Today, teachers in Houston won a major court victory against the discredited teacher evaluation method called VAM, or “value-added measurement.” The court battle was led by the AFT and the Houston Federation of Teachers.
VAM was originally developed by an agricultural statistician, William Sanders, who believed that the rise or fall of student test scores can be attributed to the students’ teachers. This theory was incorporated into the Race to the Top program, which led many states to adopt it, despite the fact that it had never been proven to Wotan in a real-world situation. Seventy percent of teachers do not teach tested subjects, which led to bizarre strategies of evaluating teachers by scores of students they never taught in subjects they never taught.
Here is the press release from the AFT about the decision:
May 4, 2017
AFT, Houston Federation of Teachers Hail Court Ruling
on Flawed Evaluation System
Statements by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Houston Federation of Teachers President Zeph Capo on U.S. District Court decision on Houstonβs Evaluation Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), known elsewhere as VAM or value-added measures:
AFT President Randi Weingarten: βHouston developed an incomprehensible, unfair and secret algorithm to evaluate teachers that had no rational meaning. This is the algebraic formula: π¦ππππ= ππππ+ (Ξ£πββ€πΞ£π€πππβπβπ‘ Γ ππππβπβπ‘ππππβπβπ‘=1)+ πππππ
βU.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith saw that it was seriously flawed and posed a threat to teachersβ employment rights; he rejected it. This is a huge victory for Houston teachers, their students and educatorsβ deeply held contention that VAM is a sham.
βThe judge said teachers had no way to ensure that EVAAS was correctly calculating their performance score, nor was there a way to promptly correct a mistake. Judge Smith added that the proper remedy is to overturn the policy; we wholeheartedly agree. Teaching must be about helping kids develop the skills and knowledge they need to be prepared for college, career and lifeβnot be about focusing on test scores for punitive purposes.β
HFT President Zeph Capo: βWith this decision, Houston should wipe clean the record of every teacher who was negatively evaluated. From here on, teacher evaluation systems should be developed with educators to ensure that they are fair, transparent and help inform instruction, not be used as a punitive tool.β
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How WONDERFUL to read something positive!! Negativity seems to overwhelm the media.
(Look at the latest GOP healthcare proposal. Why would intelligent, wealthy Congress people care so little about the health of people? It is a disgrace to this country.)
Can you get a link to or post the decision?
The decision is not yet available, Bruce. But I heard one line of it. The judge that when a public agency evaluates employees by an algorithm that is incomprehensible, that method must be thrown out.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Hopefully, this will lead to it being removed from other state’s evaluation processes.
Thanks to Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, whose expert testimony obviously convinced the judge.
She also testified in the case of Sheri Lederman, who also won.
There seems to be a pattern.π
This farce lives on in many states, including Ohio where SAS has the contract for VAM and where many teachers in ” untested subjects” are required to write SLOs (student learning objectives) a writing assignment that is judged by 26 criteria. That farce is still perpetuated as if legitimate, valid, reliable, and the rest.
This is wonderful news for Houston teachers and students. Obviously, the creators of VAM are mathematically and socially challenged.
It’s the epitome of the Dunning Kruger effect.
These people are so clueless as to actually believe that what they are doing is legitimate math.
But it’s mostly economists, so they have an excuse.
The same court decision should be made every state in the union that uses the Damn VAM to evaluate Teachers. The sooner the better then our Professional Teachers can get back to doing what they do best — TEACH — and not have to worry about some arbitrary system that has not worked from day one.
“The judge said teachers had no way to ensure that EVAAS was correctly calculating their performance score, nor was there a way to promptly correct a mistake.”
When one starts with falsehoods and errors such as using standardize test results for anything one is guaranteed that no algorithm or system based on said results will produce more error and falsehoods. Noel Wilson has proven that the whole standards and testing regime is a totally onto-epistemological nightmare lacking any validity whatsoever. For a short read on that invalidity of using standardized tests for anything read his “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/0
I showed my husband who is a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer the “so-called” algebraic formula and he laughed. He said , “What? That isn’t even an algebraic formula. That’s what you get from this dysfunctional two-party system funded by billionaires and run by lawyers.”
God help this country. We have “stupid” in charge.
Diane,
I have a copy of the ruling. Send me an email address and I will send it to you.
Gayle Fallon
Gayle,
Send me an email address.