New Jersey has decided that teachers are now fully familiar with the Common Core and PARCC testing, even though most kids “fail” it, and henceforward the rise or fall of test scores on PARCC will count for 30% of teacher evaluations. Previously they had counted for only 10%.
This method has been debunked by the American Statistical Association and the American Educational Research Association. It has been in use in Colorado and in many states for five years without producing any results.
This is faith-based policy.
http://www.nj.com/education/2016/08/nj_parcc_tests_teacher_evaluations.html
The only sensible aspect of this change is that it counts only for teachers who teach the tested subjects in the tested grades. In neighboring New York and in other states, this discredited method applies to all teachers, and they are judged by the scores of students they didn’t teach in subjects they don’t teach.
In New York, an outstanding fourth grade teacher, Sheri Lederman, sued the state after receiving a low rating. The judge ruled that the rating system was “arbitrary and capricious.” For now, the rating system is in abeyance. At some point the Regrnts and Legislature will have to clarify how this ruling affects state law.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
Assume this does not apply to charter teachers…?
Nevada will be doing that soon too. This year tests are 20 percent of the evaluation, next year 40 percent, and after that some legislators have states that 90 percent sounds good. If our supreme court shoots down their vouchers plan they will just amend the constitution.
All NYS teachers are at 50% on test score use. With a Common Core moratorium in place, many districts are placing virtually every teacher on the same SLO using a common set of Regents scores. So yes, you second year elementary music teacher, or fifth year first grade teacher, or brand new middle school teacher, yes! 50% of your evaluation will now depend on the test scores (Biology. Algebra, ELA, Global Studies, American History) of HS students you never taught. And if you are a teacher that did teach students from these three different cohorts, you are still being evaluated on scores of subjects you did not teach. However, if you are a HS Regents teacher – sink or swim on your own.
The upshot of this new trend in NYS is that it provides a tremendous relief for the vast majority of teachers from the pressure of having to show growth in test scores – and should significantly reduce or even eliminate the amount of teaching to the test that has been in place for the past four years. Test-prep has been the one of the evi twin elephants in our classrooms; the other being CC tests designed to produce hyper failure rates. Hopefully the BOR and legislature will see the light. There is simply no good way to execute a really bad idea!
“In neighboring New York this discredited method (SLOs) applies to ALL TEACHERS, and they are judged by the scores of students they didn’t teach in subjects they don’t teach” [ at a 50% of total APPR score].
As far as I can tell, the use of VAM in NYS has been eliminated due to the Common Core testing moratorium. All teachers will be evaluated using SLOs and predetermined “growth targets”. Regents teachers will be the only teachers that use test scores of students and subjects that they actually teach. Many districts are opting for a single SLO for all non-regents teachers using a common set of Regents scores. Some districts my elect to maintain separate local pre and post tests for every non-Regents teacher – and only if they are willing to submit dozens of said, teacher made tests, to NYSED for approval.
This is what happens when you don’t believe (talkin’ to you Andy) the simple truth that there is no good way to execute a really bad idea.
VAM in ALL of its forms is junk, ridiculous, meaningless, nonsense that is ALL ABOUT UNION BUSTING in the final analysis.
In spite of some court cases and its thorough discrediting in academia, etc, the trend is spreading, not shrinking. Discrediting something via the traditional academic route no longer matters. Court cases seem not to matter. What matters is narrative. This is old news tho. It’s something we should know intrinsically and it should be baked into our movement. As yet it is not.
So it goes. The big obvious funny thing here however is that they don’t really need to bust teachers unions. They are self destructing right and proper via insanely historically awful leadership and a wildly disengaged, not-activist membership (in most places) that is fast accepting all kinds of really destructive things as “normal” like the whole technology-in-education sham and the like. Tons of teachers already accept VAM as normal.
But we have opt out on our side I guess
Faith-based fare for flawed measures of teaching and learning. What an absurd premise for education in the United States, especially with so much posturing about the importance of science. That posturing includes a federally funded “Institute of Educational Science” that reviews studies based on their publicity in the news.
North Carolina has a variation on the use of VAM. It is a scheme for teacher pay based on per-student performance in preferred subjects. VAM estimates are the all-in-all for many teachers. This is one step away from direct payments to students for taking a course and passing tests.
North Carolina’s policies are a version of pay for performance that I have not seen before.http://www.morganton.com/news/burke-school-system-on-hook-for-some-teacher-raises/article_39c7f77c-714a-11e6-8105-db45ab1dcc3c.html
USDE policies still offer up the flawed SLO process as if valid for a majority of teachers with job assignments that do not produce scores on statewide tests. USDE also suggests the absurd alternative of a “distributed score,” which means teachers with the ingredients for a VAM are assigned a score for a subject they did not teach and possibly for a grade level they did not teach. These so-called distributed scores effectively nullify the importance of all subjects and grade levels for which there are not state-wide tests.
The most widely copied SLO process originated in Denver Public Schools in 1999. Two regional foundations and the California-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation funded a pay-for-performance initiative designed and managed by the Boston-based consulting firm, Community Training and Assistance Center. CTAC placed student growth objectives at the center of this plan. According to William J. Slotnick, Founder and Director of CTAC, the intent was to “add science to the art of teaching.” It has been marketed by Wm. Slotnick since then, most recently for teachers in Maryland.
“What an absurd premise for education in the United States”
Absurd, baseless, misleading, and embarrassing!
“USDE also suggests the absurd alternative of a “distributed score,” which means teachers with the ingredients for a VAM are assigned a score for a subject they did not teach and possibly for a grade level they did not teach.”
Distributed scores will now be used on a fairly widespread basis this year in NYS. Using SLOs (with “growth band” model) in place of VAM formula. And not “possibly” – definitely being used for grade levels not taught as HS Regents scores will be used for the kindergarten art teacher and everyone else without a state Regents test. Talk about falling down the rabbit hole.
YES; absurd, baseless, misleading and embarrassing. Doesn’t it truly being to feel as if we have crossed over (or fallen into) some alternate reality?
VAM has been “slammed” — quoting The Washington Post — by the very people who know the most about data measurement: The American Statistical Association (ASA). So every teacher who is unfavorably evaluated on the basis of students’ standardized test scores should vigorously oppose the evaluation, citing the ASA’s authoritative, detailed, seven-page VAM-slam “Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment” as the basis to have public employment boards and courts toss out any test-based Value Added Model (VAM) unfavorable evaluation.
Moreover, a copy of the VAM-slam ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site throughout our nation 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!
Scisne,
All your points about VAM and its debunking by the ASA and reported on by the Washington Post are correct and precise.
Yet, as stated previously, the trend seems to be for VAM spreading.
The only explanation for this is that we currently exist in a political and policy world that has been detached from the basic validations and nullifications of
Academia and experts. This is clear at many levels of our political/public life.
What matters, here more than so many other places, is narrative. We are losing that. Opt out is good and making in-roads there….but for us teachers…..where VAM is central…the narrative is dominated by reformers and pro-VAM corporatists.
Also, veeeeeery few teachers will put up the type of resistance you call for (and that I agree is the correct path). The few, like Leiderman (sc?), who took the fight on, did so from a place of financial security and the proximity of law degrees. Most working teachers don’t have the resource or the gumption to put up the fight. Don’t forget, so many teachers now see VAM as a norm.
NYS TEACHER,
It’s going to take a lot of teachers to lose their jobs because of VAMs before they will begin to speak up or leave the teaching profession in droves. That’s probably the only thing that will do it. Also, young teachers don’t tend to question the validity and fairness of VAMs.
“This is faith-based policy.”
Excuse me, but WHAT isn’t faith, or myth based “policy”?
“The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.”
” A particular king – say, James II – is no different biologically from his fellow men, yet he puts on a crown, sits on a throne and assumes a symbolic position of authority. It is from this place, backed by a mythic structure (divine right, for example), that the social structure itself borrows its substance.”
The “mythic structure” is extremely practiced at “divide and rule”, through sort
and separate, to invent mythical social categories. Does accepting and practice,
of these divisions, tighten or loosen, our “chains”?
Income disparity, would seem to be a fundamental “no-no”, in a country that
proclaims “all men are equal”, and implies “social justice” by a government
“of, by, and for” the people.
“And would you cry if I told you that I lied
And would you say goodbye or would you let it ride?” B.T.O.
Unfortunately, when it comes to educational malpractices almost all “let it ride”.
Some of us have said goodbye, knowing that one more battle with the adminimals, this time over SLO/SGP bullshit malpractices, might have literally killed us through the stress being targeted for not implementing those educational malpractices.
I totally agree with you, Duane. I am extremely close to retirement, and I am beyond thankful to be getting away from these abusive practices. Nothing is worth taking away your peace of mind on a daily basis. Many of the younger teachers have accepted these abusive practices as normal, and I fear for their long term well being. It is all very, very sad.