In this age of value-added measurement, when teachers are judged by the rise or fall of their students’ test scores, it is very dangerous to teach gifted classes. Their scores are already at the top, and they have nowhere to go, so the teacher will get a low rating. It is also dangerous to teach English language learners, students with disabilities, and troubled youth. Their scores will not go up as much as the kids in affluent districts who have no issues.
Here is what happened to one teacher of gifted students:
“As a teacher of gifted students in Florida, I can attest to the fact that you are more likely to get slammed by VAM. I was rated the worst teacher at my school, the 14th worst teacher in my district, and the 146th worst teacher in the state of Florida (out of 120,000). Previously, I had a great reputation at my school among staff, parents, and students. Now that these scores have been published on the internet, I fear that future students, parents and administrators might be influenced by my extremely negative VAM ranking. Even if they aren’t, I have to worry about being slammed by VAM two years in a row, being rated “needs improvement”, losing my job and having my teaching license revoked by the state. Funny, just two years ago I was selected to be a mentor teacher by my district in the subject that I teach. Now I’m at risk of losing my career based on VAM results of a subject I don’t teach. Thanks a lot Arne. http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/gosh-damn-thats-a-bad-vam/”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
These implementations are terrible. Any VAM system that doesn’t acknowledge that growth is easier in low performing students is junk. Any system that treats ELA growth and Math growth the same is also junk. And although I believe in transparent data and school choice, publishing individual VAM results is completely unnecessary and damaging. I feel very sorry for this teacher and the students in a system that, apparently in this case, is having exactly the opposite effect that it was intended to have.
No, it’s having the exact effect that it was intended to have.
Good response, Duane.
Duane Swacker: what you said.
The latest example of an unimpeachable witness testifying to the truth of your assertion is from a posting yesterday on this blog. One of the—if not the biggest—cheerleader for Commoners Core in Tennessee suddenly made the move from the pubic disadvocacy sector to being the head of the private Lipscomb Academy.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
The money quote in a public statement by her explaining why the alleged miracles of CC (and its associated massive use of high-stakes standardized testing for $tudent $ucce$$) are not to be at what Dr. Candace McQueen considers a genuine institution of learning and teaching:
“Currently, Lipscomb Academy draws from a variety of quality national and state standards selected by the school leadership and faculty to set a vision for what content, instruction and curriculum will be used at each grade level. This has proven to be effective; thus, I don’t anticipate any changes to this process now or in the future.”
Accessed link above and provide again here: http://nashvillepublicradio.org/blog/2014/02/10/lipscomb-academy-chief-advocates-for-common-core-but-not-at-her-school/
Ms. McQueen realizes that Commoners Core is not a Race To The Top but a Forced March To The Bottom.
She’s no dummy; she just lost control of her mouth for a moment. Just an eduapparatchk version of the political enablers of the charterite/privatizer movement.
“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.” [Michael Kinsley]
😎
“These implementations are terrible”
and
“having exactly the opposite effect that it was intended to have.”
A feature not a bug, my friend.
How will we push school choice/privatization/removal of local control/etc. unless we convince the public how VERY much the government teachers and schools suck?
Yep. Full speed ahead!
It is not easier to show growth in low performing students. Low performing students are special ed, ELL, low SES. They need to be met where they are not where rigid standards say they should be.
I agree that it is very difficult to show growth in the lowest performing students as well. If you read my blog, I also noted that many of the worst performing teachers according to VAM were special education teachers. Teachers who teach the very top and teachers who teach the very bottom get slammed by VAM and that should be very obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of math.
You probably have even mentioned it here before. I was a special ed teacher, so I couldn’t resist piping up.
Reblogged this on McBlog.
Yes, based on a brief study of the equation posted on this blog, I commented:
Looks like a weighted measure. One would assume since it is the sum of four quantities they all count for 25%?
One- school / grade demographics, more points for student in bad demographics or harder grades.
Two- student test scores, improvement relative to all the tests they have taken previously.
Three – mumbo jumbo, student gets more points for what exactly? Having quantified bad teachers and bad schools?
Four – variable ei not defined.
In conclusion, it looks like for student scores yti, half the score is based on coming from a bad environment.
VAM is 100% USDA Grade AA Super Prime Bovine Excrement.
By any measure, I agree.
Thanks for constantly bringing attention to the scam that is VAM Diane. There was a slight flaw with the link to my blog, so if anybody wants to read the whole blog post they can try this one instead
http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/gosh-damn-thats-a-bad-vam.
I agree as well. It is all part and parcel of the attempt to shut the doors of public education—in Kansas, the House just introduced a bill to committee that would do away with teacher licensure all together—put unlicensed teachers in math classrooms, among many other areas. It probably won’t go anywhere, but that won’t be any thanks to the wing nuts in Topeka, or the governor who loves them.
This is the genius of “race to the top”—there is no top.
RACE to the Top (RTTT)
Teacher handicapping
In a teacher handicap race (sometimes called just “handicap”), each teacher must carry a specified weight called the impost or proficient level, assigned by the Education Secretary based on factors such as performances on standardized tests, so as to equalize the chances of the student. To supplement the combined weight of scores, up to the assigned impost or proficient level, teachers may have to undergo additional training and/or reduction in salary and/or loss of employment.
Predicting the outcome of races
Handicapping is the art of predicting teachers who have the greatest chance of winning a race, and profiting from these predictions. The Student Growth Percentile (SGP) or the Value Added Measurement (VAM), are publications, each is an important tool of the handicapper. The SGP or the VAM detail statistical information about each Teacher entered in a race, including detailed past performance results, lifetime records, and a myriad of other information available for casual or serious study.
For use on Twitter: Just copy, paste and then ReTweet as often as possible. The short link was created by using Bitly and leads to this post.
According to national standardized tests
all teachers of the Gifted are BAD teachers
Discover why
http://bit.ly/1hgkaeI
How crazy would it be if we measured the effectiveness of doctors based on their patient mortality rates, and admonished oncologists with “no excuses!” rhetoric when they complained (including trotting out a few people who had survived “so-called terminal” cancer in order to “prove” that “cancer is not destiny”)?
I asked this question of RI’s Deborah Gist on Friday (at a speech she gave to a gathering of physicians), and her answer was that if she had cancer, SHE would want the oncologist with the lowest patient mortality rate. Her sidestep did nothing to invalidate my point. The oncologist with the lowest patient mortality rate would still have a pretty high patient mortality rate, and would still have received a low rating when compared to all other doctors.
And if that oncologist is judged based on patient mortality s/he won’t take terminal and poor-prognosis cases. So you better get the right kind of cancer to get the best kind of Dr. (kind of like being born into the right family to get the best school and teacher…)
Agree werebat
How to reduce mortality rate of your patients:
Don’t accept stage 4 patients under any circumstances.
Avoid pancreatic and ovarian cancer patients (difficult to treat/cure).
Do not accept patients who are generally unhealthy (obese, inactive, heavy drinker/smoker etc.)
Avoid patients with other issues (family problems/general ill health/ etc.)
Avoid elderly patients.
Send these types of patients to other doctors.
Seek out young patients with the easiest to spot and treat cancers who are also very motivated/educated/and have high level of family support.
Hum, something here seems familiar.
Cannot quite put my finger on it.
😉
TAGO! Ang!
werebat73: excellent comments.
The answer by Deborah Gist goes right to the heart of the “education reform” approach.
Instead of rewarding, supporting and encouraging doctors to take on the patients who are bound to have the worst stats—i.e., the ones who give preferential attention to those in most need with the smallest chances of survival—you reward those that avoid precisely those patients in most need with the least chance of favorable outcomes. That is, you incentivize mediocrity because you reward those who do (and can do) the best with the least effort and penalize those who do (because they are the most capable but not magicians) the least under impossible conditions.
It applies with equal rigor to education: once you eviscerate even a hint of honorable and moral attachment to the idea that the neediest and hardest to teach are deserving of our best efforts and the largest share of our resources, then you can have such rheephorm notables as Rahm Emanuel lightly throwing away the “uneducables” and Michael J Petrilli casually dismissive of the “non-strivers.”
Remember the “grit” and “determination” discussions we have been having on this blog? The whole rheephorm agenda is based on giving up, surrendering to circumstances, not bothering with those who ‘cost too much’ and ‘take too much time’ and ‘need the most help.’
When the going gets tough, the self-styled “education reformers” give up. That explains in large part why they get so “tough”—with the rest of us. The Ladies & Lords of Accountability don’t like to be held to account for their failures and cowardice in the face of great obstacles.
And they aren’t about to change their minds. They aren’t concerned with being thoughtful about their ideas, behaviors and results. Like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, they simply repeat their ‘happy talk’ points. Or they just tune out the ‘bad’ news:
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” [Henny Youngman]
Any wonder then that their stars like Michelle Rhee and David Coleman don’t want a Diane Ravitch challenging their comfort zones in open public discussion?
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
Based on what I learned on this blog yesterday, it appears that the real goals of the leaders of the “reform” movement are just to do away with traditional teaching altogether and replace it with this grand experiment of this new teaching tech powered by Knewton and other companies eager to cash in on it.
As a software developer and not an educator, a poster on this blog asked me to comment on this and I did. I feel that I finally understand where Bill Gates is coming from. Otherwise his remark that “it will take ten years to see if this stuff works” makes no sense at all. Obviously stuff like VAM is not working. It has the flaws mentioned here and many others. It discriminates against teachers of gifted students, it is variable from year to year due to factors beyond control of the teachers who are being rated. It’s just crap.
Nobody would be for this – unless they have a different goal in mind. In my mind that goal is sweeping away traditional teachers and replacing them with this shiny high-tech object that Knewton and others in the field are peddling.
I’ve watched the Knewton video and read the interviews, particularly that one about the ASU instructor who is working with Knewton and kind of likes it. I know what this is. I’ve seen it before. In startups like Knewton, you get very passionate people who really believe in what they’re working on. This guy is a classic case judging from his video. He’s got the fast talking down and has all the answers. They often work really closely with a few select end users who are helping them tweak the product, make it better, a virtuous loop. Both the developer and the end users helping to prove in the new product are passionately devoted to it.
I’ve been there. My first product as a software developer had one user in mind – myself. You can’t get more intimate than that. I knew exactly what I wanted and how to make it. Then I went to work for a guy with a similar business model. He wrote a program for his own mail order business’s automation, and then decided to sell it to others in the field. For a period of time, he sat on his throne, and handled calls from his end users, who were thrilled to be talking with “the guy who wrote the program”. He’d get a request and code it right there while on the phone to the end user. What bliss!
Of course, eventually it got to be too much. He hired people to handle tech support and filter these calls from him. He hired me and others to work on companion products. The bugs multiplied due to poor design. He was a great marketer, and kept it afloat for awhile by schmoozing his users but eventually the business failed.
I see a lot of this in the relationship between Knewton and the ASU people who are working with them. Of course she loves it. She’s part of it and getting a lot of TLC from the developer.
But there’s no money in that model long term. Once it goes into full scale production, they’ll need tech support (offshore?). There won’t be this one on one collaboration between developer and end users. Bugs will pile up. Things no one thought of will be discovered in the field. It may not scale as well to subjects other than math, where right answers are more elusive. It certainly won’t scale when moving from colleges with motivated students to public schools in some inner cities where the motivation to succeed at school has lots of competition with other forces.
And yet, Arne Duncan and friends have seen the presentation and appear to have been seduced by it. It’s a pipe dream, though. If this is what Bill Gates means and if our leaders are buying into it, it’s very dangerous. It’s the worst form of social experimentation. No wonder parents are turning against it. Who wants a ten-year experiment with their kids as guinea pigs.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
VAM: The Scarlet Letter. A talk given to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL.
Even if VAM were not pseudo-science (which it is) is should be considered offensive and unacceptable.
After all, it’s original use and meaning refer to “enhancing the value of a good or service before it is offered for sale to a customer.”
Embedded in the very term is the ideology that children are “products” being offered for sale to ” customers” (i.e. employers).
I don’t know about you all, but my kids are not products and are not for sale, period.
I don’t know about you all, but my kids are not products and are not for sale, period.
Completely with you!
I feel that pain. I’m an AP teacher who teaches nearly all seniors. Very little growth with students who don’t take anything seriously after January 1 (unless it can adversely affect their college admission or possible graduation).
Fortunately I work in a state that doesn’t tie this into the evaluation. Yet. (Our legislature is reviewing different models and no one is sure what the final product will be.)
AP and the PSAT and the SAT are all products of the College Board.
The College Board was intimately involved in the development of the Common Core. The Common Core is based on the premise that schools must be “reformed” to make the U.S. “economically competitive” (which is, by the way, false). Are you catching the drift?
Democracy:
In 2012, the College Board published a full page ad in the NY Times proclaiming that our schools were a threat to our economy and our security.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$&$
It’s really too bad that this particular Florida teacher was “slammed” with a bad VAM score. Because, as many have pointed out, VAM is mostly nonsense.
What’s a bit surprising, though, is that no commenters mentioned that “gifted” education is mostly nonsense too. Invariably. given the criteria used to assess “giftedness,” most “gifted” students are upper-income students. In that sense, “gifted” programs are sort of like the SAT and AC; the thing they reflect best is family income.
For example, in New York City, there are more gifted programs in the city’s wealthy neighborhood school districts than in poorer ones. Thirty percent of all the “gifted” students in the city come from only two upper-income districts. In some poor (and mostly black and Hispanic) districts, there are no “gifted” classes at all. And while “70 percent of city students are black or Hispanic,” at the academically accelerated (read, “gifted”) high schools, those students account for only 15 percent of the population.
One teacher of the “gifted” in New York summed it up this way: “there’s no way I’d put my kid in a general-education class here, no way, because it’s right next to the project and all the kids in general education come from the projects.”
In an affluent Washington DC suburb, as advocate for “gifted” programs was asked why such a label was even necessary, His response was, “I’d say that’s a good question.”
In another DC suburban county, where “giftedness” is now called the Advanced Academic Program (AAP), nearly 20 percent of all 3rd through 8th graders qualify. In some of the most affluent schools, the “gifted”(AAP) classes out-number the regular classes.
In ‘The School and Society,’ John Dewey wrote that “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.”
He was right.
I think gifted education can be very useful to students.
In Fairfax County, Virginia (one of those affluent Washington D.C. suburbs), Thomas Jefferson High School (a qualified admission magnet school) can offer a much richer curriculum to advanced students than traditional zoned schools. Gathering students of similar ability together in a class is the only way to provide appropriate education to all students, especially in math and science courses where the level of work students are asked to perform is so tightly tied to class curriculum.
What the wisest parent wants for his own child are courses and a schools that are compatible with the capabilities, desires, and ambitions of each child. That often requires very different high school classes. That is certainly true for my children.
I think superintendents and reformers would get sub-zero scores on Vaguely Assessed Machine (VAM), if we put them into data-point.
Thank you for pointing out this issue! There are so many statistical artifacts that the Sanders model ignores: these in particular with respect to gifted kids…regression to the mean and “ceiling effect.”
Maybe this is the plan; teachers of the gifted may be the ones with more seniority, thus higher paid. Save a lot of money to get rid of them first.
Just an idea. I know it can’t be true, because those people are not smart enough to think that far ahead
I would hope that the most senior, most experienced teachers are assigned to the classes that are the most difficult to teach, else their greater experience and abilities are wasted. It does not seem to me that an AP class typically fits this description. Is that inconsistent with your experience?
“That which can be measured, can be managed.”
In other words, it’s a command and control mechanism.
Reblogged this on peakmemory and commented:
Another example of the invalidity of value added assessments.
Regression to the Mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_to_the_mean
Reblogged this on rightfulwriter and commented:
Value Added Assessments like EVAAS cannot alone determine a teacher’s effectiveness with any more accuracy than standardized test scores do.
How can anyone project what a student “should” do on the next test when the test constantly changes, when the child’s life constantly changes (hormones are just one aspect), when the standards constantly change, and when subject changes. How can a child go from Geography into World History and produce any data at all that would attempt to accurately predict success? How can a test performance projection be accurate when a child suddenly finds himself in the middle of a divorce or sudden parental job-loss or even death? How can any data claim to project how a student will perform on any test on any given day? This shows the presumptive nature of the data used for Value Added Evaluations and just how useless they actually are.
Sooner or later the legislature must surely realize the very best teaching cannot be quantified. The very best teachers are artists. And truly, there is no ONE WAY to be a good teacher.
Reblogged this on The Twilight Zone and commented:
I need to learn more about the value-added measurement. If what this post says is true, then an unintentional consequence is discouraging focus on gifted students. Only really passionate teachers would really want to teach those students who make it harder to get the higher ranking/score, especially if that evaluation is tied to salary and job security. So sad – I do like the analogy to medicine in the comments – very good comparison.