“Students Matter,” the Silicon Valley-funded group that launched the Vergara lawsuit to block teacher tenure in California, is now suing 13 school districts for their failure to use test scores in evaluating teachers.
The goal is to compel the entire state to use value-added-modeling (VAM), despite the fact that experience and research have demonstrated its invalidity and lack of reliability.
The Southern California school systems named in the latest filing are El Monte City, Inglewood Unified, Chaffey Joint Union, Chino Valley Unified, Ontario-Montclair, Saddleback Valley Unified, Upland Unified and Victor Elementary District. The others are: Fairfield-Suisun Unified, Fremont Union, Pittsburg Unified; San Ramon Valley Unified and Antioch Unified.
“School districts are not going to get away with bargaining away their ability to use test scores to evaluate teachers,” said attorney Joshua S. Lipshutz, who is working on behalf of Students Matter. “That’s a direct violation of state law.”
The plaintiffs are six California residents, including some parents and teachers, three of whom are participating anonymously.
In all, the districts serve about 250,000 students, although the group’s goal is to compel change across California.
“The impact is intended to be statewide, to show that no school district is above the law,” Lipshutz said.
The plaintiffs are not asking the courts to determine how much weight test scores should be given in a performance review, Lipshutz said. He cited research, however, suggesting that test scores should account for 30% to 40% of an evaluation.
The current case, Doe vs. Antioch, builds on earlier litigation involving the Los Angeles Unified School District. In 2012, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that the school system had to include student test scores in teacher evaluations. But the judge also allowed wide latitude for negotiation between the union and district.
The court decision was based on the 1971 Stull Act, which set out rules for teacher evaluations. Many districts had failed for decades to comply with it, according to some experts.
Will the Silicon Valley billionaires help to find new teachers when the state faces massive teacher shortages based on the litigation they continue to file?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What research did he cite that suggests that test scores should account for 30% to 40% of a teacher’s evaluation?
What research is there that shows that there is any relationship between students’ test scores and teachers’ skills?
Students Matter is the sham 501c3 group run by biliionaires David Welch and Eli Broad with the prime purpose of killing off teachers unions and diminishing the roles of public schools and teachers in favor of their goal to make all public ed in America a free market investment opportunity. They play on public sympathy by calling this a civil rights movement.
Broad hire former Supt at LAUSD, John Deasy, who is currently being investigated by the FBI and the SEC for possible fraud and insider bidding in the iPad fiasco. He also hired parent trigger flack, and past head of Parent Revolution, Ben Austin, whose shady past has been reported on here. These two henchmen of Broad, are specifically working to institute Vergara-type lawsuits not only in California, but nationwide. You have seen these lawsuits being filed in NY and other eastern communities. Now we see Campbell Brown joining these oligarchs with her similar 501c3. All this sham is at the expense of America’s taxpayers.
It is imperative that we all write letters to editors with counter information so as to help educate the misled public. If you want more information please contact me at
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
Our group of mainly retired educators, Joining Forces for Education, has now been operating for over the last two years to educate LAUSD and other areas parents, students, and community members about the attack by these oligarchs on public ed in their drive for free market profiteering.
This is happening concurrently in California. It will be on ballots all across America soon. Read this report which moments ago hit my inbox.
http://capitalandmain.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d5dce077ca077937100ce9d76&id=220bd35c73&e=9aac7f3d29
July 17, 2015
For years, critics of government pensions have sought to roll back retirement benefits for new employees. But a proposed California ballot measure would go much further, reneging on promises by targeting the retirement checks of hundreds of thousands of current teachers, firefighters and other workers.
As Bill Raden reports today in Capital & Main, language buried in a new ballot initiative backed by former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former San Diego Councilmember Carl DeMaio could unilaterally impose pension cuts, undermining 60 years of legal precedent. As one veteran observer said, “I’ve looked at a lot of initiatives, and this one’s pretty far out there.”
“The plaintiffs are not asking the courts to determine how much weight test scores should be given in a performance review, Lipshutz said. He cited research, however, suggesting that test scores should account for 30% to 40% of an evaluation.”
Lipshutz cannot be relying on empirical research. Even so, he will probably invoke the deeply flawed and Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching project filled with unwarranted conjectures from the economists who engineered this study. They failed to meet VAM assumptions about random assignment of students and classrooms to teachers. They made inferences about the teacher observations based on videos of teaching — not the full reality. They also used Charlotte Danielson’s observation protocol (no reliability validity data across all subjects). They added a student survey designed by an economist. That survey was designed to reward direct teaching and regular use of homework.
The weighting of test scores is pure ideology mixed with hyper-marketing of the significance of test scores as measures of teacher effectiveness, and as Audrey Beardsley has shown, the marketing has come from a handful of economists and a long silence from experts in statistics who knew that VAM was being misused to evaluate individual teachers.
I also wonder what will be done with, and to, the majority of teachers who have job-assignments for which VAM cannot be calculated because there are no statewide scores on standardized test to feed into the algorithms.
“That’s a direct violation of state law.” Said the state with millions of illegal immigrants.
What’s the law mean? Maybe this law was made to be ignored by society as well as a practical matter.
Yes, but where would all the white people who illegally emigrated to California go? The .spanish ‘conquerors’ and all who followed is very large group of people. Of course to decent folks a human being can’t be illegal. What are you?
That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing the wonderful news, Diane. Maybe Virginia will be next….
Maybe the third time I ask you for some simple answers to questions that speak to the fundamentals of VAM//SLO/SGP will be a charm-ha ha!
Brian,
Please explain the standard involved in these supposed measures. Where is that standard? How did it come about? Is there only one standard? Who determined that standard? Does the process involved in making and using these supposed standards and measurements follow OSI protocols? If so where may I find that justification?
Help me out!
Duane Swacker. If you go to Google and look for images with the key words VAM + Formulas you will get as close to making sense of VAM as you can. There is not one master formula. The formulas might make sense if you are a statistician.
I also like http://valueaddedmeasureit.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-new-and-improved-vam-formula.html
Do the same kind of Google image search for formulas + student growth percentiles.
As for SLOs, I have a paper that will tell you there is no credible research to support their use for teacher evaluation, not just my opinion..I cite USDE’s own research–multiple studies, and the huge USDE campaign to market SLOs as the alternative of choice for evaluating teachers of so-called “untested subjects.” You might find a path to the paper on VAMBoozled, an excellent source of information. Type in SLOs.
Laura,
Just seeing if I can get some answers to some very basic question from the VAM/SGP supporter here on the blog. Perhaps he is typing answers as I type this response. Brian/virginiasgp claims that I gave up the ghost in another discussion on these educational malpractices. I’m just making sure that he has answers to the most pertinent questions in regards to VAM/SGP but so far nothing in my three attempts.
I’m not that interested in the formulas themselves overall because the epistemological and ontological foundations for even attempting to VAM/SGP data is completely lacking. So until the fundamental issues are addressed the secondary issues-VAM/SGP have no traction, hold no water, are “vain and illusory”, in other words utter nonsense. Since Brian cannot/refuses to address them his arguments for VAM/SGP are, shall we say, unconditionally bogus and without any value whatsoever and a complete waste of my time in addressing him.
Interesting how the Reformers can not be persuasive on the validity of VAM through evidence and research, but must resort to strong armed tactics and court orders.
Well, I am trained professional Mathematician and statistician, and I can tell you, unequivocally, that so-called “VAM” as defined by the deformers has absolutely ZERO reliability or validity. The several different formulae that I have studied all depend upon input variables which are themselves based upon assumptions which cannot accurately used to measure, well, anything. One formula I examined contained 32 different input variables, each concurrent variable being dependent upon the previous variable’s input calculations – this is one f the cardinal DO NOT DO rules in stats – using multiple variable which use each other as the basis for the input of each. It is beyond ludicrous, it is ridiculous. Of course, this is about what I would expect from people who also believe in the fiction of “supply side” economics and the “Laffer curve”.
Thanks for the response drspektor.
Have you read Noel Wilson’s work? If so your thoughts will be greatly appreciated.
drspektor, I wish I could get ahold of the VAM formula here in Ohio but it is secret. They publish an out of date, vague paper on the ODE web site, and Battelle for Kids somehow comes up with the magic, but they never really show us the full details. I suspect the application of multi-level stats and the many adjustments to questionable parameters is not something they want people to see. I, for one, would love to dig into a true, valid publication of exactly how Ohio calculates VAM, down to the last sigma.
drspektor: as I see it, you point to a critical aspect of how to discuss VAM and such here and elsewhere—
The mathematical machinery used, for example, by psychometricians, may be complex and out of reach for most of us but it all rests on what Audrey Amrein-Beardsley (see her blog, VAMboozled) calls “heroic assumptions” in her 2014 book on VAM-related matters.
Pardon the presumption, all you teachers that comment here, but as a TA I was in many different classrooms with many different teachers. In that sense I saw what most of you don’t see (at least so much of). So when I see something as inane as assuming that public school students are not randomly assigned, including how the composition of classes can be determined by such real (if unacknowledged by the rheephomsters) working conditions as teachers being in favor/disfavor with their admins, I simply marvel at what, well, drspektor uses the felicitous phrase “It is beyond ludicrous, it is ridiculous.”
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
You don’t a mathematician to tell you when non-mathematical assumptions are groundless and self-serving. *But it doesn’t hurt either!*
Thank you for your comments.
😎
There is a famous quote of Martin Luther King,
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
With such an unjust practice cheating is bound to Occur.
Anyone who knows anything about taking a high stakes test realizes that the test taker all too often becomes fearful- fearful of making a mistake and failing. Fear immediately invalidates a test. There are other components that invalid a test: losing one’s place; needing to use the bathroom; becoming physically sick etc. Standardized tests can be an indication of where the district’s strong and weak areas of teaching are but that is it. A standardized test can not tell a teacher the instructional reading level of a student. Only and IRI or similar individual test can indicate the readability level of a student. For years I compared the results of an IRI with the Standardized test and there was no correlation- an indication at best.
To retain anyone because of a score on a standardized test is ludicrous. To use a standardized test score to be part of an evaluation of a teacher’s performance is just plain asinine.
“Standardized tests can be an indication of where the district’s strong and weak areas of teaching are. . . ”
NO, they can’t!!
Any results from standardized tests are COMPLETELY INVALID due to myriad epistemological and ontological errors and falsehoods as proven by Noel Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted 1997 treatise, therefore there are no valid indicators. No amount of statistical manipulation, machinations or fudging as Wilson calls it can overcome those errors and falsehoods. Read and understand his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Thanks for this rebuttal, Duane. Even though mass data collected with longitudinal studies can be used to ascertain some aspects of the success or failure of programs, they have become too subject to political motives in their design. Many of the new standardized tests have not been reviewed longitudinally, but are only guessing games.
I believe the point is that all standardized tests can ever be are “guessing games.” 😉
At some point the whole validity of VAM needs to be challenged in court. I am tired of judge’s decisions that say, “It’s the law so it has to be followed.” It’s a bad law that should be challenged.
Duane Swacker, enough with the existential nonsense. Here are the responses to your arguments (not aligned with your numbers)
1. Standards: the states determine the standards and develop tests (via contracts) to align with those standards. Teachers are always involved in making/reviewing those test questions even if you personally are not part of that group. While it might be good practice to conduct long term studies on whether curricula is aligned to standards is perfectly aligned to tests, that is not a prerequisite to administering and using the results of any test. Period.
2. Standards and scores: If the standards and scores were not aligned (test measured something else than the standards), how are some teachers getting consistently superlative results on these tests? Do they somehow secretly know the test questions that are being asked even though you claim the test questions are totally unrelated to the standards? There is no systemic bias in the scores which would result from the test questions not meeting the standards.
3. Observations and VAMs are in alignment: this is the fundamental issue for you opt-out activists. For as long as studies have been conducted, evaluations by observations have aligned with VAM scores. As one NC principal tweeted to me, “I know who my weak teachers are before I look at the test results”. Thus, this is all a show by you activists who already know you have weak teachers You just don’t want to do a single thing about it. You want to leave them in the classrooms of student who you don’t give a da*n about! How many ineffective teachers should be overlooked in order to prevent a single “effective” teacher from being misclassified as ineffective? That is the question that both sides must answer. You cannot get around it. The same applies in war. How many innocent civilians must be sacrificed to protect our soldier’s lives. For those sitting here in safety, it’s usually about “none” of maybe 1-5. For soldiers who signed up voluntarily to protect your freedom while you conduct armchair criticism, it’s at least 100 to 1000. You simply don’t care about disadvantaged kids being taught by ineffective teachers.
4. Even the national research centers and ASA say that VAMs can be used reliably for larger populations such as those for a whole school or trends in a district. Thus, nobody is questioning the validity of the formulas (except for you), they are questioning the granularity of the results and the minimum threshold of scores needed for accuracy. Pretend that a teacher taught a MOOC and had 1000 students per year. I guarantee you that the think tanks/centers would all approve using VAMs on the teacher since there are a large number of kids every year. All we are really arguing over is what number between 15 (clearly too low for me even though some places use it) and 1000 is a sufficient number of scores.
5. Nobody is suggesting that VAMs be the only factor. We are suggesting that VAMs be part of the eval (< 50%) and that one continually studies the alignment of VAMs with observations.
6. Yes, there are different formula. We want innovation. Folks can run those formula on loads of historical data to evaluate their accuracy and consistency. For example, do they align with observations? Do they score teachers consistently from year to year? In the end, it's about being able to accurately forecast a student's growth on a test given a known set of information. The most accurate and reliable formula wins. I don't care if it asks what their zodiac sign is. If it's the most accurate time after time, it wins.
Nobody upon nobody will accept this simple deal. Let's do away with ALL forced evaluation of teachers by VAM. Let’s simply publish the data publicly and let parents have some say in which teacher is assigned for their student. Let’s talk about real choice in current public schools. What’s so bad about that? You can campaign to tell everybody that VAMs are a sham and many soccer moms will apparently buy that nonsense. Others get to use VAMs to select their teachers. Both sides win. How can you defend the suppression of information when you are free to inform the public why that information is “useless”?
Thanks, Brian, for adding the third argument-existential nonsense-against what Wilson has proven that anyone has written. Your description, while lacking in cognizant detail is certainly understood by all, he?!?!
This is what I have asked you: Please explain the standard involved in these supposed measures. Where is that standard? How did it come about? Is there only one standard? Who determined that standard? Does the process involved in making and using these supposed standards and measurements follow OSI protocols? If so where may I find that justification?
You have not answered any of those questions. So. . . I ask again:
Please explain the standard involved in these supposed measures. Where is that standard? How did it come about? Is there only one standard? Who determined that standard? Does the process involved in making and using these supposed standards and measurements follow OSI protocols? If so where may I find that justification?
In answering those questions we can start to have a dialogue about the validity of VAM. If you proponents cannot answer those questions, then I take it to mean that you are definitely blinded by your idiology that the teaching and learning process can be “measured”.
To sum up your belief in that idiocy you state: “I don’t care if it asks what their zodiac sign is. If it’s the most accurate time after time, it wins.” Yep that sums up the idiocy of your idiology.
Why don’t you just admit you can’t answer my few, what should be easily answered, questions (if there were any answers-hint hint), and then also admit that your precious VAM/SGP is no more valid than reading tea leaves and/or palms, and/or than a flip of the coin. VAM/SGP = 100% Grade AA Pure Bullshit (and bullshit at least has value as being used for fertilizer in comparison to VAM?SGP that is a total, complete loss of time, energy and resources that could be better spent in the classroom).
Thank you for the piece of research, Duane. Why not send that on to the superintendents and legislatures?
Mary,
Do you know where there might be lists that would have the contact information? If so please let me know!
Thanks,
Duane
Hi Folks,
I am one of the weak teachers mentioned above. I was forced to teach in three roles outside my certification in a renew school in Newark this past year. Meanwhile, uncertified teachers were leading what might have been considered my department. Coincidentally, teachers of children from the most affluent families produce the highest standardized test scores. Put that on a billboard.
I think a lot of teachers would quit Diane if they had something to transition in to. Maybe we could brainstorm an idea for a job board or something where companies who want to hire intelligent and hardworking ex teachers could contact all of us disgruntled teachers. At least that way we have options, rather than trying to ride out this storm at the detriment of our families.
*quit
What? I’m not sure what you are trying to say. Can you please explain further?
TIA
Duane
I wonder if this person is compensated in some way by the deformer crowd. Only logical explanation I can see.
trying to say it really bad out there and lot of us want out. at this point its the only tool some of us have left to fight with. just to leave. only 12 states allow strikes. the reality is both dem’s and republicans really are ‘out to get us’. they are clueless and until the parents stop voting in people who hate us and our profession it will keep getting worse. america needs a wakeup call and if we can strike then we can walk. having jobs to go to would obviously help a ton of people out. not expecting people with 20 or 30 years of experience to consider it but if you have 20 or 30 years to go how can you not if you value your family/home/standard of living?
Thanks, Daniel. that’s kind of what I thought you were getting at but wasn’t quite sure.
And yes, those just starting out in teaching (and I know a few of my former students in that spot) appear to be in a bad position. But one can look at it as the pendulum swing and we’re about as far into the insanity as we can be, but then again I’ve been thinking that for years and the craziness continues and that it has to change for the better soon.
I blame, yes blame, not only many of the current teachers but especially the administrators for being so GAGA* and not standing up for what is right. Cojoniless brown nosers.
*Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution upon their passing from this realm.
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
As a parent in one of the districts sued (Saddleback Valley), I cannot possibly say how “thrilled” I am that some Silicon Valley billionaire (who more than likely sends his children to private school) is going to cost my district precious monetary resources; money which could be used in my students’ classrooms! The ironic thing is that we are a high achieving, high test score district with almost exclusively highly experienced teachers. Our teachers are well regarded in the community and quite beloved. Our parents are very involved and, as a whole, well educated. I would imagine that if this succeeds, the push back will be similar to what happened on Long Island in NY.
I am not sure how this lawsuit can square the idea that, due to our State education code, we are all entitled to opt our students out (with no penalty) with the idea that my students’ teachers should be judged by those (non-existent) results. But I am sure it is just another way to continue to destroy what was once, in my childhood, a quality system.
Couldn’t your district just “settle” right away by saying in future test scores will count as 0.00001% (pick any number of zeros here) of each teacher’s evaluation? They say several time that the law does require any particular amount…. Getting each negotiating side to initial a handwritten clause in the margin of the contract should be doable for such a good cause.
Sorry, the law _doesn’t_ require any particular amount.
“Our teachers are well regarded in the community and quite beloved.”
No, they’re not. At least according to the corporate reformers.
If they teach at traditional public schools…
if they belong to a union…
if they have more than 2 years on the job…
they are terrible, lazy, incompetent, greedy, etc. or to quote Kati Haycock, from “the low end of the pile,” and need to be replaced, and the schools in which they teach need to be closed and re-opened under private management.
This whole test-score-based evaluation has nothing.. NUH-THING… to do with increasing the quality of teaching or students’ education. It’s an artillery mortar fired into the ranks of teachers… killing every teacher in the immediate radius, and causing the rest to scatter in all directions, so that those remaining will be isolated and easy to pick off.
Test-score-based teacher evaluation is a union-buster. The unions are standing in the way of money-mad profiteers raping and pillaging the public educations system, so they must be destroyed through lawsuits like Vergara, Friedrichs, and now this abomination.
I bet if a private investigator looked into the lifestyles, housing, income level… of the plaintiffs from the various lawsuits—Vergara, Friedrichs, and now this—you’ll see that an inexplicable increase in their standards of living… they’re all getting greased by the privatizers.
You all, Jill, hold the joker cards in the stack: opt out. The California Educational Code permits it on the say-so of the parent. This more or less has happened at districts like yours this last April/May but was done so that their kids could spend their time on the AP tests.
OTOH, California does not yet have a working test system since the suspension of the CSTs. No doubt when the SBAC tests are finally administered “for real” that a new insurrection will take place because they will most likely be shown as useless to tell if a kid is or is not making academic progress.
At that point, either opt-out is the simplest way to go or a major civil disobedience by districts takes place with the related legal drama. Either way, it will then be time to tell Welch and his crew to take a hike.
State law does not supercede federal law. However, at Calabasas HS
recently, a mid to high socio economic area in So. California, 80% of students did opt out. It is too soon to know if their teachers will pay a price for this. Thoughout LA, teachers are banned from talking about opt out, and if caught giving any info to students and parents, are being severely punished by either being jailed on tupmed up charges, or losing their classes teaching AP courses, or gifted classes they have taught for many years. The punishment certainly far exceeds the adminstraters ‘perceived” crime. Most administrators are Broad Academy grads and are loyal to their mentor..
that is…trumped up charges….
Ellen – What gives me hope is social media. The kids know enough to organize there, and the “powers that be” don’t.
Good point Christine…it was quite an eye opener here when
Deasy handed out the first iPads, the kids within moments got past the locked areas, and could use them as they wished.
“…participating anonymously….”
How is that even legal? Sue someone anonymously? What the–? Trials are public. Except in cases of victimization in which the victim may need to be protected from the perpetrator (e.g., rape), which I can’t see how that would apply in a civil suit, all parties are supposed to be public. I’ve worked in law firms for 15 years and have never heard of such a thing.
Doe vs Wade?
I’m not a lawyer, I just marry nurses and they turn into lawyers, but there is a rather famous case using an anonymous name.
Exactly Dienne…under US jurisprudence you must be allowed to confront your accuser.
Deasy, and Austin who is an ersatz attorney who worked with equally intellectually and morally challenged state Senator Gloria Romero, to write the very flawed parent trigger law in California, are the lead underlings in this charge…placed in their role by their boss, Eli Broad.
But the wonderment is that highly respected, and highly paid, law firms are in on this. Shockingly, even respected Ted Olson and David Bois are pushing similar lawsuits. Why?
I would hope that teachers look beyond their own, and rightful, interests to see and fight what is the greater plan of these dangerous oligarchs. ALEC is in the lead as well for they are ALEC, and the goal is to takeover over our country 100% and create a solid plutocracy with no more Medicare, no more Social Security, no more public education….where each of us is on our own from birth to death…all based on a free market that rules every inch and moment of our lives. Read Ayn Rand, who laid out their road map to marshal all wealth upward And this New World Order is firmly in place by both Republican and Democrat leadership.
It would make sense that a teacher would want to remain anonymous if they are one of the plaintiffs.
Imagine the blowback for that person in their school. Not a pretty visual.
In WW2, I believe these people were known as collaborators.
What you just wrote is exactly why they should NOT be allowed to remain anonymous….
Remember the end of WWII POW film “STALAG 17,” where Bill Holden exposes the collaborator Price (Peter Graves)?
Until this point, the cynical loner Sefton (Holden) has been falsely fingered as a collaborator by everyone in the barracks, then beaten and scorned in the process. The real collaborator Price goes undiscovered, but, just as Price is about to foil the POW’s escape, Sefton clues everyone in…
Check out this dramatic finale:
(Go to 2:08)
Oh and, here’s the satisfying ending where the collaborator gets what’s coming to him!
Evil gets its just dessert!
This scene really strikes home with me, as I taught at a school where a Deasy-ite stoolie-teacher-collaborator acted as the Deasy-ite principal’s walking microphone, reporting back on anything and everything said by the teachers. She would go to happy hours, then report back on any critical or seditious talk. The principal and/or assistant principal would then harass and write up these firebrands in retaliation, including me.
Eventually, I figured out who she was—after tailing her as unobtrusively as possible after school till I had enough evidence. She always ended up in an out-of-the-way clandestine rendezvous with one of the Deasy-ite administrators.
You’re busted, Bitch!
I then clued in the rest of the staff… not in a group setting like Sefton…. but one-on-one.
Let the shunning begin! And boy, did it ever!
No hail of machine gun fire, however.
Thanks for the video and anecdote Allie!
I remember watching that as a kid. Brought back memories. One of our friends’ dad was a POW in Germany. He never talked about it other than to say he was lucky because by the time he got captured (two bombers collided off the coast of Italy and he was the only survivor) they knew the fight against Germany was basically over. He was a prisoner for about six months.
I agree, they shouldn’t be allowed to be anonymous.
I wonder what weird, strange path a public school teacher would have to go down in order to come to the place these anonymous plaintiffs are at.
I wonder if they are retired, or left the profession after just a few years.
Maybe they are TFA alums, did their bit, and now feel they can call themselves teachers. Probably not…they’d want the name recognition and notoriety that would come from such a lawsuit.
Looks good on that resume’, ya know.
The Silicon Valley billionaires don’t care uf teachers have an education and the skills necessary to teach.
I think these RheeFormers are planning to hire anyone who breathes with a heart beat to fill those vacancies. For instance, “You have a GED that you earned in prison where you served 12 years for sexually molesting a minor. Okay, you’re qualified. You’re hired to teach 12 grade AP English. All you have to do is make sure the students keep focused on their computer screens for all the Pearson step-by-step lessons that will turn them into college and career ready by the age of 17.”
Lloyd…folks seem not to recognize that this is a well orchestrated onslaught. These billionaires know how to cooperate, plan long term, and attack simultaneously on many fronts. They have learned from The Art of War. Also, remember Richard Dawkins research in his book The Selfish Gene. Banksters have this gene and are driven to have accumulate endless wealth despite how others suffer, teachers do have this gene so they are willing to serve the public for miniscule economic gain.
Sorry for the typo…Teachers and nurses and firemen do NOT have this gene and therefore are willing to serve the public for little economic recompense.
This^. It is exactly what it’s boiling down to.
Let’s just give the tests a weight of 1% and call it a day.
But really, how can there be 6 plaintiffs (3 anonymous), but 13 defending Districts. Each plaintiff charged 2 or 3 Districts?
I have the same question.
Lloyd is correct about the computers coming. Soon, the teaching will be taken out of your hands. You will simply watch kids stare at screens and check their workbooks (if that). This will be an extreme version of “mass education.” The elite will send their kids to good private schools that are still run like good public schools from the past with real teachers and teaching. They will run things and design the games that mesmerize the bottom 90%. The bottom 90% won’t need much education to work in service industry, shop at the mall, play sports, join the military or go to prison. I think they will still let the masses waste time on sports. It’s a big money maker, and it keeps the masses away from books. This is a dystopian future, and part of me is interested to see how crazy it all becomes. This is the Fall of Rome, and it is going to be very entertaining in a dark way. This is a historic time, even if it feel uneventful and boring most of the time.
We see that dystopian world already happening. All anyone has to do is look at the nubmer of avid readers by age group to discover that fewer and fewer younger Americans are avid readers of books, newspapers, magazine or journals.
http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/part-2-the-general-reading-habits-of-americans/
If hell exists, attorney Lipschutz has a special place reserved just for him for his action on this case. He will be in good company with the banksters and the members of the billionaires club, who will have the audacity to act surprised to find themselves tormented by Beelzebub. They will truly be puzzled and unable to understand why they are not being rewarded for “helping all those kids” .
Well this is really depressing. A law that was passed in 1971 is now being interpreted to mean that only standardized test scores are valuable evidence of student achievement and must be used to evaluate teachers. On its face it is laughable. VAM has been well disputed many times and shown not to be a reliable gauge of teaching by very credible sources. But I remember being happy that Ronald Reagan was the Republican nominee because I thought he was a laughable character that no one would take seriously. I thought citizens united was totally laughable. So I am worried by this suit, because justice and reason seem in short supply in America these days.
You’d better not be laughing this time tultican!! Ha ha!!
You weren’t the only one laughing about Unca Ronnie, until election night in 1980 when some of us were drowning our sorrows in sheer disbelief that what happened happened.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
The entire nation is turning, and will continue to turn, against this garbage.
Maybe this lawsuit will be a huge asset and boon to people like us, because it will provide an opportunity to make salient points about the non-empirical characteristics of the APPR system as it stands now as well as the mis-use of VAM.
“The impact is intended to be statewide, to show that no school district is above the law”
This can not be true, all I see here is that “ALL PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE ABOVE THE LAW.” This is the new law similar to the law of gravity. All public schools are above average (a la Lake Woebegone). The inverse of it is also true, all private schools are below average.
The existing laws is applicable only for the rest of us.
Huh?
Please shut up.
Not you, Math Vale. Raj. He has decided he is the judge, jury, and executioner of teachers and public education. He can’t stand to see a supposed law from 1971 be “ignored” by school districts. However, he does not seem to see all of the financial and other laws be broken by his beloved “choice” schools.
No problem. I just had no idea what Raj posted.
Please stop being so mean to Raj.
He is the only source of humor and a veritable living joke of a person, that if he becomes intimidated about speaking out, I will have no one to laugh at and make fun of.
Scorn is a very therapeutic tool, and Raj has become my cheap therapy.
Raj is the ultimate court jester, and fools are needed to entertain us through this ordeal.
Leave Raj alone . . . . . PLEASE!
🙂
Point taken, Robert. I guess we have to laugh somehow.
Folks in this opt-out activist movement are about to have a very rude awakening. Just like some teachers in Virginia. Come to think of it, I might have a great new funding source for getting more reforms in Virginia. I won’t have to fund it out of hide going forward.
It’s so sad that the only folks that truly care about giving kids an effective teacher are the silicon valley entrepreneurs in California. I don’t blame the ineffective teachers for not having a clue. But there is a special place in Hades for those of you who are effective teachers, know there are ineffective ones amongst your midst, and stand by and do absolutely nothing to have them retrained/replaced. You even fight those who try to make that happen. We each have to meet our own maker years down the road. I’m guessing that won’t be a pretty conversation for most of the opt-out activists on here.
WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO GET RID OF INEFFECTIVE TEACHERS. That’s administration. We have no control over that. Please get that through your thick skull. Thank you.
I’m already in Hades, I’m a VAMed teacher. But the WWJD argument is certainly another interesting point. Is that a measurable goal? But seriously, this post is bizarre and you are losing (lost?) it.
Virgina,
Go to church, genuflect all you want until your arm falls off, and don’t bother coming back to the Ravitch church of sanity and reason, as you are of a different faith altogether.
If morality and fairness were God, you’d be the biggest atheist here. . . .
Robert Rendo, Duane Swacker, et al, you truly have started your own religion of opt-out activists.
But how do any of you demonstrate the benefits of Head Start, which consumes $B’s every year. You can’t. All of the criticism you direct at VAMs would apply equally to Head Start. You simply have no proof whatsoever. In other words, you are simply wasting $B’s for a “belief”.
It’s so sad that there are NO folks that truly care about giving kids an effective teacher in silicon valley in California. I don’t blame people who engage in genuine and constructive criticism for betterment of effective teaching and learning. But there is absolutely NO place for the folks coming from alien “Supernova Gaijin Planet,” dress up in bluebird clothes,’ sweet talk students to sell sympathy in pretense, and snub those who were/are wrongly labeled as ‘ineffective’ based on flawed, defective, VAMpire machine, by audaciously claiming oneself as pro-deformer, pro-free marketer, pro-data selling racketeer.
MathVale: always the optimist…
How can someone lose what he never had?
😏
No idea what you are talking about. Make no sense.
“ALL PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE ABOVE THE LAW.”
Warning, this is where I insult you, Raj, you ignorant fool. First, there are more than a 1,000 school districts in California so less than 20 that are alleged to not be following the Vergara verdict are not “ALL” the school districts in California.
Alleged means they have been accused of not following the judge’s decision in the Vergara verdict. That allegation must be proven in court—-U.S. law is clear on this point. Everyone is considered innocent until found guilty in court and even then verdicts can be overturned later. In fact, it happens all the time.
In addition, I taught for thirty years and there are so many laws that govern the schools that it is like a minefield for school districts, and those laws all came from the top or from court cases that sometimes get overturned later when they are appealed or a higher court rules the judge’s decision in the court case was unconstitutional.
For instance, in 1994, California Proposition 187 (also known as the Save Our State (SOS) initiative) was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal aliens from using health care, public education, and other services in the State of California. Voters passed the proposed law as a referendum in November 1994. The law was challenged in a legal suit and found unconstitutional by a federal court. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis halted state appeals against the ruling.
The Vergara decision has been appealed and the appeal process also follows the law.
http://www.rotlaw.com/legal-library/how-does-an-appeal-proceed-what-happens-during-an-appeal/
Raj likes to stir from his seat in the troll pot. Maybe, even, he is PAID to stir the pot and post lies. I tried insulting him; but that goes against my good character.
I had to hold myself back by just restricting my insult to an “ignorant fool”. If I were to give myself free reign, then Diane would have to block my comment. :o)
Vergara has been sent back to be re-adjudicated…and it was the Governor of California who recognized all the flaws in the decision which was actually based on contrived testimony of two well known educator witnesses for the plaintiffs who admitted that they used imaginary stats to make a point. The judge refused to take that into consideration and ruled for the billionaire’s 9 phony plaintiffs who had not even attended the classes of the teachers who they claimed were inadequate. A pure a simple set up that is now a SCOTUS case…as I predicted it would be in this blog site last year.
Lloyd, my fellow California educator, I love you more each day. You are a riot. Thanks for reminding us of the infamous Prop 187. I too was active in killing that one. And “Ignorant fool” is most apt…big hug for that one.
And how shall we evaluate special ed teachers? Or teachers that have a non english speaking class, or a class with 40% in foster care, or 100% low income with free lunch? How do we quantify these factors in number form?
Tests do not = good teaching
Here is a little more info on our friend virginiasgp/Brian Davison: It seems he has no regard for courtrooms and decor there either. He seems to think he knows more about law than the judges he appears before, the fines levied him say otherwise.ww.leesburgtoday.com/news/judge-s-foia-ruling-comes.
The link: http://www.leesburgtoday.com/news/judge-s-foia-ruling-comes-with-sanction/article_841b9b88-eeb2-11e4-ba49-531745e72fc1.html