The Los Angeles Times reports a new survey of 26 school districts showing that many of them are not complying with state law that requires them to evaluate teachers in part by student test scores. Apparently, the district leadership knows this is a flawed and invalid means of judging teacher quality.
Teresa Watanabe writes:
The review of 26 school districts serving more than 1.2 million students found that only Clovis Unified near Fresno and Sweetwater Union High School District in Chula Vista fully complied with the law. Two others, Upland Unified in the Inland Empire and San Ramon Valley Unified in Contra Costa County, were “blatantly in violation” of the law by expressly prohibiting the use of state standardized test scores in their teacher evaluations, the study said. The findings were disputed by both districts.
The other school systems surveyed — which included Long Beach, San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco — offered mixed findings, according to the study conducted by the EdVoice Institute for Research and Education, an educational advocacy organization in Sacramento.
Los Angeles Unified School District is still writing its method for evaluating teachers, in response to a court order telling the district to do it (even though most researchers have said it is invalid).
This is a big problem for “reformers,” constantly having to litigate against states and districts to force them to comply with invalid measures and policies that have negative consequences for students and teachers alike.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
we had a meeting about our VAM today (NC) and apparently NC won’t allow a teacher to be dismissed based on only one standard (so student scores would never be grounds, alone, for dismissal). VAM is one of six standards that we have. They also drop the lowest of three the first year they work it into the score (which is the first year you have three years worth of scores). From then on, you drop the oldest score.
Is it here to stay, I wonder. I try to look at it like the clear plastic bags I had to use as a purse when I worked retail, or the precautions a banker uses or anything else. I didn’t having to have the school score as my own for this year (because the school did not meet growth), but it seemed less daunting than I had thought. It seems like it factors into the equation in a reasonable way (like having to carry a clear bag when you work retail or whatever they do when you work in a bank).
??
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“. . . but it seemed less daunting than I had thought. It seems like it factors into the equation in a reasonable way . . . ”
You’re getting sucked in Joanna.
It’s not a matter of being “daunting” or not to be evaluated with false metrics. The “It” cannot be factored in in a reasonable way when the “It” is based on false premises, epistemological and ontological errors and illogical thinking that renders the “It” COMPLETELY INVALID.
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My key point was “is it here to stay?” If RttT is over, can states just abandon VAM?
Not getting sucked in. Just trying to stay sane.
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I would guess, Joanna, that it is only continued pressure that will keep VAM factored into the equation “in a reasonable way” if not abandoned. If you sit back and say “Oh, that’s not too bad!” VAM gains a foothold it doesn’t deserve. You cannot allow yourself to accept being evaluated by junk science for a “reasonable” percentage. You don’t want people to forget that teachers are being judged by false metrics. When the heat is turned up, they will come back at you and ask why you accepted it for so long without complaint.
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The arts have a separate “standard six” beginning this year. We have to submit three time lapse pieces to show artistic growth.
It’s tough. Gadfly in the butter.
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2old: who will come back at me? St Peter at the pearly gates? Nobody cares now, so why would they care later, what I think?
The only answer I can find is to get out of this line of work. Meanwhile, I will try to keep a perspective that allows me to sleep at night, and then fight once I’m on the outside. But within the situation, far better to focus on the children, as others point out (and as others point out is the ironic downfall of teaching). But staying in at all might be the path that gets questioned.
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Who will come back at you? Unless citizens of NC stay vigilant, the legislature can turn virulent again. We have all learned the lesson of complacency, and it is costing us dearly. If you can stand it, stay. If it starts to eat at your soul, then it’s time to go.
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“Irrational factors”
VAM’s an irrational factor
Like square root 2 or Pi
Now matter how you’ve stacked ‘er
She will not end or die
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Joanna,
What is “artistic growth”?
Thanks,
Duane
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good question.
Who knows at this point. . .I question if they will even have the system ready to accept our “artifcacts”—they are already behind in getting up some of the preliminary stuff we have to do (like verify our class lists).
I guess they are looking to see that music and art teachers are “growing children” the way a good choral director or band director grows the band or choir. But my question is: who will judge? I can’t imagine that there is money to pay people to evaluate said growth.
I have recorded some things showing improvement in, for example, the class of seven year olds clapping a pattern they read in unison, or playing on the xylophones. I feel certain you can hear improvement in what they do musically, if that’s what they are looking to see.
Mostly VAM and reform is my cue to move on. I’ve always wanted to be a full time mother anyway. Now’s my chance. On the one hand I tell myself things like what I wrote yesterday (that these “precautions” and “accountability measures” are just part of quality control, same as any business). But mostly I think it all just eclipses my focus and why I went into teaching to begin with. Maybe I’ll be back when it blows over? Will it blow over?
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Dr. Ravitch, my bills opposing VAM for teacher evaluation and cutting back on mandated tests will be heard on Feb. 5th. If there is any chance you would be available to testify in support, that would be awesome!! However, I know how busy you are and I DON’T know how your health is these days….so would certainly understand if that’s not possible. I do remember that you sent a letter opposing SB-191 (Sen. Johnston’s teacher evaluation bill) that I read to the committee. If you could do something like that this time around in support of my bills, I would be extremely grateful! The bills are on the Colorado Legislature website. They are SB-03 and SB-73. Thank you! Senator Michael Merrifield 303-866-6364, 719-460-0580 cell Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:01:46 +0000 To: vgmike@msn.com
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Senator MM, Dr. Bruce Baker, professor Rutgers Univ Grad School Ed, may be helpful also. His seriously statistical research looks at states besides NJ; his blog=School Finance 101. He works w. Mark Weber, a music educator, who blogs as Jersey Jazzman.
Good luck from NJ
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Mr. Merrifield: either as a witness or someone to recommend other first-rate witnesses, I would suggest you get in contact with Audrey Amrein-Beardsley.
She can be reached via her blog—
Link: http://vamboozled.com
She has written the book on VAM. I mean that literally. RETHINKING VALUE-ADDED MODELS IN EDUCATION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TESTS AND ASSESSMENT-BASED ACCOUNTABILITY (2014).
I read her book. She can deal with the so-called VAM experts on their own numbers & stats turf, and she is good at explaining in plain language what it all means.
Thank you for your efforts.
😎
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Data collection is an unfunded mandate. Until the voters vote themselves a tax hike to pay for it, no more data collection.
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I am a California teacher and I know of no such law.
Sent from my iPad
>
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Ms. Virginia, are you a semi-political junkie as I am? If not, then I can fully understand why you’ve never heard of it.
To understand it, you would have to read up on the case that Lucia’s org pushed through the courts as a precursor to the Vergara case. [It is mentioned in the article. BTW, Lucia is essentially a one-man shop for the Usual Suspects to advance their causes, namely run a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) to harass the hell out of teachers by appearing to be “for the children.”]
This case is the one that challenged the use of the “Stull” evaluation and demanded that, since the CSTs surely define who is an effective teacher or not, their scores be included as a measure of a teacher’s worth.
As the article makes clear, most districts thought this was superfluous to their efforts and have ignored the results of the court ruling. Of course, Lucia must point out to the rest of California that “all these districts are not following the law.” Interestingly, I have no idea what the penalties are for them not falling into line.
Incidentally, LAUSD was given a pass probably because it was still run by Deasy when Mr. Lucia was busily collecting his data. He probably thought he did not need to bother. But LAUSD has quietly, even under Deasy, not pursed it. I guess Deasy thought that he could always pull that out of his pocket to keep those pesky teachers down during contracts negotiations.
But we know where Deasy is now, don’t we?
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Here is the education code from CA numbers 60600 – 60603 pertaining to assessments. There is no language in there, that I can find, that says that they scores are to be used to evaluate teachers. Am I crazy? http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=edc&group=60001-61000&file=60600-60603
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:01:21 +0000 To: virginiatibbetts@hotmail.com
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Sorry, third time is the charm, they say. Here is the section of CA Ed Code which is referred to by the article. Still don’t see the reference to test scores being used for rating teachers. http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=EDC&division=3.&title=2.&part=25.&chapter=3.&article=11.
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:01:21 +0000 To: virginiatibbetts@hotmail.com
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Sorry, I should have been more explicit: the answer is not in the EdCode. It is in the ruling by the judge. He interpreted the EdCode as compelling the districts to use the CST scores. How he reached this decision is, of course, buried in his ruling, which I never did get.
But here is a series of links which will tell you how it played out:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/31/local/la-me-teacher-evals-20111101
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/05/local/la-me-teacher-eval-20120606
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/local/la-me-teacher-eval-20120613
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/parents-seek-new-teacher-evaluations-by-september.html
This is the most recent article I can find on it. Of course, other things distracted Deasy and the Academic Growth over Time (aka AGT) never did get off the grounds because, surprise, principals never got around to doing the observations they were supposed to.
In the meantime, Lucia had to bid his time for Deasy’s minions to act. I am sure he realized that it was going to go nowhere and he launched his “study.” And here we are now.
Hope this helps to inform you that, no, you are not crazy. It is just how this Grand Kabuki play has unfolded.
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I’ve been wondering when we might see insubordination, rather than vocal denial to test, etc. Here it is. Yay.
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Subordination is the preferred term used by ignorant GAGA administrators who cannot handle teachers’ questioning the insanities promoted by said administrators. Their subordinates are deemed insubordinate so that the administrator can continue to gain their inordinately high salaries without having to address the real concerns of the true professionals of the teaching and learning process, the teachers. 99.99% of all administrators are failed/poor teachers who wanna be boss but aren’t able to recognize a good teacher even if that teacher bit the admin’s nose off. Yep, we’re lucky if 1/10000 administrators isn’t an ignorant GAGAer.
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It’s called passive-aggressive resistance
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The problem is the assumption in the first place that this is what they are supposed to be doing according to CA ed code. CA ed code states no such thing and this is just another ed reformer putting out his opinion based on lies.
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I also think that it isn’t in California’s ed code. I suspect that this really comes from the federal DOE. Arne Duncan is a bully who boasts, lies, and exaggerates. He’ll claim that the standardized testing isn’t a federal mandate and it’s up to the states but when the states don’t use the standardized testing to judge teachers. Duncan threatens to withhold federal funding and report that all the public schools in that state are consider failing.
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No, this comes from a Superior Court Judge. This is from one of the above linked articles:
“Chalfant ruled that the Stull Act requires the district to use California standardized test scores in determining student achievement. But he gave the district wide discretion in deciding which yardsticks to use to judge progress in learning its local academic standards.”
It was left up to negotiations between LAUSD and UTLA what those yardsticks would have been. But Deasy had other fish to fry and did not follow up on this. And it doesn’t look like Cortines is too gung-ho about using test scores, particularly now that he is asking the state to not even “count” the scores to be generated in 2015.
The article ends with this:
“In his ruling, Chalfant said that L.A. Unified’s current review system “provides little meaningful evaluation.” He noted that 99.3% of teachers received the district’s highest rating in 2009-10, yet state standardized test scores that year showed that only 45% of students performed at grade level in reading and 56% in math.”
My guess is that UTLA and CTA will not waste their legal resources until the claims in this paragraph are used to go after teachers. Let’s see if Lucia can get the state interested in wasting its resources enforcing a legal ruling that is basically useless until the SBCA tests gain traction. And at this point, it looks like it will take at least two more years, which, of course, will drive Arne up the wall, but it is fun to watch.
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A teacher can be a great teacher but if the students don’t pay attention, don’t do the work and don’t read—-and I think that is the norm and not the exception—then test scores are going to reflect that. The only way to know how a teacher teaches, is by observation but classroom observations have no way of knowing how many children read or do any work outside of class, the kind of work that’s called studying.
There should also be a focus on how students learn and if they are making any attempt to learn.
>Teachers teach
>Students who cooperate, read and do the work, often learn
>Parents support both teachers and students so the child gets an education. Children who have no parent supervision often do not to the work that leads to learning.
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ONLY 8 CORE Districts in CA applied for and received a Federal Waiver to implement Common Core that requires a teacher evaluation on test scores.
I do not think that the other districts are anyway legally bound to implement common core, because they have NO Waiver to do so.
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http://www.hemlockontherocks.com/2014_09_01_archive.html
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