The Tampa Bay Times reports that teachers are baffled, confused, and outraged by their value-added ratings, which will determine their evaluation, their longevity and their career.
The story begins like this:
Geoffrey Robinson is a National Board certified teacher at Osceola High School in Pinellas County who says 60 percent of his upper-level calculus students last year tested so well they earned college credit.
But this week Robinson received his teacher evaluation, based on a controversial new formula being rolled out statewide.
He was shocked to see how poorly he scored in the “student achievement” portion: 10.63 out of 40.
He’s not alone. Teachers all over Pinellashave received their scores, calculated by a new formula that confounds even math teachers. Hillsborough teachers also got their scores, though their situation is different due to participation in a grant program with its own evaluation rules. In Pasco, the scoring is on hold while the teachers union and the district figure out how to implement it.
Another teacher said that she is one of the best in the state in terms of test scores, but was rated only 57 out of 100 points. She said:
“I know I’m good, I’ve been teaching for 19 years, I’m not stressing about that. But if I was new, I’d go home crying.”
Teachers were wondering how these wildly erratic and inaccurate ratings are supposed to improve education.
In Hillsborough, where the Gates Foundation poured in many millions of dollars ($100 million?), 95 percent of teachers were rated either “effective” or “highly effective.” So they are not as unhappy as the bewildered teachers in Pinellas County.
Some teachers were rated based on the scores of students they never taught.
As one teacher says in the article, this system is not ready for prime time.
Can anyone remember how or why it was supposed to improve education?
It would be interesting if someone figures out how much money Florida received from Race to the Top and how much it has spent to implement the mandates of Race to the Top.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Snake oil has a way of being found out as the sham it truly is unfortunately after the sheister has sold it to far too many unsuspecting folks and then moved on to his next carnival. How many lives will be damaged by VAM before the truth about its lack of validity is accepted by John Q. Politician?
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Politicians will keep up their teacher-bashing and rheeform as long as the public feels the way they do. They are too fearful of their constituents to do anything else. Only when the sting of rheeform is felt in suburbia – and those parents begin kicking and screaming- will politicians back down from this insanity.
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This is why educators–the truly credentialed and experienced ones–need to have a presence in the community far beyond their jobs. Advocacy is a huge part of what we do. When we ignore the impact of reaching out to the people in our communities and instead concentrate solely on the confines of our classrooms, we become sitting ducks who are targeted to take the blame for every ill in society since society “pays our salaries,” as it were.
With so many influential types controlling a message about “what’s wrong in education,” we need to get out there and show what’s right about public education and the part we play in that success.
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Agreed.
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I second this motion. As an experienced teacher, with many degrees, I am the expert. I am done being trampled. And I am done watching my students get thrown under the bus.
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But this is only one of “multiple measures,” right? According to the Department of Education and the Gates Foundation, the fact that other things are considered as well means that the complexity of teaching is considered, and verything should be just fine. Go back to work. Nothing to see here. Move along.
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In Pinellas County 50% of a teacher’s evaluation is based on FCAT, known to be a flawed test, 40% on principal evaluation (which is almost impossible to get highly effective marks in all areas due to wording), and 10% on professional development.
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This is worth 50% of our evaluation! That is a HUGE portion of the measures and one basically out of my direct influence. I’m evaluated on students I have not necessarily taught because of the grade I teach.
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Judging from your comments you are misinformed about what these so called improvements to education are truly about. I addition, I would bet that you have nothing to do with education and do not or have not volunteered in a school recently. If you had you would see for yourself the impact to not only the teachers but the students. As far as Bill Gates and his foundation the man is a college dropout and should stick to what he knows computers and leave education to the educators.
When you are evaluated like teachers are you can point out there is nothing to see until then everyone needs to see what is going on and support the teachers not some BS evaluation system that is doomed to fail.
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Love the irony- teacher evaluations as hit and run accident.
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I teach first grade in a struggling school in Pinellas County. We are 93% free and reduced lunch. My VAM score is based upon my school’s FCAT scores (even though very few of the students I have ever taught actually take the FCAT at our school (we have a very transient population and our school was recently redistricted). My first grade students take the FAIR test. My students made huge gains last school year and I felt really great about my students’ progress. However, my VAM score was only 8.5 out of 50 because once again my VAM is not based on my actual students’ progress–It is school FCAT scores. Thank god I received excellent ratings on the administration portion of the appraisal and I was able to squeak by with a low score that put me in the “effective” category. It will be sad to see in a few years how many quality educators are left. We are all scrambling to find something else to do as a career until politicians can figure out the harm they are doing to public schools, students, and the well being of their teachers.
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I work in Pinellas County…My VAM score was 16/50. I was rated “effective” due to the other 50 points of my evaluation. I teach gifted children. There are several problems with the VAM…1. This formula leaves out socioeconomic status of students (SES), one of the primary indicators of student success. It was left out on purpose. 2. This formula uses FCAT test as the basis for 50% of my evaluation. FCAT is known to be a flawed test. FCAT has a ceiling and does not reflect the true learning of my gifted students. (If a 4th grader gets a perfect score and then misses one question in 5th grade, I am penalized because his score went down.) 3. NO ONE can explain how the formula works. It’s so complicated, that calculations can’t be made by hand. No administrator, school board member, or state elected official has been able to explain how this formula works. They can tell what information it uses, but can’t explain the math.
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My students took a released STAAR exam. The questions are not difficult, but many did not know the meaning or “taunt” or “remoteness.” Hence, the multiple choice question suddenly became a guessing game. Yes, they can decode and they can read. But you don’t know what you don’t know.
How will they get the question correct if the test consists of words they don’t hear, or words they never read?
The love of reading is becoming extinct. Kids who are tested to death and given reading packets their entire lives cannot be expected to have a love for reading or writing.
My kids are incredibly intelligent, but they have never heard the word taunt or remote. What’s the point? How can these tests be valid.
Instead of paying billions on tests, why can’t we just put real books in the hands of kids? Why can’t we hold book talks? Why can’t we hold reading Thursdays in school?
It’s not rocket science. Just let them read.
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Dade county teachers have yet to receive their scores. The district obviously has the data, so what are they waiting for? I think the superintendent and the union are planning on waiting until the election is over. A few thousand angry teachers in South Florida could make the difference in this election.
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You got it. Wait till NYS releases its scores in December to the press….what are they waiting for? NYC teachers have not seen theirs yet.
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In no other industry are non-management employees rated on the proficiency of others. Where subordinate proficiency is used as an evaluation tool, the evaluatee has a degree of control over the subordinate. The subordinate can be fired. The subordinate can be placed on probation. The subordinate can be retrained.
Can I fire my students? Can I threaten them with expulsion if they do not perform? Can I demand that parents seek tutoring for an under performing child? Of course not.
Can I make certain my students have a good breakfast? Can I make parents check homework? Can I make my students come to school? Can I convince my students not to get high between classes?
And my favorite: Can I convince a senior, who doesn’t need my class to graduate, that he should try his best on the final exam because even though it doesn’t count for him, it does for me?
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I believe Florida received about $700 from RTTT.
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I am Geoffrey Robinson referred to in this article. If u go to the Tampa Bay Times link and look at the blog responses to this article, you can get a feeling of the outrage down here.
I am a huge fan of your crusade Diane…..I would love to meet up with you one day.
If there is anything I can do to help you I would be happy to.
Does anyone have any contacts to speak to Rachel Maddow? I am sure she would have fun with this analysis.
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Good for you, Geoffrey, for speaking up.
VAM is absurd.
Read the latest post about Louisiana.
Wish I knew how to get through to Maddow.
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I hate to break it to you Geoffrey but Rachel Maddow, or anyone else at MSNBC, is not going to touch this story with a ten foot pole. Judging teachers based on student growth is a major component of both Race to the Top and the NCLB waivers. In case you haven’t noticed, they never say anything bad about Obama on MSNBC. I would say you would have better luck over at Fox News but I am not sure which is greater, their hatred for teachers or their hatred for Obama.
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There is always Ed Schulz on MSNBC. He is a friend of teachers and the middle class. But my guess is that any criticism of Race to the Top is forbidden until after November 6. And NBC, lest we forget, is heavily invested in faux-reform via Education Nation. It is rare that a dissident voice is ever heard on that network to call out the phonies. I might add, or on any other network.
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Yes, Ed is quite the tiger. I wouldn’t want to be in a cage with him when he’s hungry. He covers human interest stories like the closing of plants due to outsourcing, etc. Tthis is definitely up his alley.
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He might cover it but he will blame the whole thing on the Republicans. No mention of Obama or Race to the Top will ever be made.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand that VAM is “not necessarily” a federal-level requirement of RttT but has been adopted by states as a way to evaluate teachers–that is, states with both Republican and (in New York’s case) Democratic leadership. If Ed sticks to the topic, perhaps he might consider exploring it.
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One of the problems districts are having, I believe (you can’t know for sure about anything with VAM as everything is highly secretive), is how to scale the raw scores. The actual VAM score is between +1 and -1. But in Pinellas schools and teachers got points out of 40 or 50 (depending on how many years they have been at a certain school). Many many schools received scores between 5 and 17 out of 50 points. It is hard to believe that every elementary school in Pinellas County is no better than that. Teachers whose administrator’s appraisal part only produced 30 – 40 points ended up in the needs improving column.
Administrators were pretty much told that the vast majority of teachers should receive mostly reatings of effective and below, very few should receive many highly effective ratings on the 50 or so criteria. If you got ALL highly effective ratings on every criteria, the highest score you could get was 49, which would still place you in the needs improvement column. Not until VAM scores were added in could any teacher be effective or highly effective. And with almost all elementary schools receiving VAM scores below 20 points, no one could be highly effective overall. The district has yet to reveal how raw VAM scores of +1 to -1 became VAM scores of 5 – 17 points. Actual raw data has not been released nor has the scaling guide created to determine the number of points. This has become a disaster for many schools who received under 10 points, as almost all of their teachers are considered needs improving. And most of the schools who received the lowest points are, you guessed it, the schools with the highest rates of poverty. Too bad you couldn’t use the percentage of free and reduced price lunch students in the school as the scale! 93% of 50 points would be a great score!!
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I am not sure you are correct about your insight that teachers will receive between a -1 and a +1 in terms of growth. Floriduh uses EVAAS, just as HISD, along with many other states, including mine. I believe I have received a number higher (and lower) than a -1 or +1. Also if you look at the recent Audrey Amrein-Beardsley study from epaa at ASU, you will see sample teacher EVAAS outcomes from the teachers involved in the lawsuit. They received ratings lower and higher than -1 and +1. Maybe you are referring to a subrating within the system?
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I was referring to what our district told us in their explanation and what I have read from the state’s explanations. We have never actually seen any real data so that is all I have to go on. Thank you for the info; I will look into that!
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In Miami, I don’t believe we will receive a number at all. We will just be told our value added ranking came back as unsatisfactory, needs improvement, effective or highly effective. Then based on that, you will be given a fixed number of points (like 12.5 for unsatisfactory). Even if you scored 48 out of 50 on the observational standards, you end up being labeled needs improvement if your VAM comes in as needs improvement or unsatisfactory. This obviously shows that VAM is actually more than 50% of your evaluation if you can be rated near perfect on the first portion but your VAM brings you all the way down to needs improvement.
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I would like to know other states compare to this breakdown.
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Here is a sad comment from a teacher on the Tampa Bay Times website:
—————-
Dedicated Educator3 hours ago
I am a Pinellas County teacher that has received ratings of “highly effective” for the past 20+ years. I have received nominations for “Math Teacher Of The Year” from a top performing elementary school. I have been featured in various newspaper articles for innovative teaching, and my students have been featured on the news for outstanding work that promotes community. My students have consistently done well on state and county tests, and I have had the privilege of training other teachers in various educational fields. However, now according to the VAM and the new evaluation scale, I am a ” teacher that needs improvement”.
I can handle being among the worst paid teachers in the United States. (49th out of 50th). I can handle them taking away a portion of our promised retirement. I can handle the mounds of new paperwork and mandates by the state. But, there is one thing I cannot handle, and that is being called a “teacher that needs improvement. ”
Just ask the hundreds of students I have taught what they learned in my classroom. It is far beyond academics. I have loved my students and my families. I have dedicated my life to the children of this county.
And now my heart is broken. If I told my former students, they would be up in arms. However, I am too embarrassed to even share that I am not the great teacher they thought I once was when they were in my classroom… because the “secret formula” the state has developed said so.
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Bill Gates philanthropic endeavors offer some compensation for his appropriation of billions of dollars of social wealth to his personal accounts, but there seems to be nothing that will make up for his destructive influence on K12 education.
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I’ve asked before and will continue to ask: “Where the hell are all the class action lawsuits?”
I’m no legal expert, but this nationwide systemic reform disease is based on such ignoramus science, politics, and the expertise of no one, that literally mountains of peer reviewed research has long ago debunked VAM as a measure of anything.
I simply cannot understand why at this point teacher associations across the country – HELLO NEA / AFT! – are sitting on their butts while teachers are getting theirs handed to them. Every state association has a legal team. Do something!!
I personally have collected reams of articles, research, and testimony exposing this facade for what it is, and I feel as if I could win this no-brainier court case myself. But why should I have to? This is ultimately the part that pisses me off, disappoints me most, and makes me want to quit. Every. Single. Day.
Hmmm…this just in: due$ dollar$ still flowing nicely.
C’mon man.
Henry C Hale, M Ed.
National Board Certified Teacher
Westerville, Ohio
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The Florida Educators Association (affiliated with the NEA and AFT) is already suing the state over this new merit pay law (SB 736).
http://feaweb.org/sb-736-lawsuit-filed-by-fea
I’m sure that once VAM results are in for everyone, there may be some individual teacher lawsuits as well. I believe I read somewhere that a lawsuit by a teacher will only be plausible when someone is fired based on these VAM results.
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The comments here and on the TB Times website show how demoralized teachers are in this process. I wish that the FEA lawsuit would be heard quickly, but these issues generally take months if not years (the “failing-schools” voucher program that started in 1999 wasn’t struck down by the state supreme court until 2006). In the meantime, voucher-receiving and charter schools in Florida have no obligation to implement this craziness, including charter schools run by legislative leaders.
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So what you’re saying is: If you work at a school that’s privatized in some way, you have no rights, but you won’t have to be shamed for nothing with VAM. However, if you work in a public school, you have rights until VAM takes them away.
So the rights of teachers are gone in either scenario. Oh, how convenient for the reformers to have set up a no-win situation for teachers. Take them to court and inform the public. There are two sets of rules for our schools.
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People are debating VAM like it is a rational instrument. VAM was designed to break teacher unions and privatize education- period! I find it funny how people talk about it and try to understand it. There is nothing to “understand”. It is not a rational instrument to “grade” teachers. It was designed to get rid of all veteran teachers, so that the schools can “churn” teachers every few years, and looked at from this light, VAM does exactly what it was designed to do. No veteran teacher will survive the “purges” that are coming. Ten years to go, and then I am off to Costa Rica. I will never encourage my children to become teachers. The career is now officially ruined.
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