Seven teachers in Houston are suing the district over the use of test-score-based evaluations.
Good for them!
As a K-12 graduate of HISD, I am proud of these teachers for standing up for their profession.
I hope they will introduce as evidence the recent statement of the American Statistical Association cautioning about the limitations of VAM, as well as the joint statement of the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association, warning that VAM produces results that are inaccurate and unstable.
Here is a good list of references the plaintiffs can use.
VAM is junk science when used to rate individual teachers. The ratings change if a different test is used. VAM says more about the composition of the class than the quality of the teacher.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Boy, VOX is turning into ed reform promotion HQ:
http://www.vox.com/cards/charter-schools/how-are-charter-schools-funded
All we needed was another media source to promote charters over public schools, right?
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I am wondering why Houston is having these problems when they are not doing CCSS? I was hoping that if our state (Missouri) Senate passes HB1490 today, one of the good things that would come from it would be that we won’t be evaluating teachers based upon test scores. This issue goes beyond CCSS, doesn’t it?
Caroline
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I believe they still need to meet NCLB waiver criteria. CC standards were not absolutely mandatory. Texas must create their own comparable standards.
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Fort Wayne is often an outlier in Indiana ed reform, and they are again:
Fort Wayne Community Schools announced Monday the district will halt administering online ISTEP+ exams and wait instead for paper tests.
“After several days of computer network issues related to CTB-McGraw Hill’s servers, we lost confidence that testing could take place without the extensive interruptions students experienced last year,” superintendent Wendy Robinson said in a statement. “We refuse to subject students and staff to the probability of the same thing happening this year. Our students deserve the opportunity to be tested in an environment that is conducive to their success.”
This is the second year in a row the online testing failed, and students took the brunt of the screw-up. Good for them.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/stateimpact/
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Good!
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More Broad influence.
According to Superintendent Terry Grier’s bio at the district’s web site http://www.houstonisd.org/domain/8144 :
“In 2013, under his leadership, HISD became the first district in America to win the Broad Prize for Urban Education a second time (the district won the inaugural award in 2002). HISD received high marks for its progress in decreasing achievement gaps and increasing the number of minority students taking and doing well on advanced placement tests.”
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Reblogged this on rightfulwriter and commented:
I hope they win! “VAM is junk science when used to rate individual teachers. The rating change if a different test is used. VAM says more about the composition of the class than the quality of the teacher.”
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One thing these teachers, and all teachers, can do is to document the progress of each child in the class. It is not difficult to demonstrate progress by collecting work samples, compositions, end-of-chapter tests and all things that teachers do anyway. Teachers should invite the principal, other teachers and parents in to observe this progress. These people then become witnesses.
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I have 256 students. It IS difficult to do all of this. I invite everyone to my classroom, but no one comes.
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Yes, the teachers can do more work by documenting more, calling more parents, and filing those papers for easy access. More work, more work, more work, more work…that is the answer.
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Actually I was thinking of elementary school where teachers generally chart progress carefully. It doesn’t need to take extra work, but the teacher does need to keep samples of the assignments and tests she gives. Also, most elementary school teachers are usually very cooperative with one another and can be witnesses for one another. Even in the poorest schools, it is not that difficult to get some parents and administrators to visit a classroom. At least that was my experience.
Whether we like it or not, teachers must go on the offensive.
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Well, you need to also think of secondary schools. In my 13 years of teaching, I have had ONE parent ever visit my classroom. I have an open-door policy and I tell parents that. My classroom is a trailer a good distance from the school, so I barely see administrators except for their 20-minute drive-by evaluations. I have specifically invited administrators to see special activities in my class. They never come. In fairness, they’re pretty busy: three administrators for a 1,000-student middle school.
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Just waiting for students to sue because their data is accessed by some process like FICO or the military and they become forever doomed in the world of big data.
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Hi, Dianne,
Was sorry to hear about your knee injury, but you will have a new knee before long! My husband had total knee replacement by Dr. Jon Brown in kc, mo last sept and he is doing just great. Know you will do great, too!!
Did you hear that MO Senate passed their SB 1490, which could halt CCSS in MO? Hoping it works out for us!!
A follower,
Caroline
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A teacher/researcher’s view with research on the why the Value Added Measure(VAM) is an invalid evaluation of teacher performance
Three research documented examples why the Value Added Measure(VAM) is an invalid method to evaluate K-12 teacher performance, as discussed – in the lawsuit “Seven teachers in Houston are suing the district over the use of test-score-based evaluations”. Firstly, is some background assumptions information on the K-12 education system. The two assumptions that most everyone including teachers and administrators agree upon include. (1) Each grade is incrementally more advanced than the previous grade. (2) Students are to be promoted by proficiency as the students are promoted from grade to grade. The former is obviously applied in the K-12 system, but the later “promotion by proficiency” as required by California State law AB 1626, 1998) and nationally by NCLB in math and English for all students by the 2013-2014 school year is not.. The NCLB promotion by proficiency portion of the law is still is in effect until congress makes changes in the law. Although president Obama stated that he will not enforce the law in 46 states, the NCLB promotion by proficiency law is still in effect.
The reason why the proficiency mandate of the NCLB law is so important to this lawsuit is that the student on entrance to the course by the NCLB law is required to be proficient. The three examples that follow will document this failure of the local district ADMINISTRATION’s to implement the NCLB law. In fact, a strong argument could be made the local administration that is placing the student into classes without the proficiency requirement could be sued or their employment terminated for failure of enforcing the proficiency requirement of the NCLB law.
Three research studies, one national, the NAEP clearly documents that by 8th grade the black and Latino students are four years behind the white/Asian students or the MEAN black and Latino students have skills of 4th grade students. Obviously, logic and research suggests that one can not effectively teach 4th grade students 8th grade material and expect the students to be proficient by the end on 8th grade competencies that the VAM demands for appropriate student learning.
The next two classroom examples support the NAEP research. In the evaluation of 61 students in two 8th grade classes, one honor algebra)N = 31) and the other pre-algebra(N =29). During the last month of the school year, a 50 question, ten area diagnostic -prescriptive exam was given to both classes/ The test had two distinct areas with 25 questions in whole numbers, decimals and factions- 6th grade material and 25 questions in general math 7th grade topics- measurement, signed numbers, percent, measurement and perimeter, area, volume geometry. If proficiency was defined as 80% correct, the difference between the mean proficient and mean non-proficient student scores was approximately 40 % in each of the ten area and the composite. In addition about ½ of the students had scores less that 50% correct on both parts. Stanford math norm’s documents that each years equates to 9.1% correct difference. Therefore, a 40% difference equates to a four year difference in skills- or once again the mean non proficiency 8th grade student has skills of a fourth grader. Question: In both cases, how can one use a VAM to FAIRLY evaluate 8th grade teacher’s teaching effectively when many students skills are at a fourth grade level
The final example was this same test listed above was given pre/post to a series of developmental college student classes, N = 106 to evaluate student learning. The pre-post learning difference between the proficient student, defined as students with entrance scores of 80% or higher, and the non-proficient students was 2 to 1. In other words, if the proficient students at entrance to the course were evaluated separately from the non-proficient students, the VAM value evaluation would be high for the proficient students and low for the non-proficient students. Since the SAME teacher taught both the proficient and the non-proficient students, the high and low VAM scores respectively, how can the same teacher be identified as a good teacher in one class based upon high VAM scores and be evaluated as an unfit teacher when teaching non proficient students with low VAM scores. In other words, if all the students entering the class were proficient as the federal and state law mandates, then VAM may yield a valid evaluation of the teacher performance. However this rarely occurs especially in the educationally disadvantage classroom, which is very likely in an area such as Houston that have a varied of ethnic back ground students many of which are educationally disadvantaged.
Using these three examples, clearly the VAM is an invalid measure of student performance and teacher evaluation, since the student background pre-requisite skill differences yield a different VAM effect independent of the instructor .(*)
* Research documentation is available from this instructor/researcher at ekansgas@juno.com
Sincerely, Eric Kangas, a forty year retired instructor/researcher who has taught at all three educational levels, K-12, community college and university( CSU, Private, and UC )
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