Laura Chapman, a regular contributor to the blog, has worked in arts education for many years.

She writes:

This desire to churn the teaching workforce is not just a push from Bill Gates and lawsuits to dismantle unions.
Six economists/statisticians brought together at the Brookings Institution offered a similar plan. These number crunchers said that district-wide VAM (value-added) scores should be used to determine the most effective teachers, irrespective of the subjects and grade-levels they teach.

This proposal is efficient and absurd. It is based on the assumption that a district’s value added scores are so highly correlated with “non-value added” measures that employment decisions for all teachers can be based on the performance of teachers with value added scores.

Under this system, all teachers would also have a composite evaluation based on multiple measures such as end of course test scores, observations, and student surveys. Even so, the teachers with VAM scores would determine the employment fate of all teachers. How is this conclusion reached?

Here is the magical thinking: “For example, we would assume that the correlation between observationally-based ratings of teachers and value-added (scores) in math would be the same in history, where value-added measures are not available.”

In other words, the statisticians freely invent (impute) a missing metric for the history teacher by assuming a math teacher’s rating on a classroom observation protocol can be used as a substitute for the history teacher’s missing value added score.

Those inferential leaps are just the beginning of a larger plan that would make all teacher evaluations “comparable” without any distinctions in grade level, or subject, or conditions under which teachers work.

The Brookings policy articulates principles for dismissing up to 25% of teachers in a district, on the assumption that this action plan would increase test scores and be “fair” to every teacher. The only exception to this formula might be for teachers of exceptional children. This case of econometric thinking ignores the educational, ecological, and substantive importance of different job assignments. See Corerelation, Para 5 in http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2011/04/26-evaluating-teachers

The Brookings paper is not radically different, (except for the 25 % churn) from a USDE plan for all teachers by a collective VAM for a school, but limited to one of the “priority” subtests such as reading or mathematics. In Florida, for example, the school wide VAM in reading or math is assigned to art and other teachers of nontested subjects. In other words, the curriculum and instruction that really matters is narrowed to the three R’s.

The use of a collective VAM focused on reading or math is a rapid and cost-effective way to meet federal or state requirements for teacher evaluation. Moreover, in 2014, a U.S. district judge ruled that evaluators in Florida are allowed to disregard a teacher’s job assignment in rating performance. The judge ruled that this practice is legal, even if it is unfair.

Teacher ratings based on a collective value-added score are likely to increase in states where Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are adopted and tested. The CCSS call for all teachers to improve student proficiency in English Language Arts and mathematics.

Although the American Statistical Association has denounced the practice of using VAM for rating individuals, that measure is unlikely to disappear as a tool for churning the workforce.

In the Obama/Duncan/McKinsey & Co. “RESPECT” project, for example, a teacher can only be judged “highly qualified” by producing more than a year’s worth of growth (gain in test scores) in three out of every five years. Teachers without that designation have shorter up-or-out criteria to meet.

This stack-ranking system, like the Brookings plan, banishes job security and churns the teaching workforce by insisting on one-size-fit-all criteria for “effective” teachers. http://www.ed.gov/blog/2012/02/launching-project-respect/