Audrey Amrein-Beardsley has devoted a large portion of her professional life to criticizing the work of William Sanders, creator of the value-added model for measuring teacher effectiveness. She reports in this post that he passed away at his Tennessee home at the age of 74.
Sanders’ model was tried out first in Tennessee in the late 1980s and then widely disseminated to other states. Many teachers lost their jobs because they didn’t get the gain scores that the Sanders’ model predicted.
Sanders was trained in animal genetics. His hometown obituary reports that:
He received a bachelors of Science degree in animal science in 1964, and a doctorate in Statistics and Quantitative Genetics in 1968….
Beginning in 1972, Sanders created and led a statistical and consulting group for the Institute of Agricultural Research for The University of Tennessee system. Over the next 28 years, Sanders worked with scientists to plan experiments and analyze the resulting data on research projects ranging from agronomy to physics. One of his research projects modeled the nutrient flow in the Peace River system in Florida, which proved that the environmental degradation in the Gulf was not a function of the development along the west coast as was previously thought but rather was a result of the phosphate mining activity in Central Florida. Other projects were as wide ranging as developing a forecasting system for Bike Athletic to improve forecasts for over 2,500 different inventory units to working with a longtime friend to develop a process that improved calibration of an invention that measures fiber properties.
He achieved lasting fame by transferring his attention from agricultural assessments to teacher assessments. He seemed never to recognize that assessing the effectiveness of teachers was far more complicated than studying animals and plants, which may be raised in a controlled environment.
Although his methodology was critiqued by scholars like Amrein-Beardsley, the American Statistical Association, and the American Educational Research Association, Sanders continued to peddle it to credulous school board members looking for a simple formula to determine teacher “effectiveness.”
Amrein-Beardsley writes:
Sanders thought that educators struggling with student achievement in the state should “simply” use more advanced statistics, similar to those used when modeling genetic and reproductive trends among cattle, to measure growth, hold teachers accountable for that growth, and solve the educational measurement woes facing the state of Tennessee at the time. It was to be as simple as that…. I should also mention that given this history, not surprisingly, Tennessee was one of the first states to receive Race to the Top funds to the tune of $502 million to further advance this model; hence, this has also contributed to this model’s popularity across the nation.
Arne Duncan too bought the horse manure that Sanders was selling and that he patented. Keeping his methodology secret and proprietary posed a challenge to scholars. But there were always buyers, no matter what the scholars said. States that wanted to be eligible for Race to the Top funding had to adopt a test-based evaluation system, which was a boon for Sanders’ model.
“William Sanders’ Baby (VAM)”
William Sanders now is dead
Wish his babe had died instead
Born of human, cattle bred
Time to put the VAM to bed
I remember hearing Arne Duncan tout the value-added model on the radio early in Obama’s term.
I didn’t know anything about it but I was really struck by how Duncan presented it as 100% reliable and valid.
Duncan’s credulousness towards anything these people churned out and stamped “valid” was really something to behold. He questioned none of it.
Forward the Gates Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the Coleman knew
Someone had blundered
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to test and lie
Into the Valley of VAM
Bill and Mel foundered
From the Charge of the Gates Brigade, by Alfred Lord Tennyson (sort of)
“ACT is phasing out Compass, a popular but controversial college placement test that colleges use to determine whether students need to take remedial courses.
Community colleges and nonselective four-year institutions rely heavily on Compass and Accuplacer, a similar test from the College Board. Both assessments are low-cost, computerized and relatively quick ways of assessing students’ abilities in reading, writing and mathematics.
A 2012 study found that only one in five colleges use high school grades, class rank or any other criteria besides high-stakes standardized tests to decide whether students have remedial needs in mathematics. That number was only 13 percent for remedial English placement. And when students place into remediation, few ever make it to college-level courses, much less to graduation.”
So the colleges that take the vast majority of lower income students were wholly relying on a single score placement test to put students into remedial courses.
And the test put WAY too many of them in there, which led to ed reformers touting remediation rates as proof public schools were failing.
The test was garbage so the remediation rates were garbage, but ed reform sold those remediation rates to the public FOR YEARS.
This is like a testing tragedy. Ed reform’s near-religious devotion to cheap tests rather than looking at the whole student did huge harm to millions of low income college students.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/18/act-drops-popular-compass-placement-test-acknowledging-its-predictive-limits
Wow! It only took 4 years to obtain a DOCTORATE DEGREE for this VAM creator from a bachelors of Science degree in animal science to a doctorate in Statistics and Quantitative Genetics!
“He received a bachelors of Science degree in animal science in 1964, and a doctorate in Statistics and Quantitative Genetics in 1968….
He skip a master degree and he did not have any problem to graduate in FOUR YEARS in “Statistics and Quantitative Genetics”! How much flaw his learning can be! Back2basic
It is interesting that Sanders received a doctorate in statistics and quantitative genetics since VAM is a statistical model that at its worst can result in social engineering. He clearly believed all human behavior can be defined through numbers. Unfortunately, VAM fails to truly assess the impact a teacher can have on students. Some aspects of human behavior defy statistics.
It’s possible to “prove” almost anything with statistics — which inspired the famous claim that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”
It’s actually very easy (especially with today’s statistical software packages) to just “plug and chug” — plug in data and report whatever pops out without even questioning what, if anything, it means.
But the mark of a true statistician is asking whether statistical results are meaningful.
Some people who call themselves statisticians never ask that question.
It has been the statistical game which has given foundation to devastating school invasion after devastating school invasion in our district; for long years now testing data has been endlessly collected and manipulated to “reveal” whatever it is that our funding-greedy superintendent and school board choose to implement at any given moment.
Since Sanders and I grew up in the same county, I feel it necessary to eugolize him as a nice guy and an interesting conversationalist. I tried a couple of years ago to talk him into writing some bio on his mother, who was a gospel musician, for the local historical quarterly. We had a nice talk that lasted almost an hour and got off subject. His sister come to the history meetings sometimes. She is a nice person too.
His ideas are the antithesis of all I believe. It is a common thing for me to have friends with who. I disagree in a findamental way. May he rest. I am sure that his ideas will not rest.
Sanders sold his professional soul to the devil. As soon as a prof writes about how his research can be used to make policy, you should be able to smell horse crap right then. Why? Because a prof should never suggest to conduct large scale experiments.
Milton Friedman was another prof who went down this Faustian path.
Unfortunately, economics and education profs do this all the time.
The “experimentation on humans without informed consent” aspect of all this Deform stuff (Standardized testing, Common Core, VAM, etc) is what really gets me most.
These Deformers carry out what are effectively large scale experiments on the lives of teachers, children, schools and even entire communities without going through any kind of ethical review process — and without any accountability for the negative consequences of their “experiments”.
How many lives were damaged or even destroyed by all this?
Who even keeps track?
It’s sickening.
“Deform in a Nutshell”
Experimentation on your kid
Is what the school deformer did
Sans regard and sans consent
The school deform was devil-sent
“Agents of Deform”
The school Deformers laid
A fiendish sort of plan
Deformiant was sprayed
Containing tests and VAM
I often said (and wrote) this about VAM and Sanders:
VAM was invented by Dr. William Sanders, a statistician working in the field of agricultural genetics at the University of Tennessee in the 1980’s. He was, quite literally, a bean counter. He believed he could use his statistical models used to produce ripe tomatoes (and probably beans) to evaluate teaching. Then Governor Lamar Alexander said, “Go for it.” Unfortunately, children are neither tomatoes nor beans and teaching is not agriculture.
“A way for a Manager”
A way for a Manager, a plan for his scam
The Little Economist laid down his sweet VAM
The stars in the White House look down where he lies
The Little Economist with powerful ties
The cattle are lowing, Economist awakes
And Little Economist, a model he makes
I love thee Economist, look down from the sky
And stay by thy cattle, till morning is nigh
Of course VAM calculations were not possible for about 69% of teacher because they had assignments for which there were no statewide tests. As I work in the arts, I became aware of the “solutions” offered by USDE for measures of “growth.” One of these, the infamous SLO–student learning objective–is not less a monstrosity, and like VAM is still being required in the absence of any evidence that it has any reliability or validity for the teaching assignments where it is still being used. William Slotnik is the marketers of this sham. The first client was the Denver School System in 1999. The SLO is nothing more than a failed management strategy for business, especially retail environments. In Denver, it was the initial means of getting pay for performance up and running, with a little help from the Broad foundation. One of the last big clients for Slotnik: The State of Maryland, all public school teachers.