Value-added assessment is all the rage since te introduction of Race to the Top.
Before then, everyone understood that teachers, families, school resources and the student herself (or himself) were the determining factors in student test scores.
But RTTT set off a movement to use scores to evaluate teachers, hoping to identify laggards and fire them.
The only problem: VAM is junk science. The low ratings tend to go to teachers of ELL, special education, and troubled kids. The scores, it turns out, measure WHO you teach, not teacher quality.
VAM isn’t working anywhere, yet our nation will squander hundreds of millions, maybe billions, trying to make it work.
Now we hear from a great blogger in Pennsylvania: VAM is sure to be a mess there, as everywhere else.
Junk science is junk science.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
See this excerpt and the same model is being piloted in CT right now. If this is true, why wouldn’t Danielson speak out about the misuse of her system?
In Pittsburgh, this half comes from a system it developed called RISE (Research-Based Inclusive System of Evaluation), based on the work of education researcher Charlotte Danielson. But Slekar argues that RISE is a “distortion of [her] original work on quality teaching. Danielson’s qualitative system of evaluation was never meant to be merged with a invalid and unreliable quantitative evaluation system—Valued Added Measures.”
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Somebody got right to the point. I have been saying for a long time if we really want to know who is a good and who is a bad teacher let us take the teacher from Beverly Hills and put them in Compton and take the teacher from Compton and put them in Beverly Hills and then compare what happened. Does anyone want to guess?
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I’m pretty sure Danielson has spoken out that this is not what she had envisioned, but I bet she’s rolling in & loving the dough!
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Do you know how she makes money off of these evaluation systems? Just wondering.
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She has a consulting company called The Danielson Group. Google her name.
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VAM is a sham?? NSS!!
Just gave an inservice on the sham that is vam during our “share fair” professional development day. Had four teachers there. Out here in rural Missouri the folks just don’t know that the train wreck of vam will be upon them next year-even though we are being told that the system we will be using doesn’t use VAM. Funny that the developers (the Regional Professional Development group out of the University of Missouri-Columbia) will not give out any information about that portion of the teacher evaluation process. I talked with the director for over an hour and couldn’t get anything other than the background political problems involved with the state department of education. Am I afraid of this? You better believe it.
I’ve already informed my principals that I can’t ethically take part in a process that is so wrong. Hopefully, I can make it to retirement before all the shit hits the fan.
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You do get around Duane! I’m like you, being a gadfly to admin and hoping to last 4 or 5 more years and retiring. I’ve been sending some of your references to our school board, particularly the newly elected members. While we have had our disagreements, I appreciate your Wilson revival. I am sure it makes some people rightly uncomfortable. I only wish I had a law license, I’d be in a position to make the powers that be here more uncomfortable. Maybe I need to go back to school in a few years.
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OT,
Thanks for the kind words! I’m encouraged to hear that you are using Wilson’s work. In it he has completely destroyed standards, standardized testing and “grading” students as policies that should be abandoned. Many here at this site still believe in the falsehoods that are those practices.
And I do believe it is going to take going through the courts to get rid of this nonsense. The politicos are mostly bought and paid for and those of us who live paycheck to paycheck (thanks to the complete collapse of the economy of the common man by the banksters, corporateers and politicos) have minimum say in anything. I just try to provide background information that shows that much of what we attempt to do in education, CCSS, standardized testing, sorting and separating students through “grading” them is unconstitutional and unethical.
Far too many in education accept the above mentioned travesties as “part of reality” of public education. Well, their reality is based on flawed and unethical practices. Yes we need to change what we do in public education but certainly not in the realm of what passes for edureform these days.
Again, thanks for the kind words. By the way have you read “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues” by Andre Comte Sponville? If not I suggest reading it.
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Aw, come on, guys: VAM is science, just as bleeding and phrenology are! And multi-page checklists, wielded by pressured, inexperienced administrators, are support for teachers!
If you don’t believe me, then check out the link and adjust your psychometrics.
If you disagree, you are clearly one of those child-hating, union dues-paying, status quo-ers.
(www.google.com/search?q=phrenology&hl&client)
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Michael, what is your hat size? I appreciate your tongue in cheek humor, I’m not sure my add principal can spell phrenology, let alone know what it is. As someone that studied psychology and developed profiling programs before teaching, I love the reference. Thanks for adding a bit of wry humor to my day.
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I’m not sure of my hat size, but am reasonably certain that the shape of my head and brain would certify me as the criminal type.
Meanwhile, please pass the leeches… oh wait, the leeches are everywhere!
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Michael,
I read your comments everywhere..here, Rubenstein, Jersey Jazzman, I think. You are very smart and very funny….what a catch! I appreciate your word choice. You make me laugh and I learn….do not leave us.
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Wow, Linda, it’s been a long time since anyone referred to me as a “catch.”
Thanks, you just made my day.
And I do hope to stick around, at least until one of the best and brightest determines (scientifically, of course!) that I am “life unworthy of life.”
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Michael is pretty famous here in NYC as well.
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Dr. Slekar has invited me to be a guest on his internet radio talk show, @ the chalk face, ( http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chalkface ) which airs Sundays at 6 p.m. EST. We will discuss VAM/teacher eval issues. I will post the specific date once it is scheduled.
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I will be on two radio shows in upcoming days: On Sunday (01/13), I will be on @ the chalk face (http://atthechalkface.com/) at 5p.m. EST discussing VAM. On Monday, 01/14, I will be on the New Orleans Imperative (wbok1230am.com) at 11:30 a.m. EST discussing school performance score inflation.
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Diane-
I got to this article in the WSJ through the Naked Capitalism blog I read daily:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323374504578219873933502726.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_4
The Naked Capitalism blog also included a link to this article from 2006 on the same topic:
Click to access Webber-Metrics.pdf
I forward these because I think they explain why school boards and politicians are hoodwinked by VAM. I know enough about statistics to know that VAM is junk science… but most people (and especially businessmen) want to believe everything can be reduced to a mathematical model and so we find ourselves in VAM-land.
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Thank you, Diane Ravitch, for giving this excellent piece national coverage. As we can see, this is far more than just a Pennsylvania issue. I posted a link to this piece on my Facebook page when it first came out, and have received many positive comments from all over. I introduced it with my own comments:
Bravo to Yinzercation for this excellent post. Many excellent points here, to which I would add: VAM and the other so-called “objective” systems of “evaluating” teaching are being used in many places to create an atmosphere in our schools, for our teachers, that long has reminded me of something. This morning I put my finger on it. I grew up under the shadow of the McCarthy witch-hunt, in a home with a mother who was targeted by little people in big men’s bodies wearing FBI badges. We lived in constant knowledge that my mom’s job, friends, and family all could at any time once again (for it did happen) be harassed and disrupted by powerful people who were driven by forces inimical to human solidarity and freedom. I felt the fear growing up, but, more than that, I felt my mother’s determination to not let those little, jealous, hostile minds stop her from standing up for her children, her beliefs, her community, and the battles she knew were just. And now here we are, teachers in so very many places, under the same kind of scrutiny from little minds (politicians and billionaires who know and/or care nothing about children and education) — teachers going to work every day to do the best they can for children knowing that they (we) are being judged by these people and their less-than-valid “measures.” And I think of all of the children with all of the things they bring to school with them, and all of my colleagues everywhere who do so very very very much for these children which NEVER could be measured by these “objective” tools — and who keep on doing for these children knowing that numbers will come out on some spreadsheet somewhere saying something about their teaching which is so very skewed. Thank you so very much, Jessie Ramey and Yinzercation and Tim Slekar and, especially, thank you to every teacher/counselor/para/schoolnurse and, yes, administrator who keeps working for our children despite the witch-hunts and ridiculousnesses, and who will continue to do so, and who stands with and behind all other teachers/parents/students who must/can/will turn this nonsense around.
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