The Ohio State Senate wants to drop changes in test scores from teacher evaluations. However, the Cleveland district objects because the superintendent clings stubbornly to standardized tests of students as a reasonable measure of teacher quality. The fact that value-added measurement has flopped nationally doesn’t matter to him.
”District CEO Eric Gordon isn’t happy about the change and still wants to use test scores as a major part of teacher ratings. He looks at student scores — particular the “value added” measure of how much students learn in a year — as an important part of gauging whether teachers are doing well or not.”
Maybe no one told him that VAM is a sham.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
VAM’s on the way out. Too bad it cost so much and the Obama Administration staked their entire educational agenda on it.
FORTY FOUR states bought this nonsense, hook line and sinker. Spent billions of dollars on it, combining federal and state funding, and it’ll be a bad memory 5 years from now.
Oh, well. I bet a lot of consultants got paid.
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Is Eric Gordon a graduate of the Broad Academy of Administrative Dolts?
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Cleveland’s portfolio system was designed by national ed reformers and VAM is central to the scheme:
“They also do not have much tangible impact in Ohio, other than in Cleveland, where a special improvement plan for the Cleveland schools allows the district to fire teachers for low ratings and use ratings to determine raises.”
Gordon is wholly dependent on standardized tests and these rankings.
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Chiara,
Any evaluations of the Cleveland Plan?
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PROGRESS:
Cleveland Municipal Schools State Report Card (information obtained from Ohio Dept Education Website)
2011-12 (before plan) 2016-17 (after plan)
Academic Emergency Achievement F
Performance Index 75.3% Performance Index 49.2%
Indicators Met 0 Indicators Met 0
Adequate Yearly Progress F Progress F
Other scores on 2016-17 report cards (not graded in 2011-12)
Gap Closing F
Graduation Rate F
Prepared for Success F
K-3 Literacy C
Number of Teach for America employees: 2011-12: 0 2016-17: 91
http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/District-Report.aspx?DistrictIRN=043786
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Thanks, Annette. That is sad but not surprising. All such top down efforts have failed.
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The plan brought many more administrators.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/10/cleveland_schools_spend_38_of_2012_levy_on_new_administrators_most_of_them_in_schools.html
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Broad likes to privatize and bankrupt public schools so he can feed his real estate addiction. This particular superintendent is probably after some Gates cashola. Gates loves to dangle money in front of district heads to keep his data addiction full throttle. Or it could be the Walmart Waltons trying to destroy the last vestiges of unions as the rightwing ideologues they are. Anyway you cut it, the superintendent is a super dolt — a clouted, dizzy-eyed vassal.
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They had research that said it wasn’t working but they ignored it:
“The value-added model, which is in place in about 30 states, attempts to measure a teacher’s contribution to student academic growth by comparing the test scores of an individual teacher’s students to the same students’ scores from past years, as well as to other students in the same grade, and can account for up to half of a teacher’s entire evaluation score in some states, such as Ohio.
Many states are implementing new teacher evaluation systems that place a greater emphasis on student growth measures because the Obama administration has required them to do so if they want to keep their waivers from No Child Left Behind. In fact, Education Secretary Arne Duncan in April revoked Washington’s waiver because its legislature failed to implement a teacher evaluation system that met the federal requirements. The waiver requirements stipulate that states should have these systems in place for the 2014-15 school year and used to influence personnel decisions by the following year.”
Ohio, of course, adopted it immediately and mindlessly because our lawmakers are apparently incapable of saying “no” to any random ed reformer who lobbies them in the hallway.
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/05/13/report-finds-weak-link-between-value-added-measures-and-teacher-instruction
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“They had research that said it wasn’t working but they ignored it”
That’s called “fraud”.
And those who created it and pushed in on schools are called “frauds”.
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Amen.
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