely get it. SGPs are intended to show how much growth needs to be attained to ensure a child is “on track” to be college ready by graduation. That would produce a much harsher result than 7%. If you want some “absolute standard”, you should really be careful what you wish for.
4. The whole point about replacing teachers is the new teacher has a high likelihood of being “about average”. Certainly not in every case and states need to measure the performance of new teachers vs veteran teachers (hint: after 3 years, all teachers score about the same regardless of average experience). I would even recommend they measure the performance of the marginally hired teacher. In other words, the last teachers recruited. This is similar to the myth about “college graduates earn $1M more” than non-college grads. Many of those college grads were smart and would have been successful regardless. If you look at the “last student in” to college (last one who met the cutoff) and measure their increased earnings, it will be substantially less. The final recruits may not be as effective as the average recruit. On the other hand, if NY simply publishes private sector equivalent pay to show candidates how much pensions are worth, they may attract a lot more capable candidates. Unless shown otherwise, one must conclude the average new teacher performs close to average.
5. You can measure the number of students who “tried”. But part of the responsibility of teachers is measuring their inspiration of students. The MET study found that high-VAM teachers got students to give more effort and enjoy class more. If Sheri had low-VAMs, maybe it’s because her students were bored and not inspired. Is inspiration a requirement of teachers, I would say yes. Certainly if other teachers can inspire, if a teacher cannot and new recruits can do so more effectively, maybe it’s time for a new recruit.
6. You are wrong about VAMs not teasing out ELL, FRL, disabled, or otherwise disadvantaged kids. SGPs capture 90% of the SES that VAMs do. It’s basically in their score histories. That is why a kid who scores at the 15th percentile for years isn’t compared to a kid who scores at the 85th percentile for years.
7. The formulas are not kept secret. They are open source for goodness sakes. Most states have an exemption in FOIA that protects proprietary code anyways. Any teacher can get any score on that evaluation. But if a teacher is not effective, he/she will virtually never get a top score.
You seem to think in terms of “civil rights” for teachers. Note that you have never, ever taken the side of disadvantaged students who are being subjected to ineffective instruction. You only worry about if a teacher might be misclassified. That is very telling. You certainly allow that VAMs may be completely accurate. You are just trying to show that if VAMs/SGPs could be inaccurate, then they are not allowed by law. That interpretation is incorrect. Nothing prevents NY from firing 5% or even 20% of its teachers every year. But the sad part is you don’t really care if that would be the right thing to do. You just worry that some teacher out there may eventually be incorrectly labeled and the world would virtually come to an end because of that horrible “injustice”. That perspective is what is disturbing.
Virginia, I don’t think I can argue with you anymore. You think like a robot. Your prerogative. But most other people do not. You can measure a person’s height and weight, but how do you measure their character? How do you measure their potential to succeed in college, in career, or in life? Write whatever you want. You won’t convince me that life, teaching, people, art, humanity, can be coded, measured, and turned into finite data. So I won’t block you. But you don’t listen to anyone who disagrees. You are rigid in your own views. I do wish, as you stated earlier, that this blog was read by all reformers. There should be genuine exchanges. But genuine exchanges require a willingness to consider the views of others, the ability to say you are wrong, the ability to change your mind. That is the mark of a free intellect. Rigidity is not.
Diane/Ed Detective/Steve K, not sure this is fair to go 3 against 1 but here goes. Yes, I do change my mind when I see data/theories that contradict my perspective. But just as most of you here, I did not come to my conclusions superficially. Thus, it will take completely new data to change my views. I have somewhat changed my perspective on one issue though: Head Start. I was familiar with the research that showed all test gains from Head Start dissipate within 2 years. Thus, I believed the $Bs spent on it were wasted. But after seeing the similar research on VAMs and the long-term data on each, it strikes me that inspiration may be what follows the child for 10+ years. If a child knows that an adult takes an interest in and inspires that student, his/her effort may increase for years. Seeing scientifically controlled data by CFR has largely changed my mind on this issue.
However, many of you don’t appear to hear what I’ve been trying to say. VAMs are a proxy for many facets of education. Just like the SATs were a proxy for a real IQ test, or the number of books in the home is a proxy for parental education, or BMI is a proxy for health; none of these directly measure the exact characteristic. However, they are very close approximations and are highly correlated. You don’t improve VAMs by “trying to improve VAMs”. That would be like saying Coach K will increase Duke’s points per game by trying to score more points. No, you focus on the process and the details and when you are successful in the process, your outcomes are better. Coach K focuses on concentration/coordination on defense, high-percentage shots and rebounding. Together, those produce more possessions per game and more made field goals while minimizing points against. But Coach K does so much more. He focuses on players’ “love” for each other, the team and the program. He focuses on players not letting themselves or their teammates down. And while Duke’s players are not shabby, Duke alumni do not rank at the top of the NBA rosters. Yet, Duke is without question the most successful college basketball program of the last 30 years. Teachers do the same. The efforts in after-school chess, or calls to the house, or coaching a team show up in their academic effort and grades. I understand why it’s tempting to say VAM is “just a number on a test”. But it’s not. It’s so much more.
I also think we have digressed away from the core subject of accurate evaluations. The MET study suggested 3 parts: VAMs, observations and student surveys. Ok, what are “student surveys”? Well, my district is one of those high-faluting districts that most teachers would die for (3rd highest household income in the US). Kids show up and pass the test on day 1. But how do we compare against similar districts? Below average according to VAMs. But what do the students say? I put together excerpts of the PISA results of the 5 high schools participating in 2015. In the front, it shows how students responded to questions such as “Does my teacher care about my well-being” or “Will math be important for your career”. These are attitudes that can be compared across the US. As the VAMs would predict, our students were less likely to believe teachers cared or that math/science were important for their careers. I live in “Silicon Valley East” so that’s crazy for students not to think the surrounding tech companies value STEM. Nobody is inspiring these kids. It shows up in the surveys and then the test scores. But just looking at the raw data without SES data would fool you into thinking our system is great. My district officials certainly try to claim that. Has anyone ever looked through these 150-page PISA reports? They are quite excellent and easy to understand. Can anyone object to using such student surveys as part of the teacher evals?
Finally, some suggest that I am “naive” and don’t ascribe ulterior motives to the reform actors. I certainly don’t ascribe selfish motives to a billionaire who is giving his entire fortune away and has given billions to solve poverty in Africa (Gates). But there may be others who are in it for their own profit motives. In fact, lest you forget, there is one billionaire in Falls Church, VA who happens to own a large (shady) for-profit charter school network called Imagine Schools. He got his right-hand man elected to my school board as chairman without ever telling anyone about his connections. I call it being an undisclosed, taxpayer-funded lobbyist. Lobbyists work not only for their employer’s direct contracts but to push the industry as well. Bakke has hired lobbyists to change Virginia laws. I argue Hornberger is doing the same thing for charters in Loudoun County. He never disclosed his conflict of interest nor recused himself. He has infinite amounts of time to attend ceremonies in the middle of the day because that’s what Bakke wants him to do as his foundation employee. But best of all, we pay Bakke’s employee to lobby for him since school board members get $37K in salary/benefits.
So what did I do when I realized folks were using the system for their own advantage? Remember, I’m agnostic on charters in general. I sued! I’m still proceeding even though a circuit court judge in my county literally made up facts on another FOIA case that both parties refuted to justify her dismissal of FOIA violations. That same judge sanctioned me for simply trying to have Hornberger and other school board members testify at trial. Within 10 days after her ruling, my district released emails that proved the school board and Hornberger had pressured LCPS to finally provide the documents they had been intentionally hiding. In this latest conflict of interest case against Hornberger, Loudoun literally lets Hornberger pick his judge! Who does he pick? Well, the judge who sanctioned me for trying to question the dishonest school board under oath?
I put my money, my time and my reputation where my mouth is. I’m trying to root out powerful interests even though I am not an anti-charter person like you all. Yet, you call me “naive” and “rigid”. Are you really serious? Diane refutes hard teacher attrition data gathered by the US DOE and she is cheered for using her own made-up numbers. I explain how Sheri Lederman and her husband fundamentally don’t understand SGPs and I am called a fool. Wow.
Come up with your own system for evaluations. Use a “teachers’ poll” where they rate each other after actually observing each other teach (similar to the coaches poll in college football). It would probably improve their own teaching just from observing others. Just use something other than the “all teachers are great and should be trusted without question” method that was previously in place. We may never agree. But I do hope you improve your arguments. I really do wish you might take an objective look at how your arguments sound to truly outside observers.
Virginiasgp, the “injustice” is that VAMs do not capture who teachers are, or what they do. Tests do not capture who students are, or what they really know or can do. You may not trust all teachers, but surely you believe there are some intelligent ones out there?? Well, the intelligent ones know this, and have been arguing it.
You seem desperate for a way to get rid of bad teachers, and maybe that’s why you are so hesitant to consider the idea that the number scales are abritrary, manmade, not natural — and that measuring a change in standardized test scores is a fundamentally flawed method for assessing teacher quality.
You certainly don’t trust educator people about education, and yet you trust the far-removed tests that non-educator people create (for profit) to measure teaching and learning? You are quick to question the motives of teachers, but what about the motives of testing corporations, economists, politicians, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists?
My motive is not to “protect” bad teachers. Why would I still strongly oppose VAMs? Could it be because perhaps they are not what they claim to be?
Adding on to Diane’s “think like a robot” observation: A binary thinker would argue that teachers can be simplified into a number, and then they just get better (scores go up) or worse (scores go down). That’s all there is to it in the world of 1s and 0s. Is that what education really is? Does that really explain everything that’s going on?
Have you considered that there might be a better way?
Oops, forgot the link to the PISA results. Notice how not only did these schools underperform on the tests compared to similar SES, but their students often felt the teachers did not care about them and that math/science was not important (relative to other US students).
1. No one objects to bell curves in nature, you are far afield and apparently confused about what the judge was saying. He was saying the decision to use APPR which compares teachers to other teachers using VAM instead of a fixed scale makes the system subjective, counter to the state’s claim.
2. (a) If you’re “guessing”, the conversation is over because the law states there shall be no guesswork as formulas must be transparent before the school year, let alone after a lawsuit.
(b) You say “Her score in 2013 was probably overestimated. Her 2014 score might have been slightly underestimated” so the system yielded inaccurate results going in different directions for consecutive years. Pretty damning.
(c) “no teacher will be fired based on one year of data in 2014” – the case is not arguing that she was going to be fired, rather that the ineffective label constitutes any sort of injury to her resume or professional standing.
(d) You said “But yes, folks do have bad years. It’s not the end of the world. The system is still transparent. Her students simply did not achieve as much growth as similar students around the state.
She did not have a bad year and her students performed similarly to the year before. The suit is saying that because she was compared to peers in a system that offers no human override of computer generated rankings, it is unreasonably arbitrary and capricious.
3. (a) You make a quantum leap to say that the bell curve of teacher performance should correlate to the proficiency of students on the tests. It’s in dispute whether the test scores do or do not show the teacher’s hand, and particularly with outliers like Sheri. The state already admitted the system was imperfect and because I’m actually in an inner city classroom, I see why – many kids are not actually reading the test, they are just filling out bubbles. Then statisticians stay up all night trying to analyze and extrapolate meaning from something that has no meaning. Randomly filled bubbles mean nothing and show nothing about the student, teacher, school, district, city or country except that the kid is not buying in to the testing.
(b) The choice to rate 7% ineffective conflicts the language in the law.
4. In my school, the test-and-punish VAM law scares away experienced teachers from taking the job so we end up with an inordinate number of TFA recruits. They have a 50/50 chance of staying in the job for 3 years, so the program has been quite a spectacular failure. In fact, 85% of TFA said they do not intend to teach as a career. The use of quotas in the system to label teacher ineffective and the decision to rank teachers using test scores has also caused teachers to flee the profession. The NY Times just reported on today’s acute shortage.
5. (a) I cannot wait to hear how you can tell apart a low 1 who legitimately tried from a kid who just bubbled in at random, particularly when there is no discernable pattern in the pencil dots. Educate me how you know!
(b) I see myself, as a real teacher, examples of students who show effort all year long for their teachers and lessons, and even teacher-created tests, but lock up when they see the state math and ELA exams. So what about teachers who do inspire students every day, but not for the Common Core tests.
Kids know the tests are imposed by the government, and choose not to participate often because they have been traumatized by high stakes tests in the past, or because they feel the rigor is way above their actual functioning level.
Please explain how you know, looking at the dots whether the kid was unmotivated all year long, or just on testing day. Just another example of how putting stock in VAM makes us miss the common sense, real world factors that greatly affect the lives of young children.
6. Does the VAM formula adjust for high and low functioning within the classifications of ELL, SWD and poverty? Or does a designation of ELL count the same whether the kid has been here for 10 years or 10 days? Does the SWD designation affect APPR the same whether the kid is a highly capable or barely functioning? What about the subjectivity of SWD classification, where it’s decided by the whims of the parent?
7. (a) They are not secret and are open, the state response redacted them with big black boxes in their response. Is there an explanation you can show us that explains how the raw student scores are boiled down into a 1-20 score?
(b) You really should spend time in an inner city community, among the kids and families and in the schools for extended periods of time to understand a few realities on the ground.
Your last paragraph parrots political talking points that accept the myth of the bad teacher and the myth of teacher impact as gospel, without any cognizance that you are being used as a misinformation mule. The reason I am active is to advocate on behalf of my students, the highest needs kids in the state. The massive, widespread failure of NCLB and standardized testing, narrowed curriculum and APPR has destroyed the joy of learning for generations now, chasing away good teachers.
Good teachers are the first responders to bad teachers. We have to take up their slack, mentor them, collaborate with them and have their inadequacy reflect on us and our students. So understand that you are not just wrong in your image of teachers protecting bad teachers, you are a dupe, swallowing whole something deliberately designed to distract the gullible.
Just as Reagan conjured up the image of the welfare queen to vilify single moms in the inner city as lazy and shiftless, it was a successful ruse to distract from the exponentially worse corporate welfare expanding under everyone’s nose. Though there absolutely were legitimate welfare cheats, the true numbers were hidden as the problem was sensationalized using racist dog whistles and platitudes about personal responsibility to get gullible middle class voters to act against their own interests and elect a slew of corporate stooges.
In this case, the reformers are using the same tactic with a different boogeyman. If they can convince you there are a lot of bad teachers in the public schools, and that teachers are the most influential factor in kid’s future lives regardless of economic circumstances, then you will stand back and let them take over the school’s resources, usurp local control of your schools, and slip away with money meant for kids in classrooms.
Maybe you feel your statistical acumen is useful to reformers who may one day reward you, but standardized testing and VAM is being rejected in NY in a big way, both in court and in out not only because it enriches private vendors, but because year after year, it’s own metrics show it continually increases the achievement gap, failing in it’s primary stated mission.
Teachers accept and use tests and evaluations, just not your bad tests and invalid evaluations. VAM is fatally flawed in both on and off-label use because it is too blunt to capture the complexities of a real classroom that are beyond the control of the academic staff. People are catching on that it is built on predictions, estimates and projections akin to corporate efficiency practices meant for sports analysts, not places of learning.
Test-and-punish has ALEC roots and it’s corporate funding belies it’s intentions to privatize education services in order to introduce middleman profiteers, to manufacture a crisis that paves the way for receivership and charter schools, and to deprofessionalize the teaching profession to cut budgets, suppress benefits and scale up centralized accountability practices.
I hate to keep reminding you, but I’m an experienced inner city classroom teacher and I see how these kids do and don’t respond in real-world learning situations. You are a statistician removed from these struggling schools and human interactions who erroneously assumes that their test scores correlate to the same compliance of effort as suburban schools. You also believe VAM converts our tax dollars into useful data, but cannot show in step-by-step breakdowns how Sheri Lederman’s score was generated, or why the state redacted the calculations in their official response.
You are clinging to practices that hurt disadvantaged students in NY by dictating their curriculum by age instead of functioning ability, by preventing their schools from hiring good teachers, and by ceding local democratic control to state and federal officials. The same practices waste precious time in suburban schools, upending proven practices in favor of unproven ones. And as you call for 1 out of 5 teachers to be fired annually, offer no explanation for how they would be replaced and how this drastic faculty churn would impact children as their teachers change like the weather.
I would recommend you for a job with the Koch or Walton astroturf operations. If you sound like you know a lot about SGP, FRL and SES, you might temporarily convince gullible red state voters that you understand how and when kids learn best.
Beyond this case, the whole idea of turning the measuring stick on the measurers, when no one was really measuring but encouraging, marking (very, very roughly and crudely) progress, or rather backing it up with something tangible, and setting low bars to prevent total slacking and total corruption, and when there are so, so many moving parts and factors well out of the measurers control or even knowledge, is profoundly wrong.
Imagine restaurants given letter grades based on how the health of their customers improve and how many of them remain within budget and out of debt, regardless of what they choose from the menu, though someone gives a pitch at their table for the healthier, more economical stuff. And then of course some moron statistician tries to compare restaurants and adjust for the diets and wealth of different groups of customers. And the NY Times sends a food critic around who promotes the whole enterprise and utterly bastardizes the reviews. And eventually people get hospitalized due to indigestion from reading these reviews and dining in tense and toxic environments, at which point President Christie punches the NY restaurant industry in the face and Cuomo goes to jail for raking in obligatory tips.
I just read an article on how hospitals are being penalized based on their readmission rates. Medicare reimbursements are being cut even when hospitals improve but do not meet arbitrary goals. Of course the claim is made that extenuating circumstances, like the client base, are taken into consideration. Now, the temptation to game the situation and not readmit patients who really should be hospitalized is being encouraged. The alternative care plans are far more costly to the patients but could save the hospitals from penalty.
Enough is enough. When will common sense again prevail?
The bar is going to be high because the question being asked about the implemented system seems to be within the meaning of the law the legislature passed.
Given the lack of outcry from lawmakers it seems this system is what they intended though the holes they have in the law which they probably wrote to maintain the illusion of fairness may actually serve to create justice by blowing their own law apart.
Defending the fairness of the system was probably something they thought they had to do but how they didn’t realize it was impossible I don’t know/
Either they do think the system matches what the legislature wanted or they miscalculated in not hanging everything on “the law is X we did Y the 2 match up even if there is a better alternative”.
The complicated defense of trying to illustrate their own controlled and artificial sets of checks and balances is a defense that never could have worked.
They want to hold all the cards and control the rules while telling all the players their fate is in their hands. I hope to god she blows all current and future incarnations of this godforsaken system to hell .
Even if the state is using a flawed system, though, that doesn’t mean it has been ”arbitrary and capricious,” in operating the test program, said McDonough. “”That’s an incredibly high standard,” he said.
Kudos to the Ledermans for their courage and persistence. It cannot be easy for Sheri to sit there and listen to the state’s defense. Whether they call her “ineffective” or “outlier,” it must be difficult for her, especially since she knows she is an effective teacher that serves New York’s students well. It’s never easy for the trailblazers, but I hope their dedication pays off for many other teachers and students in New York as well as the teaching profession in general. Let’s hope they shine a light on the faux statistical railroading of teachers that will result in blowing up the bogus notion of VAM as “accountability.”
Diane. Sheri and I thank you, Carol and all your readers for the support throughout this case and journey. We are cautiously optimistic that this case will bring some sanity to the debate over Teacher evaluations. Even if the judge rules against us — which we do not expect — we are proud to have brought national attention to the issue. Let’s hope some politicians read carol’s excellent account and take note.
Is the trial still ongoing? Can the public attend?
This is a very important step in the eventual demise of the Common Core
The same thing happened to me in Cleveland, Ohio. Can I get her husband to defend me in Ohio? I asked my union for defense, but was told they only provide attorneys for class actions. Is there anyone in Ohio that can help me?
Talk to other teachers to whom this happened. Document those cases, perhaps a facebook page or your own blog. Try to get those who have been harmed to stand with you (more likely than not they will come running out of the woodwork). Then approach the union again: Hey, here are so many examples of the idiocy, class action time.
(Unfortunately, the union probably will still refuse so that they can keep their place on the table where they’ve already had their cojones cut off and consumed.)
Duane, have you read this? It is a fascinating explanation of the ineffectiveness of the AFT due to the capture of the Unity party and its communist roots:
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2015/07/unity-cadre-democratic.html
Certainly makes me rethink my two decades of involvement in the AFT.
Interesting site. Thanks for the referral.
I’ve not been involved with any of the teacher’s unions (and by the way I don’t consider the NEA to be a union, what union allows management to be members.) NEA is too far in bed with the powers that be to begin to counteract the nefarious practices that are instituted.
Although I am a staunch believer in unions, the teachers’ unions and the NEA have betrayed the members by Going Along to Get Along (GAGA) believing that being on the dinner table is the same as being at the dinner table. And the first part carved off their body politic was the cojones so that those organizations are totally emasculated and now are part of the problem running shrieking interference for those seeking to destroy public education.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The Waltons, the Bill Gates Cabal of Billionaires, Eli Broad, a vipers nest of Hedge Funds, and the Koch Brothers have all been slandering and libeling public school teachers for years making them the skapegoat for all of Americans problems and now their Common Core Crap high stakes testing is on trial in New York State. This is Strongly Suggested Reading. Putting VAM on Trial is putting the RheeForm movement on Trial and defending teachers against the greed-is-good, for-profit education industry. Is the media covering this trial like they covered the Vergara trial in Los Angeles when the Rheeform movement—paid for by those billionaires—was attacking public school teachers?
Is the national media covering this trial to the same degree that they covered the Vergara trial in Los Angeles when public school teachers were on the chopping block with the RheeFormers noose around their necks?
Are there any reporters there from the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times or Time Magazine?
It’s time for Time magazine to put VAM on their cover riding a broomstick alongside VAM’s old sidekick, Michelle Rhee, who is wearing her witches hat and black ankle length dress as she flies around bashing teachers and principals in the head with an axe.
Hmm, Halloween edition. VAMpires, Brown and Rhee as witches, Gates the giggling mad scientist wearing pie on his face and drinking a dubious concoction, Broad, Kochs, Waltons as an extended cannibal family a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes, and Cuomo as of course an unflinching, relentless zombie, the slow kind.
:o) Yes! This would be a perfect Time Magazine cover and that issue would probably sell twice as many copies as usual and become a collectors edition because of Time actually being honest for once.
Cuomo would be dragging his feet as appendages rot and fall off. His eyeballs would be hanging from the sockets. His nose, ears and lips would already be gone—chewed off by rats and crows.
Careful with the ‘mad scientist’ thing. Gates is not (and never was) a scientist.
On another thread, I shared some thoughts on this topic. It was a bit rambling at times… but here it is:
I just read about the concept of “growth” in the Leaderman case, and some thoughts came to mind…
First, there’s the phenomenon of the “ceiling effect” when judging someone based on a growth model of data. This is a handicap where, in raising your “growth” data, you have nowhere or almost nowhere higher to go, or there a circumstances present that make it very difficult to go higher. This might be the case with Leaderman’s students. They scored massively high in two consecutive years, with a minuscule dip from one year to the next.
In Los Angeles, I’ve looked up the stats on two exemplary public schools in upscale neighborhoods: Wonderland Avenue up in Laurel Canyon, and Warner Avenue in Westwood.(the school where privatization puppet Ben Austin sends his kids, by the way.)
In their annual API score(maximum score 1000), these two schools consistently fluctuate between in a range between 980-995, but never 1000. They’re at the “ceiling.” Within that range, their scores go up or down 5-to-15 or so API points from year to year. It’s impossible for those schools to show much, if any “growth”. They’re at the ceiling, and that makes moving up the score almost impossible—you have nowhere to go but down. When their score dips slightly—say 990 down to 980—that would lead to them having a low “growth” score.
On the other hand, a struggling inner-city school might start with an API score of 600 one year, that goes up to next year to 620, then 630 the year after. (When a school starts out this low, these gains are fairly easy to attain, much easier than at Wonderland or Warner.) In the “growth model” world, this school would have a high growth score, while Warner and Wonderland would be “outliers”, with a poor “growth” score.
Thus, the growth model is nonsense.
Here’s how “ceiling effect” works in sports. I’m not sure, but Ms. Leaderman—in regards to her students’ scores year-to-year—may be sort of in the position of former Lakers’ coach Phil Jackson was in the early 2000’s, when his teams won 70 or more games in multiple seasons.
Keep in mind that team winning over 70 games is a season is rare in NBA history.
The argument goes like this: If the team that Jackson coaches wins, for example, 74 games one year, then only 71 games the following year—again, both phenomenal achievements—he would then get an “ineffective’ rating on his team’s “growth.” Since the system is a bell curve, one could mandate that 7% of all coaches MUST be given an “ineffective” rating… no matter what. He might be in that group.
Conversely, a coach who went from, say, 11 wins one year, and then “grew” to 14 wins the next year would be awarded a “highly effective” growth score… even though he would be benefiting from the opposite phenomenon— the “floor effect”… the opposite of the”ceiling effect” hampering Jackson. Thanks to the “floor effect,” this coach had nowhere to go but up, and that fact made it a lot easier to do so than in Jackson’s case.
The variable in both of those cases is, of course, the players… the analogy in education being the students. The quality of the students a teacher receives–and more importantly, the quality of the parents… are they involved, college-educated, etc.? … is a big piece of this puzzle.
Let’s look at other variables in other jobs.
There are some jobs where the person performing it has total control over the outcomes.
For example, a mailman is given a square half-mile or so that he has deliver mail to every day. While there may be variables inhibiting his job performance—weather, dogs blocking access to the mailboxes, whatever—for the most part, that mail carrier is in almost 100% control of the conditions that would lead to him either performing his job well or poorly. If he fails to deliver mail to the entirety of his territory every day, there’s no one to blame but him.
Another example could be a gourmet “made-by-hand” cookie maker, who has the job of making sure that exactly 20 jumbo chocolate chips are in each of the jumbo chocolate chip cookies he or she makes by hand (this is making me hungry 😉 ). In this case, the worker is again in 100% control over producing the quality demanded of him—20 chips-per-cookie.
If the mail carrier or cookie maker doesn’t deliver the results demanded of him or her, he or she has no one to blame but himself or herself.
I could present endless such examples.
On the other hand, a teacher’s job is not like that. It’s more akin—but not exactly akin, mind you—to that of a dentist’s, or say, a personal fitness trainer’s. In those cases, no matter how talented or inspiring you are in your job, your student / dental patient / fitness client may lack the same dedication or innate ability to deliver optimum results. Not all students / dental patients / fitness clients are equal… a factor beyond the control of the teacher/dentist/fitness trainer.
Now what do I mean by innate ability? Let’s examine the dentist’s dilemma. Based on the chemical makeup of a person’s mouth and saliva, some people are more prone to get cavities—given the same foods consumed by the patient. Those patients are “special” ;-). They will have to be a lot more aggressive in their home care, diet, etc. to avoid cavities. In addition, their outcomes also dependent on how they are supported by the family members they live with.
Other patients, for the same reason, will be innately and significantly less prone to cavities, and thus, will have to work less hard, and not have to be as prudent in their diet… to achieve the same result.
That’s beyond the dentist’s control.
The other thing beyond the dentist’s control is the same thing that’s beyond the personal fitness trainer’s control. At each visit, the dentists can give the patient the best pep talk ever, demonstrate proper brushing and flossing technique, and provide him with free brushes, toothpaste, floss, ACT anti-plaque mouthwash, etc. as the patient walks out the door.
However, after that, it’s up to the patient to deliver and complete the “homework” which the dentist assigns to that patient. If he or she never or rarely brushes/flosses his teeth, never washes with ACT, or eats too many jumbo chocolate chip cookies (I’m getting hungry again 😉 ), is it the dentist’s fault when the patient comes back with cavities… resulting in fillings, root canals, and tooth extractions?
Would we have ratings for dentists, or pay those dentists based on such “data”? Of course not, but that’s what Campbell Brown and so-called “corporate reformers” want for public school teachers (but strangely, not for her own kids, who attend Heschel, a rich kids’ private school where none of the teachers are evaluated based on students’ test scores.)
“Your patients had more cavities, so we’re paying you less, and if you don’t improve, you’re fired… And you over there, your patients had less cavities, so we’re paying you more, and giving you a promotion.”
Does that make sense? I didn’t think so.
As for the personal fitness trainer, I’ve spoken to them and the qualities of their clients also vary wildly, and not just in their innate ability, but also in their mental determination and performance during 1-on-1 training. Some clients approach these sessions with a ferocity that matches the trainer’s. These clients always give more, or do more than is asked of them. This also is hopefully reinforced in the home environment—by their spouses, significant others, or family members… another factor beyond the control of the fitness trainer.
Could you imagine if the fitness club manager said that they were going to measure the beginning state of the client’s fitness—weight, muscle mass, heart rate, etc.—and then 9-10 months later, re-measure all of that, and the judge the trainer’s effectiveness on the “growth” or improvement in the client’s fitness? Some clients will improve. Some will not. But in the case of the latter, how much is it the fault of the fitness trainer? Should a trainer be punished or rewarded based on such a “growth” system?
Indeed, some clients will not progress or show “growth,” no matter how talented or inspiring the trainer is in the performance of his job. In the context of a training session, these clients don’t even want to break a sweat, and barely do a thing, instead content to complain to the trainer about their spouses or their jobs or their kids, or whatever. With the latter, they may as well stay at home, for all the good the training is doing…. another factor beyond the control of the fitness trainer.
Furthermore, it may be the case that no one in the client’s life outside of the gym—spouses, significant others, family members, etc.—is encouraging them, or reinforcing their efforts to get in shape, and stay in shape. Their family members a’re not doing so, and may NEVER have done so in their lives… and so they might not even want that client to excel in the first place. Misery loves company.
This leads to the next part… the homework.
A fitness trainer might train someone Monday-Wednesday-Friday, while giving his client the “homework” he should do on Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday-Sunday—i.e. 30-60 minutes cardio, 30-60 minutes weights… and most important, maintain a good diet… the real killer for some people’s efforts to get in shape.
If the client does little or none of the “homework,” then also gorges himself on Hostess Cupcakes, slabs of fatty ribs, baskets of seasoned curly fries, buckets of pasta with rich sauces, gallons of ice cream, etc. (Are you hungry yet? 😉 ), should the fitness trainer be held responsible for the poor results of the client?
Of course not.
To carry this analogy further, if fitness trainers were judged this way, this would lead to them avoiding certain potential clients, or even whole gyms. There’s a Gold’s Gym near my house with a predominantly gay clientele. For the most part—excuse the stereotype—the gay men are much more finicky about keeping their bodies fit. They work extremely hard in the gym and they watch what they eat. (Oh how I envy this attribute;-).) In this hypothetical scenario, all the trainers whose pay is merit-based are going to flock to work here. Many middle aged clients start out in poor shape, so for the trainer, you have the “floor effect” at work
Meanwhile, regarding another other gym with—excuse the stereotype again—hopelessly apathetic, overweight straight guys who can’t or won’t do the work, both at the gym and at home… no trainer being paid or fired on merit will want to go anywhere near that gym and train those folks. Evaluating the trainers who have these men as clients based on “merit”??? Would that be fair?
To carry that analogy further, some individuals—straight or gay— or groups are genetically pre-disposed to be overweight (Samoans for example) and have greater difficulty getting into shape, or staying in shape. No trainer who’s being paid based on merit will ever want to have those “special” folks as their clients.
That’s all I’ve got to say for now.
Congratulations!
Thank you again Mr. and Mrs. Lederman!
Thank you Akademos for your paralleled example Restaurant menu and its diners with
a) From volunteering to enforcing bad choice of unlimited fat food (chemical trans-fat salad dressing = testing scheme) and toxic dink (liquid syrup pop = no allowance of arts, music, historical and geological field trips)
b) Versus other diners who from consciously and moderately to be taken away their legal choice of eat fresh food (learn arts, music and stem) and drink fruit shakes with milk (= track and field, testing from teacher to assess students’ level of their knowledge achievement from all of what they have been taught throughout school year.)
Also thank you for a heartily laugh from Halloween costumes.
I hope that Attorney Bruce Lederman will ask any numb skull defensed lawyer regarding VAM, a dead-end question, like:
Where would VAM intend to achieve?
Between
a) To force teachers and principle to CHEAT the students’ scores to be higher and then to be put in jail as in Washington case, and to force previous Washington Chancellor Michelle Rhee to cheat and to FLEE away from justice; and
b) To force exemplary Teacher Rafe Esquith in LAUSD to be in teacher jail and to assess the exemplary Teacher Sheri Lederman from highly effective to be ineffective?
Where does VAM intend to achieve?
1) To destroy an excellent Public Education for all?
2) To eliminate next generation to choose teaching profession as their calling career?
3) To transform next American generation to become submissive robots?
4) To genocide American DEMOCRACY?
5) To enhance fascists, communists, and terrorists to spread like cancer in America, because these LACK-OF-CONSCIENCE, money-minded, and short-sighted business tycoons intentionally co-operate with fascists, communists, and terrorists to bully the intellectual population = teachers + professors + scientists + students who were forced to be rated by VAM as being FAILED, or INEFFECTIVE, or CUT OFF PUBLIC educational fund?
This list of bad consequences from VAM will be many more to name with the help of the true American JUDGE. Amen. Back2basic
Tests are NOT educational nor student’s scores a reflection of a teacher’s educational acumen.
Observe, lots of tests did not create very well educated judges or lawyers.
The courts met out justice, which if you understand it historically, is religion based. Judges, the seventh book of the bible, and the courts (created by kings with divine rights), at some point in time, must realize they’re archaic, draconian sacrificial measures and procedures are the problem in education and to a large extent society.
Simply, the huge sacrifices both emotionally and financially this teacher made to defend herself and hopefully regain her job are deplorable.
Let’s ask ourselves a few questions: how are trials by judges, lawyers and prosecutors, who’ve based decisions on legal/religious precedence and on sacrifice, not on observable science, neurological physiology, learner readiness, etc…intellectually and academically qualified to decide much of anything in education? Legal scholars (I use that term loosely) fail to realize laws create sin, guilt comes through judgment, one then atones through sacrificing, is practicing a religion based on medieval witch hunting and sacrificing!
Maybe we in education should talk about testing the “validity of the rule of law” Why do we accept justice based on sacrifice? Who really benefits? Are we going to sacrifice ourselves into a better World here? Who is testing judges and lawyers on ethology and biology to insure they can accurately measure behaviors AND the societal pressures that create those behaviors.
Finally, the real question is, how is the learner being helped by any of this?
“The day is here when anyone deprived of a raise in pay or of a job because of low rank may with justice file a grievance. He will win his case.” –W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993)
As will Sheri Lederman.
Deming’s famous “Experiment with the Read Beads” offers an understanding of why. A couple of short takes of the Red Beads…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmCjr6cwDpI (7:52)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckBfbvOXDvU (9:00)
It’s the middle of the night before a new school year starts for us teachers in Los Angeles, and I’m having difficulty sleeping. Reading Diane’s blog posts from the daily digest and, for this post, all the reader comments, was the wrong thing to do to help me go back to sleep! I get so angry and frustrated sometimes at the so-called reformers’ lack of reliance on scientific examination & research principles, and the public’s ap.parent lemming memtality! I’ll bet that Carl Sagan (author of “The Demon-Haunted World) has been rolling over in his proverbial grave.
With regard to VAM, I was not aware until reading these posts that VAM was based on a curve. In LAUSD, we teachers are forbidden from grading students on a curve. There were two times when I as a student was graded on a curve, but not in K-12. The first was as an undergraduate in a summer logic course of only 9 students, including a senior who needed the course credit to graduate. When it was over, he told me that if I had scored 2 points higher on the final exam, he would have failed the class. Why should I have had that power? Obviously, it wasn’t fair to him or to me. The other time I was graded on a curve was all through law school. The curve pre-ordained that some would fail. Thus, it seems both ironic and absurd that a curve-based rating would be used on teachers.
Another thing here. This sort of grading of teachers will certainly irk the stellar ones both in outcomes and process. It will probably irk them so much they will focus much time on preventing low scores, worrying about the possibility and rationalizing the choice to continue to work for a stupidly run government department. They will probably become less stellar and more disgruntled as years go by.
I wonder what it does to students.
Of course, the dimming of the stellar corona affects primarily the students, and then the school. Yet, I shouldn’t de-emphasize the personal toll of being stressed and demoralized, let alone what that does to rapport, spontaneity, creativity, etc., and that certainly affects students, who are often aware and stressed themselves by the bizarre stakes involved in their outward successes or failures. It complicates rapport and senses of regard, etc. What unnecessary stupidity!
Akademos, I would encourage you to take a lesson from professional sports players. They realize that their careers are short. A younger, faster, healthier player will soon take their place. It’s only a matter of time. Do they sulk? Do they complain that it’s not fair they cannot do “what they love” for 30 years?
Of course not. They realize that optimism and energy are what generate success. They understand that they must observe other practitioners to learn new secrets every day. They understand that while they want to learn all the nuances of the game to help both themselves and their team achieve victory, that cheating cannot be part of the solution.
When there time is up, they hang up the cleats and find a new “love of life”. I’m not suggesting teachers only teach for 3.4 years (or 5 or 10). I’m merely suggesting that while you often denigrate the fascination with sports in this country, you could learn a lot from them. Focus on the process. Focus on the improvement. Let the results fall where they may. There is no reason to get upset just because you lost. Have you ever “lost” in your teaching career? Do you really think you have been “great” this whole time? Or have you just been mistaking that “participation trophy” with the winner’s trophy?
Ask your district administrators for the names of the 5 highest-VAM teachers in your district. Ask if you can take a few half-days off to observe what they do in their class. Just like the best NFL quarterbacks watch their competitors, it will help you improve too. Try it before you knock it.
I think it’s great that the defender of VAM on this blog post uses the word arbitrary to describe the 7 percent fixed part of the bell curve. That is the extract point the Lederman’s are making in the case. It is against education law in Ny for evaluations to be based on arbitrary items.
Does anyone know if VAM came from the Robert S McNamara Graduate School of Public Policy at Harvard University?
To virginiasgp under name of Brian:
You must be at the age of 30-ish. You are too young and too naive in your expression of comparison between teaching career and entertainment profession.
That is the same REAL problem from young, hot shot and naive Scholars from Harvard University. These arrogant scholars try to manage American Educational System as being in business operation model.
American YOUNG people are not slaves or pieces of metal that business tycoons can use and discard whenever they are suited or useless to make profit for their CLAN’s gain.
For this SOLE reason, please do behave as civilized as possible = DO NOT enforce on population testing scheme that are invalid, lack of transparent process,looting tax payer education fund for foreign investors. and strenuously stressful on students’ joy of learning, and on teaching profession’s joy of cultivating democracy.
In short, any short cut NEVER YIELDS a long term GAIN or GLORY. All young, ambitious and TALENT-LESS, but maliciously GREEDY people are the culprit that causes CHAOS in any peaceful environment. Back2basic
m4potw, a person’s age or “credentials” have no bearing on the quality of their ideas. You are incorrect but it shouldn’t matter.
Let me correct this notion of VAMs/SGPs having no “transparency”. Are the rules for winning a gold/silver/bronze medal in the Olympics “transparent”? Is every athlete eligible to win that medal? Of course. But who wins depends on the times/scores of the other athletes. Even if a runner ran a 9.65 (previous world record time), they would have lost to Bolt in 2008 with a 9.59.
Or extend that to earning a spot on the varsity sports team in high school. Every student has a chance to earn a roster spot in a transparent way. But there may only be 12-15 spots on the basketball team and it will depend on the others who try out for the team. Just because there are limited spots doesn’t mean that the process isn’t “transparent” or cannot be obtained by every student.
Now, let’s look at teacher evals. The algorithm for measuring teacher MGP or VAMs is clearly transparent. They calculate the individual SGP of each student from year to year based on the growth of similar students. If a teacher promotes tremendous growth, he/she can get the top MGP. If their is little growth, then he/she will get bottom scores. Average growth gets middle scores. The process is fair and transparent. And any teacher can get each score depending on their performance.
I realize many of you claim that “every teacher should be evaluated as great” even though secretly you acknowledge bad teachers in your very school. To get a judge to accept your premise that there is no way 7% of teachers could possibly be ineffective, you would need to show that these natural distributions of MGPs somehow don’t indicate that the bottom tail (the teachers who performed much worse than nearly everybody else) are still above the threshold for effective teaching. That must mean that those teachers clumped in the middle are “outstanding”. But even then, it’s permissible for the state to drop the bottom 7% every year if they wanted and bring in new teachers to perform at the average, excuse me “ouststanding”, level of that group clumped in the middle.
In the end, you have no argument. You have a “hope”, a “prayer”.
Whatever can be measured is not important. What is important cannot be measured. In Vietnam, the US military undefeated in battle, but lost the War. Same thing here lather rinse repeat.
Westmoreland, when he was the commanding general of U.S. forces in Vietnam during the war, used VAM and thought it would win the war. His VAM was based on how many Vietnamese were killed and he demanded higher and higher body counts from his commanders. Commanders with low body counts could lose their commands.
We often hear how it was a tragedy that in 19 years of war that U.S. forces lost 58,220 men.
The North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong lost 444000 troops in addition to 587,000 civilian dea6ths in both North and South Vietnam. And even with Westmoreland’s VAM based on body counts, the U.S. still lost the war and the Communists govenrment is still there. But that wasn’t the only body count. There was also the illegal wars in Laos and Cambodia that were not sanctioned by the U.S. Congress.
In Cambodia, the U.S. killed 273,000 and in Laos another 115,000—-mostly civilians.
Lloyd, everybody already knew that. What’s the point? Are you suggesting that measuring teachers’ effects on students’ effort, enjoyment, critical thinking and long-term income are not “important”? Seriously?
” Are you suggesting that measuring teachers’ effects on students’ effort, enjoyment, critical thinking and long-term income are not “important”?”
Are you really incapable of seeing that high stakes standardized tests are not a good way of measuring these variables? Long term income? Look at their family background. You will get quite accurate “data” from such a perusal. Enjoyment? I don’t think we have an instrument that accurately measures enjoyment although I would be interested in your definition of enjoyment. For my special ed students it had more to do with our relationship than the subject matter. They had already endured years of failure. For a student gifted in math, the challenge might also play into that equation. For others the ease of obtaining a high grade might be important whether due to their own interest in a subject or the teacher’s “keeping the bar low.” A well crafted survey of his/her students might give a teacher useful information but should it really be used to make career ending decisions? There is more than enough credible research out there debunking the use of VAM and SLOs and we already have all the comparative information we need from NAEP.
virginiasgp
If EVERYONE knew this as you CLAIM, then we wouldn’t have this war being waged on the public schools. There would be no high stakes testing. There would be no Common Core crap. There would be no ALEC. There would be no RheeFormers. Bill Gates would be spending his billions somewhere else but not to destroy the democratic, non-profit, transparent public schools and replace them with opaque, for profit, corporate schools that do not answer to the public like the public schools do.
In fact, if EVERYONE knew what was going on, the Hedge Fund managers, the Koch brothers and the Walton family would be living in other countries in hiding or on the run fearing for their lives.
If EVERYONE knew what was going on, most if not all of the parents would Opt their children out of testing and demand a national early childhood education program modeled on the one in France—and that would mean corporations would not be allowed to profit off such a program.
If EVERYONE knew what was going, they’d know that many corporate charters are riddled with fraud and are worse or or the same as the public schools they are replacing.
If EVERYONE knew what was going on, all but four of the schools in New Orleans would have been taken away from the so-called recovery district and returned to the democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools.
If EVERYONE knew what was gong on, UK’s Pearson would be going out of business and its CEO and Board of Directors would be hunted by a mob of millions of angry citizens in countries around the world.
Lloyd, that’s funny. As folks learn more about VAMs and high standards, more want it for their children. Now I’ll grant you that any teacher who will be held accountable yells and screams bloody murder to avoid being evaluated. But the parents and taxpayers yearn for this data.
In fact, why don’t we do just that Lloyd. We’ll give the people what they ask for. Let’s post all the VAM scores of the teachers publicly. If what you believe holds true, the public will discount the data and return to purely unionized, public schools. If what I hold is true, then massive change will occur as parents demand highly effective teachers for their children.
See, compromise is a great word. We can both win when the truth comes out. Maybe you want win but at least you think you will. What do you say?
Virginiasgp, in the few cases where VAM scores were published, they were rife with errors. Teachers in affluent schools get higher VAM than those who teach the most challenging children. Teachers of gifted students get low VAMS because of the ceiling effect. The VAM scores are unstable and unreliable. In some cases, elementary teachers got a high VAM in math, and a low VAM in reading. Only about 30% of teachers teach the tested subjects. The other 70% are VAMMED based on the scores of students they don’t teach and don’t even know. It is nutty.
Diane, I hope you have completely recovered from surgery. I have some friends who’ve had quite the surgeries this past year and know that takes a toll.
On the topic of publishing VAMs:
First, all of the disclaimers should be published with the data. As I’ve said before, the Mayo clinic doesn’t always get the best outcomes but nobody thinks they are a low quality hospital. You should give the public a little credit.
Second, there are ways to minimize the anomalies. Top-end scores (within the top 5%) can be suppressed so as to eliminate the ceiling effect. In Virginia, they don’t calculate SGPs for the “advanced proficient” which constitutes about 20% of the students (500+ on a scale of 600). Now I think that is too much and it should be limited to about 5% at the top, but I can understand the argument that some of the top should be taken with a grain of salt.
I also don’t support giving VAMs to teachers that do not teach the subject that is tested. I understand why some might want to do that (many companies have different levels of profit-sharing bonuses that depend on varying degrees to the performance of your division, department, vertical, etc.). But there is absolutely no reason to eliminate VAMs in core subjects simply because you can’t compute one for art or home ec. Core subject teachers (reading, math) should be paid more and have higher expectations. The top practitioners in every field (spec ops, investment banking, astronauts) always have higher expectations.
Now I find it odd that you suggest teachers have “specialties” but then are surprised that an elementary teacher might get a high VAM in math but not in reading. While the LA Times value-added data showed that to be very unlikely, it certainly makes sense that a teacher could be more skilled at one subject. Certainly the middle and high school teachers ask to be evaluated/teach their specialty classes. If a principal knows a teacher is good in math but not in Reading, it’s in the principal’s best interest to put that teacher in their specialty. Why would anyone think a teacher would be fired for getting a low reading VAM if they have the potential to get a high math VAM? That’s truly nuts.
As for reading Thoreau and King, you might as well as Gandi in there too. Let me post a note on why Carol’s actions last year were inappropriate on the correct forum. She is free to do whatever she wants this year of course.
Virginia, VAM is not valid for individual teachers. I will reiterate: 70% of teachers do not teach the subjects that produce VAM. When you suggest that elementary school teachers should teach their “specialty,” either reading or math, you literally don’t know what you are talking about. Teachers in 3-4-5- and often 6 teach ALL subjects, with the possible exception of science, physical education, and art. The same person teaches both math and reading. The same person may get a high VAM in reading and a low VAM in math. Are you suggesting that elementary education should be re-arranged for the sake of VAM?
hospitals are not the same as schools
Do you know the difference?
Nuts!
Your ignorant proposal is guaranteed to always rank a set percentage of teachers as incompetent every single year until every teacher is incompetent and has been replaced—a vicious cycle that will never stop repeating. This means that teachers who were competent the previous year will be ranked incompetent the next year because 20% has to always be found incompetent due to the way the VAM will be set up.
For instance, if the cut mark is set at 20% of teachers—Microsoft did this for their own employees and after a few years, they dropped this foolish strategy because morale had dropped dramatically in the company and this totally flawed method plan could not be sustained (see links below)—will be marked as incompetent and fired annually, then in five years 100% of the teachers will have been fired until the day comes that the U.S. runs out of U.S. citizens who want to be teachers. Then the U.S. will recruit from India and China until that source dries up. By then there will be robots ready to roll of an assembly line and replace teachers as humans and if the robots fail, the companies who make them can just delete the current teaching program an upland another on with promises that it will work. They will do this repeatedly.
Microsoft Eliminates Its Own Destructive VAM Rankings; However, Gates Still Seems Focused On Using It For Us
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/11/16/video-what-gives-you-meaning/
Businesses Dumping Employee Ranking Systems – Just As Schools Are Adopting Them For Teachers
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2015/07/23/businesses-dumping-employee-ranking-systems-just-as-schools-are-adopting-them-for-teachers/
Lloyd, you claim my proposal is “ignorant”. I think a little more understanding of probability may help you out.
Take a look at these slides from Prof Friedman (we cut them down from his normal brief to present in court). See the slide where the bottom 5% of teachers are marked in yellow? If we eliminate that, the resulting teachers do not generate a normal distribution once again. The top tail of the distribution is still Gaussian (normal), but the bottom doesn’t have the extreme outliers. For example, it may appear like a Poisson distribution where the lower bounded teachers have some minimum effectiveness.
You see, when we get into a discussion of policy and probability/statistics with teachers who have no clue about STEM fields, it’s pretty challenging since you simply don’t know what you don’t know. Nobody is claiming that for a single year, 7% of teachers get fired. But those 7% should not get promotions (step increases) as long as they remain at the bottom.
Look at it from another angle. Pretend that we have a fixed pool for salaries (S). We plan to increase each salary based on CPI each year which means that personnel costs next year are S * (1 + CPI).. As older teachers retire and new teachers entire, the total cost for salaries (S) should remain the same given a steady-state distribution of teachers. If we block step increases for the bottom 7%, then the top 93% of teachers can get 1 / 0.93 = 107.5% of those step increases. If it’s truly random which teachers are in the bottom 7%, then every 14 years on average, each teacher spends 1 year in the bottom and gets 0% step increase. The other 13 years, she gets 107.5% of the original step increase. This means over 14 years, he/she gets the exact same step increase if the VAM policy were not in effect. But, if VAMs are truly measuring effectiveness, the effective teachers get 14 years of 107.5% step increases or an extra step (15 total steps). Either way, what is the harm? I would advocate for a much more aggressive pay model for effective teachers like Dallas has implemented, but simply freezing step increases for the bottom 7% is a start.
Many districts will retrain/remove a portion of the bottom teachers. If a teacher remains in the bottom 7% for 2-3 years consecutively, then they likely should be removed from core classes. Certainly, at this point, your unreliable argument goes away, right? Teaching is not a competitive industry like pro sports, software, or investment banking. There are not an endless number of applicants. So we must be judicious in trimming the workforce. But as more candidates find out how much teachers really earn, we will have greater supply to choose from.
Again, I repeat, you show your ignorance. Teachers can’t be judged incompetent by the test results of students simply because they don’t come off of an assembly line and the environments, socioeconomic and famlies they grow up in are not equal.
Diane and others have repeatedly provided links to evidence that details why teachers can’t be judged by VAM. The Economic Policy Institute has also explained in detail why only 1 to 14% of what a child learns can be attributed to teachers.
Earlier studies going back to the 1960s that have never been proven wrong clearly prove that schools are only responsible for about 30% of what a child learns and 60% is from the child’s environment outside of school.
Ok, should a teacher’s ability to inspire count? Should a teacher’s concern for their students count? You see, in my district the students reported they don’t really believe their teachers care about their well-being or that math/science are important for their careers.
Or maybe a teacher should improve their students’ long-term income. Or maybe their reported effort and enjoyment of class (table 14).
Are these things “not important”, as you say?
Mr. and Mrs. Ledermen, I am feeling a little jilted. I saw that you left a post for me on WaPo but after I responded, you won’t chat anymore. I’m quite sure neither of you really understand SGPs. I guess you think I only understand them at a “high level” but I promise, I’m up for a skype chat anytime. I have lots of charts from my own SGP data release in Virginia. Maybe I can help explain them to the judge next time.
You don’t seem to an appreciate the games that start to be played when something is quantified. You doubt the true believers one side of the debate. OK. The way you present your case is also very mindlessly true believing also. Why should anybody trade in their own narrow view, for your narrow and brittle view?
Please could I get a grammar and language troll to mock my last comment. Thanks
Now that’s funny.
Btw, can somebody define the difference between an advocate, critic and a troll. Is a teacher kinda like somebody who ignores all the evidence of climate change (all the evidence of VAM validity)?
“Btw, can somebody define the difference between an advocate, critic and a troll.”
You are each of these simultaneously. You naively advocate VAM, unfairly critique teachers, and troll everyone on this website. See:
“Is a teacher kinda like somebody who ignores all the evidence of climate change (all the evidence of VAM validity)?”
If you are indeed trying to help schools improve, and you’re not just a troll — you are extremely misguided and not a part of the solution. Doing more harm than good.
Ed Detective, let me show you the hypocrisy of one Carol Burris. Burris was in a leadership position in NY’s educational system. The top leadership, via the legislature and appointed officials, have decided that VAMs allow the identification of effective teachers. There is no dispute on that issue. Does Carol have a duty to support the leadership’s position or get out? Or can Carol simply advocate anything to her students/parents that she believes?
Let’s look at another position. The US military has historically not allowed gays/lesbians to serve, at least openly. Whatever your personal opinion on the matter, there were stated reasons for that policy. Then, the US military changed its policy. I’m sure there were lots of leaders who supported the old policy. Yet, if one of them had told their soldiers or sailors “you know what, we have a new policy but I’m ok with you excluding the gays/lesbians because I think the top leadership is just crazy on this one”, how long do you think that “leader” would have lasted in his position? You would definitely support the removal of that person from the chain of command and condemned his views. But only because you agree with the new policy. You simply pick and choose what you like and then try to enforce it. When folks are in leadership positions, they must support the organizational line or they are free to leave. That’s one reason those positions earn more since there are other pressures that come to bear.
Carol Burris is a hypocrite to believe that she can pick and choose which policies she supports but yet expect her reports to support her policies in her school. It just shows the whole hypocrisy of this whole movement.
Virginia, go read Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience, then follow that up with a generous helping of Martin Luther King, Jr.
virginiasgp,
A truly good leader questions policy, and protects those under himself/herself by standing up to bad policies and not passing them down. A good leader encourages dialogue, has conversations, elicits suggestions from those they serve. Someone who mindlessly passes down whatever bizarre order is given, is irresponsible at best.
Carrol Burris is not a hypocrite, she is a brave hero. A quick look through history (see Diane’s comment) will reveal that not all laws are just, and if we didn’t stand up to unjust laws, the world would be a horrible place. Beneficial social movements are not led by people who comply with any and all expectations. The greatest leaders demand change when moral failings are apparent.
If you’re really looking for hypocrites, look no further than people like Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Gates, etc etc who attend or send their kids to progressive schools that are completely opposite of the policies they advocates for everyone else. Teachers and principals are not hypocrites for wanting to remove the fraud that is test-based accountability. They are simply onto something you aren’t — which isn’t difficult to imagine, considering they work with students every day, and you (and bill, arne, etc) don’t have their perspective.
Well said. Thank you.
She has retired, so she can advocate for sane educational policy freely. I am sorry she felt the need but trust her judgement. That being said, comparing military command structure and “our duty” as educators is silly. Last time I looked, we still claim to be a democracy and not a military dictatorship. Our schools should not be run as if they were.
BIT IN THE BUTT: VaGSP’s use of the military ban on openly gay soldiers was a horrible example because he forgot (or never knew) what really happened. He says:
“The US military has historically not allowed gays/lesbians to serve, at least openly. Whatever your personal opinion on the matter, there were stated reasons for that policy. Then, the US military changed its policy.”
This policy was a perfect, shining, brilliant example of how Carol Burris’ tactic was the correct one, and won the debate, once we recall that it was highly experienced, decorated service members like Dan Choi and Victor Fehrenbach who risked everything to stand against the policy, openly disobeying orders to prove that it was discriminating and punishing exactly the type of soldiers that were among our best, hurting our ability to recruit and retain fine soldiers.
In that case, they were not arbitrarily picking and choosing orders to follow, they were specifically disobeying orders that were constitutionally discriminatory, years ahead of others who were too timid to speak up, because they were following the advice of VirginiaSGP.
I was watching live TV when MSNBC censored Dan Choi’s words “I am gay” in fear and indecision. These experienced, on-the-ground practitioners forced the military’s hand, raised the profile of the public debate, and THEN the US military changed it’s position.
The Ledermans have essentially done the same by saying APPR is illegal and here’s the evidence, in court, for refutation. No has refuted the evidence, including the official state response, but we have seen a number of lame excuses, deflections and smear tactics.
There is TOTAL dispute on whether VAM identifies effective teachers, and that is what’s in question, not whether Carol Burris should be called names or not.
Lastly, follow VirginiaGSP’s thoughts on hypocrisy: “When folks are in leadership positions, they must support the organizational line or they are free to leave.” I guess his bosses are free to eat his lunch whenever he feels like it.
From our “don’t tread on me” founding to the recent Supreme Court decision to expand gay rights, the American story has been about confronting those in power and refusing rules based in bullshit, knowing full well that history is littered with the stories of those that were simply “following orders”.
Climate change ? Are you not aware of the emails hack? Not a good representation of the scientific method or unbiased pursuit of truth either.
As a middle school ELA teacher, all the math and data information posted here is off the point. No teacher should be evaluated in such a myopic way. The teacher’s record and reputation is spotless and it sounds like she is loved by her students. Her observations have been great, too. Perhaps she had students who doodled or napped through the testing like many of the students did in my school. Or the child who wrote as his essay “this test is dumb.” Or students who didn’t finish. Accountability is needed in all professions, but this formula clearly puts a good teacher in an unfair evaluation system.