Dan Boyd, the superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools in Florida, explains what a mess the Florida value-added assessment program is.
Sixty-seven counties are each using their own formulas to rate teachers.
In his own county, 75% of the teachers are not teaching subjects or grades that are tested, so they are evaluated based on the scores of students they never taught and on subjects they don’t teach.
He writes:
“Alachua County is sending up a revised plan. The DOE will still have to approve it and it will still have to comply with the law. And there’s the rub, because any way you slice it, this system is badly flawed. It’s inconsistent, it’s unfair and it’s unscientific. Worst of all, there’s no proof that it does anything to actually help students.”
More intelligent and courageous public officials like Dan Boyd, and the public will understand the harm that these fake reformers are inflicting on children, teachers and public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Walk Tall superintendent Boyd.
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“Worst of all, there’s no proof that it does anything to actually help students.”
Help the students??? What a novel idea! Perhaps it should be looked into – it might actually take off.
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My own FL district tried to sign an agreement between the teachers union and the superintendent that said the VAM was such a mess it couldn’t and wouldn’t be used for last years’ evaluations and wouldn’t be used until the state straightened out the terrible mess of confusion and craziness.
The state Dept. of Ed immediately fired off a memo stating that if the agreement stood then my district would lose almost $4 million of Race to the Top money immediately, which would have devastated the district.
Needless to say, since that state has already cut our budget to the bone over the last 6 years both the union and the superintendent backed down. And I still don’t know what my rating was for last year and we’re nearly at the mid-year point for this year.
Fates willing, this will be my last year teaching in Florida.
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Need more leadership like this…..! Take a stand school boards, teachers and administrators. Kids are NOT widgits!!
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We received our VAM printouts last month, five months after the end of the school year we were being rated for. Those of us who teach electives are still asking for more specific information on exactly which students scores were applied to rate us- and getting no answers. (Can anyone else hear the crickets?) How are we supposed to know how to help kids if we don’t even know which kids we’re responsible for helping? Now I’m seeing teachers falling into three categories: “I’m retiring soon,” “I need to get out of this job,” and “Who’s organizing the protest?”
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Now I’m seeing teachers falling into three categories: “I’m retiring soon,” “I need to get out of this job,” and “Who’s organizing the protest?”
Joel, I feel like I am a part of all three categories at once, depending on the teaching pressure of the moment.
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Precisely, morale is at an all time low. Our energy is
focused on ways to leave the profession, rather than ways to
improve it. Especially since teachers have been leftout of the
conversation and the process.
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Well, it’s a good thing that misery loves company, because
we have plenty of it – both company and misery.
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This system is just another way to make teachers seem less
professional and skilled. I have 32 years in the classroom but I
will be rated on things I don’t teach performed by students I don’t
teach. The students I do teach progress so slowly that the measures
applied will never show that they learned anything.
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I dare anyone to quantify the Value I add to the lives of my students using this instrument. To even put a number grade on something like this is ludicrous. Thanks Dan Boyd for your courage.
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What is really behind the use of programs like VAM? My district just bought an assessment program for $25,000. It will tell them nothing they don’t already know about their teachers. Another corporate scam for taxpayer money.
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Someone sees the light. Just someone making the “bucks” on the backs of others.
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