Earlier today, I posted a piece by Andy Jones, a high school language arts teacher in Hawaii. In the introduction, I mistakenly said that Hawaii had eliminated the teacher evaluation system that was created in response to winning Race to the Top funding. I wrote: “This past spring, Hawaii dropped the test-based teacher evaluation that Race to the Top had forced on the state as a condition of winning RTTT funds. The money was all gone, and so was this bad idea.” That was not completely accurate.
Andy Jones sent this note to correct me:
“I so hate to ask, but…the HSTA secretary, who along with everyone else here is a great admirer of your work, just asked me if I could mention to you that your intro to my article is somewhat inaccurate, in that the teacher evaluation system (EES) is still in place. We were merely successful in eliminating test scores from the evaluation. We are, however, almost equally angry at present, because in the months since that announcement was made, they have insisted on maintaining the excoriated SLO component (Student Learning Outcomes) – the mindbogglingly ridiculous quasi-action-research template we have to go through in our evaluations in which we choose learning objectives, administer pre-assessments, make predictions about student learning, collect evidence of student growth, etc., and are only rated “distinguished” if 90% of our predictions are accurate. This is now worth 50% of our evaluation, along with the standard Danielson-based observation cycle and Core Professionalism (basically a portfolio on Danielson Domain 4) comprising the other 50%.
“HSTA secretary Amy Perruso wanted me to post you on this, because she’s afraid that HSTA will now be bombarded with emails and telephone calls asking “How did you get rid of the teacher evaluations?” – which, unfortunately we have not and which we’re going to be attempting very aggressively this year to get rid of.
– Andy”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I hope I’m wrong, but I will be shocked to ever see these unfair evaluations go away. Most of the younger teachers have accepted these awful evaluations without complaint, and most of these younger teachers have not realized that these evaluations will eventually prevent them from getting pay raises on a pay scale and earning a competitive salary. It is all sad.
I know that my state of Ohio is still trying to get consequences for a teacher having a poor evaluation for three years. Many districts have declared a “safe haven” for the time being because of changed testing vendors, but I know that will not go on forever.
I still cannot believe the toxic educational policies that have slowly become the norm. I look on with horror at the number of people who fall in line and accept crazy policies as okay and perfectly normal!
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SLO ratings vary wildly from 1 to 5 for individual teachers without any rational basis. If Battelle for Kids was trying to invent the perfect random number generator, they may have hit on something. But as a measure of teacher effectiveness, SLOs and OTES are a massive waste of time. Lawmakers are embarrassing themselves. If the result was to undermine the classroom and lower morale, by golly, them there law people done real good!
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“I look on with horror at the number of people who fall in line and accept crazy policies as okay and perfectly normal!”
GAGA Good Germans is what I say!
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The evaluations HAVE gone away in Utah, which is pretty remarkable considering that Utah legislators are attacking teachers in Utah. The state legislators passed the bill this past winter, during Utah’s legislative session. The test-based evaluation was supposed to start last school year, but, due to the legislative change, which took effect this school year, districts decided to not use the test-based evaluation last year. The article below was written before the bill passed, but it did pass:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/3574258-155/house-panel-moves-to-remove-sage
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SLOS have been marketed by William Slotnick since 1999 when the Broad and two regional foundations put up money for pay for a performance plan in Denver. I have written an academic paper and review of research on SLOs, titled “The Marketing of SLOs-1999-2014.” Not an ounce of research supports their use except as a teacher management system, adapted from a business practice known as management by objectives. My paper is too long for publication, but it is in circulation via the Internet.
USDE pushed SLOs as if they are comparable to VAM as measures of “growth in learning.” SLOS were marketed as suitable for the estimated 69% of teachers who have job assignments for which there are not statewide tests. There is not an ounce of research to support the use of SLOs for every grade and every subject.
This fraud is a big deal. It is largely underreported as a story equal to the fraud of VAM for teacher evaluation.
You can see documents prepared for USDE’s marketing campaign at Reform Support Network, the marketing arm of USDE for the odious Race to the Top and other programs. The last big sale of SLOs that I note in my paper is for a statewide use of this “writing and prediction exercise” in the State of Maryland.
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Hi Laura, I always enjoy your posts. They are so informative. My district requires the VAM teachers, like myself, to also do two (2) SLO’s along with our VAM state testing results. It is so much paperwork, and I get extremely tired trying to keep up with the daily demands of my classroom while I make deadlines on this worthless nonsense. I am thankful to almost be at retirement. I have fought the good fight, and I have almost finished the race. I feel so sorry for the younger teachers. No matter what, they will get tired and burned out…just like the older teachers. Keep writing your posts!!! I love reading them!!!
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Laura,
Can you please provide a link for your paper?
TIA,
Duane
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Paper should be available at
http://vamboozled.com/laura-chapman-slos-continued/
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Thank you!
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I think the SLO’s are being forced down teachers throats to make them throw their hands up in the air and quit in frustration. It would take a computer to figure it all out, and IRONICALLY that’s the ultimate plan, to replace us with “data driven” computers, right?
Everything has become so overcomplicated that it is a wonder kids are learning anything at all, which REALLY speaks to the ability of our overworked profession. I have never seen such chaios.
If the government would just admit that poverty IS THE ENEMY and not the teacher. Of course we want to take birth control and abortion away. We care so much about you in this country. Until you are born. But, it keep the judicial/prison system going. Lawyers gotta lawyer, judges gotta judge. Ad the rest of us can pay for it.
We have to stop insentivizing people having more than two kids if they can’t afford them.Period.
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Laura, could you please contact me on Facebook? (Mireille Christianne Ellsworth) I am a teacher activist in Hawai’i fighting the SLOs with Andy Jones. I need to read your research and share it with our Board of Education. I will be giving testimony on Sept. 20 but must submit written testimony before that. Since I am a working teacher, you KNOW how we activists must manage our time carefully so that our students don’t get short-changed. Oh how I cannot WAIT for this war to be over so that I can put my FULL attention on my students once again!
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Here in NYS, teachers have been able to negotiate SLOs (we are at 50% as well) using “distributed” pooled scores. Virtually every teacher in a district is placed on the SAME SLO using a common pool of select Regents high school exam scores. This is the opposite of a “gotcha” policy as districts have the historical data that shows teachers will likely be judged “effective” using said “distributed” scores.
Apparently the USDOE has encouraged such inanity. The upshot is that it has eliminate the need for hundreds of “local” pre and post tests while at the same time eliminating all test prep pressures.
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A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf.
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That “pool of distributed scores” is a deep enough cesspool to dive into from a 10 meter platform.
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MKA
Distributed score use is more like a sheep in a wolf’ costume. When the only other option, for now, is individual SLOs – this is a no brainer.
Unless you have a way to make SLOs magically go away. think about the benefits before your knee jerks. Initially I had the very same reaction as you and every other rational, sane educator would. let the idea marinate in your brain and the beauty and irony will come through. For now. Doesn’t mean we don’t rail against the misuse of test scores while we bite the shared SLO bullet.
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And if SLOs are still “wolves” – they have been de-fanged and de-clawed by using distributed, shared Regents scores. About 95% of the teachers in my district do not have to write a SLO. they do not have to administer “local” pre-tests nor do the have to administer “local” post tests. And most importantly, they do not have to worry about the test score component of the APPR because historical test data is indicating that the chances of everyone under the single SLO umbrella have a very remote chance of being collectively “TIPed”. Yes, after four years of Cuomo’s Ahab-like pursuit of the ineffective teacher’ districts have decided to game his system in favor of us. This new approach is no wolf in my book -especially at 50%. I would be more worried about vindictive administrators who want to misuse the Marzano or Danielson rubric.
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The shared SLO is not only a WIN for teachers, but heralds a return to normalcy – pre-Race to the Top. Now if we could move back to pre-NCLB Diane could shut down this blog and relax. Unfortunately we have a bit tougher row to hoe to make that happen.
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YES. THE USDOE encourages inanity. And, with the passing of ESSA the states most likely to make the choice for an endless inanity may now pick it up and run with it.
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You are correct about the source. USDE had a marketing campaign for SLOS and for “distributed scores” for teachers of who were not caught up in the VAM ratings based on statewide tests. In Florida, teachers of the arts were rated on the school wide scores in reading, or writing, or math. Teachers were also rated on the performance of students they never taught. How rational is that?
If you want to see more of this marketing nonsense check out the Reform Support Network publications at USDE’s website.
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Here is a link to my SLO paper.
http://vamboozled.com/laura-chapman-slos-continued/
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These busy work measures that are heaped upon already overworked teachers are inhumane and unfair. They take time away from teachers doing the real job of teaching. Teaching is already hard work . Teaching is also lots of work. To waste time on inane and nonsensical learning objectives and strategies and edu speak is not helpful to the real task of educating our students. Please stop !
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Any evaluation scheme using student test scores is invalid on the face of it as the test was/is designed to assess student learning and not teacher effectiveness.
Be that as it may, Noel Wilson in the most important educational writing of the last half century has proven the COMPLETE INVALIDITIES due to all of the onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudging involved in standards and standardized testing regimes in his never refuted nor rebutted 1997 dissertation “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.
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.
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).
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.
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 words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
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.
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.
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.
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