Anither stellar contribution from Some DamPoet:
“VAMmit All”
VAMmit all, we’ve had enough
From inside Gates of Hell
Enough of sciency sounding stuff
And Common Core as well
Enough of Chetty-picking
To make Vergara cases
Enough of statistricking
The public, with no basis
Enough of VAMmy charts
That mimic random scatter
Reformers hurling darts
To tell us “what’s the matter”
Enough of rating teachers
For things they cannot sway
The outside world has features
For which the teachers pay
Enough of teacher-shaming
And firing based on bunk
We really should be blaming
The ones who push this junk
Enough of VAMmy horrors
Like teacher suicide
From teacher-bashing chorus
We simply shan’t abide
VAMmit all, the VAMs are DAMs
Devalue’s what they add
The DAM reforms are battering rams
And plain and simple bad
Diane Ravitch's blog 
EXACLTY… i could not have said it better, or more lyrically. You are the best!
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And here is your next challenge, Some DamPoet: Those SLOs and variants, SGOs, SMART Goals, foisted on teachers who have escaped from VAM because those teachers do not produce statewide test scores, estimated to be about 69% of teachers. SLOs are a writing exercise, wherein you predict the expected “growth” meaning increase in the test scores of your students from the beginning of the year or “interval of instruction” to the end-of-course test.
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Simple Laura, more mental masturbation, that’s all.
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It’s kind of like betting on the horses. You look at their pedigrees and their race records and then make a prediction based on that information. Teachers are being asked to do the same thing. Look at a child’s pedigree and past performance and make a decision on how they will perform. So basically we are rating teachers on how well they bet!
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Come to think of it, don’t seasoned gamblers also include track conditions in their analysis?
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Every teacher who is evaluated on the basis of students’ standardized test scores should vigorously oppose the evaluation, citing the authoritative “Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment” made by the American Statistical Association (ASA), Teachers should be vigorously backed-up in this opposition by their unions because the ASA Statement completely shreds the phony foundations of VAM.
A copy of the seven-page ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site and should be explained to every teacher by their union at individual site faculty meetings so that teachers are aware of what it says about how invalid it is to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers.
Even the anti-public school, anti-union Washington Post newspaper said this about the ASA Statement: “You can be certain that members of the American Statistical Association, the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, know a thing or two about data and measurement. The ASA just slammed the high-stakes “value-added method” (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been increasingly embraced in states as part of school-reform efforts. VAM purports to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the “value” a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been. THESE FORMULAS CAN’T ACTUALLY DO THIS (emphasis added) with sufficient reliability and validity, but school reformers have pushed this approach and now most states use VAM as part of teacher evaluations.”
The ASA Statement points out the following and many other failings of testing-based VAM:
> “VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation: Effects – positive or negative – attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model.”
> “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions.”
“System-level conditions” include everything from overcrowded and underfunded classrooms to district- and site-level management of the schools and to student poverty.
Fight back! Never, never, never give up!
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“From inside Gates of Hell”
VAMned philantropy. No such thing as a free gift.
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1959-no-such-thing-as-a-free-gift
Got my copy at the Raleigh meeting.
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The opt-out movement needs new lyrics to something catchy.
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always genius…
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Bravo!
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