The Los Angeles Times (!) has an outstanding article by reporter Teresa Watanabe about the new teacher evaluation system. It is based on growth in test scores and on computer modeling. The focus is on one teacher who seems to do all the right things: last year, he got a good rating but not this year. What changed? Nothing.
The United Teachers of Los Angeles has been fighting the LAUSD’s efforts to impose this flawed system on all teachers.
Eventually, after we have spent billions of dollars on these mechanical systems, the policymakers will figure out that the experts were right: the ratings reflect who is taught, not teacher quality.
Remember: no other nation in the world is judging teacher quality this way. This is our own nutty idea. It’s main accomplishment: demoralization of teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
anyone seen this doc? http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269/547664-1099080026826/The_politics_of_ed_reform_EN98.pdf
CRAZY.
No, but I bet Bill Gates paid him to write this (being sarcastic).
Obviously, the way Los Angeles has been doing value added is junk science. Sorting students by birth year into grades is also junk science. Charter schools that have middle class neighborhood boundaries [i.e. don’t let in low income kids] and have higher test scores than regular public schools that have mostly students from poor familes, claim they are better schools than the public schools with low income students. I think the intent of value added is to separate out the socioeconomic factor, which I think is dominant in test scores.
How the VAM/AGT pseudoscience worm turns.
Maybe it’s karma, but Kyle Hunsberger of the Gates Foundation backed astroturf TeachPlus, and one of Los Angeles Unified School District’s biggest cheerleaders of the highly discredited VAM/AGT pseudosciences, is now a victim of that selfsame modern phrenology.
This quote is pretty amazing coming from a bona fides member of the “no excuses” camp.
“I have to be reassured that I don’t have to lobby for honors students,” Hunsberger said. “I have to know that I have a shot at a good evaluation if I teach lower-performing kids.”
Maybe he’ll be a former member of that camp from here out, now that he’s experienced the practical application of his faulty theoretical framework. That framework incorrectly posits that “effective” teaching “overcomes” any other factor including poverty, student motivation, or even English Language Learner status. Read full post:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/10/how-vamagt-pseudoscience-worm-turns.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+schoolsmatter%2FSISc+%28Schools+Matter%29
Those Schools Matter people you quote seem to be quite clever.
No, he hasn’t changed yet as at the end of the article he stated that he thinks the evaluation system is good but just needs tweaking.
Interesting find about Hunsberger. He is now where I am at. I generally get more struggling students or developmentally younger students than the other teacher at my grade level because I do well with this group. I have felt it was an honor because my strengths were recognized. I might start lobbying for my class to have a similar make up as the other.
I am in a similar position. I have been told that I have so many struggling students and those with special challenges because I am “so good with them”. I do feel it is an honor, and I wouldn’t trade my students for an “easier” group. Nonetheless, I wonder what will happen when I am evaluated under the new system that gives greater weight to standardized test scores. Should I lobby for a different group or just accept that I may well be labeled “ineffective”?
If you teach middle school in CT, you will only be tracked to test scores if you teach 8th grade science or 6th-8th grade math and ELA. No one else will be tracked to the result of standardized test scores. Approximately 23% of CT teachers will be the lambs to the slaughter….77% are off the hook.
I’m one of the 23 percent. Lucky me.
Me, too…thanks CEA! Where is the incentive for other subjects to reinforce reading and writing…so much for collaboration and teamwork. Survival of the fittest.
I could see being evaluated on AP scores . . . Even though AP classes are filled with unprepared students (and the College Board encourages this). My move has been to offer the upper level as a concurrent enrollment class with a local university for college credit.
AP is crap!
Others are also not completely off the hook. If you look at the CT SEED document, other factors that come into play are parent surveys (not necessarily the parents of students you actually teach) and “whole school student learning” (i.e. The school’s student performance index). Also, the Summative Matrix on p. 31 shows that “student outcome” factors are more important than “teacher practice” factors. These two sets of factors are supposed to each count for 50 percent, but they are not averaged. The Matrix gives more weight to “outcomes” when your final rating is determined. The one good thing you can say is that the system is not as bad as other states’ more rigid VAM rheeforms.
It is overwhelming. We will be dissected and examined. No matter how they spin it, they will clearly look closely at the test scores. And imagine the positions they will have to add to pull this off. Hartford hired 15 just to evaluate. Two have already left and nine did not pass the evaluator training. The district will not tell the teachers who didn’t pass and then have to wait 90 days to retake the assessment. I have this information from an inside source and this is only the pilot. It will be a clusterf%#% for sure. They will have to cut teachers to hire evaluators to get rid of “bad teachers”. Who will me left?
Typo..who will BE left…
Diane,
Check out this new site…move Chicago schools forward…they really are on the cutting edge of killing this privatization scam. Watch the first video that pops up…a little more than a minute long,
http://www.movechicagoschoolsforward.com/main/
Oops…here is the video I wanted you to see:
http://www.movechicagoschoolsforward.com/index-flashintro.html
Speaking as someone who believes that mathematics, science, and technology do have their place in building a more humane and wiser world, this is the sort of stuff that really grinds my guts.
The mindless mystification of the very idea hat any old measure and any old model must have a connection to reality and a bearing on our ultimate concerns, despite all evidence to the contrary — what can I say? — it’s one of the reasons that Nobel Prizes in Economics deserve a place in our esteem somewhat below that of the Country Music Awards.
Hey now, don’t insult country music artists by placing them in the same thought as economists.
I would not dream of it …
Jonny Cache
Just to repeat what I’ve said before, it’s not really about the value of the measures — anyone who thinks about them for half a second knows they have nothing to do with education — it’s all about shifting the locus of judgment outside the profession until it’s no longer a profession at all.
cf. Details, Details, Details
From the article:
“‘Those controls give every teacher an equal shot at good performance ratings regardless of their students’, according to Noah Bookman, the district’s director of performance management. ‘The important piece for people to understand about [Academic Growth Over Time] is that it allows us to level the playing field,’ Bookman said.”
So a “director of [teacher] performance management”, who has one year and eleven months teaching experience (smells like a TFAer to me) is qualified to be in charge of teacher evaluations (for one of the countries largest districts)? Must be kowpie throwing season. How much bullshit can they throw!
“School districts in more than half the states have added students’ test scores along with other factors to their teacher reviews, a direction promoted by the Obama administration.”
As my mom used to say when my pals and I had a cockamamie scheme all cooked up but needed permission to go do it, “So if everyone was jumping off the cliff you would too?”
“‘Teachers with low, middle and high-achieving students have the same opportunity to demonstrate growth as each other,’ Bookman said.”
Yep, a real “scientific” way to evaluate teachers that is sooo accurate that what Bookman says is obviously true. How many road apples does he want us to eat??
“Hunsberger’s colleague, English teacher Daniel Badiak, said his below-average scores last year have pushed him to “teach to the test” more this year.”
‘Bout says it all, eh??
Yep I’m glad I did psychodelics when was young to prepare myself for times like these. (apologies to L. Black)
God, I need to go wash my hands and rinse out my eyes after reading and commenting on that crap.
“So a “director of [teacher] performance management”, who has one year and eleven months teaching experience (smells like a TFAer to me) is qualified to be in charge of teacher evaluations (for one of the countries largest districts)?”
Do you know this for a fact? Was it mentioned in the article?
No it wasn’t mentioned in the article. I had to do a search in multiple locations to find that information. Don’t remember exactly where I found it. It was difficult to find for a reason. Many times what is left unsaid is more important than what is said-think of resume’s, CV’s etc. . . .
country’s not countries