Audrey Amrein-Beardsley writes here to explain the importance of judicial decision to terminate VAM in Houston. Houston tied test scores to very high stakes. In one year alone, 221 teachers were fired based on their VAM scores.
Yet when the case went to trial, representatives of the district could not explain or justify the algorithms that determined the fate of teachers.
This case should be cited wherever VAM is used. It is an inexplicable and punitive formula that is incapable of evaluating teacher quality. It is a fraud.
This is why unions exist. No teacher has the resources to fight VAM. The union did, and he awarded the union its legal expenses.
I hope all those unjustly fired teachers get their jobs back.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unfortunately the EVASS formula is still used in Ohio. I guess the litigation will have to be state by state. THere is little political will to be fair to teachers, certainly not in the major parties and least of all in state legislatures where this fraud is hard wired into law or in regulations.
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Laura,
EVASS must be challenged in court. OEA has the resources and should do it. The formula and algorithms are opaque and unrelated to teacher quality.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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The teachers should get back pay.
And the only way to discourage this stuff is to make those responsible pay a high monetary price.
Make the former Houston Superintendent, Terry Grier, pay for teachers’ back pay.
The fired teachers should go after him with a class action suit.
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SO many teachers across the nation have been pushed out of their work due to (though of course never mentioned) their age and accompanying resistant experience. What a collective ageism lawsuit that could be.
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The legal argument used in this case –that EVASS is a black box that violates due process — was very smart and hopefully, other districts will follow suit.
Though the agreement by Houston School District not to use VAM as long as the VAM scores are not independently “verifiable” might seem weak on it’s face, it is probably actually fairly strong.
It is unlikely that the VAMbots will make their source computer code — or even an executable that can be reverse engineered — available because they know that it would open them up to scrutiny and possible charges of fraud by legitimate scientists and statisticians like Amrein-Beardsley.
So, they will continue to hide behind the ” revealing the inner workings would allow teachers to game the system” excuse.
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