James Eterno, a teacher in New York City, has started a petition calling on the New York State Legislature to repeal the failed and ineffective teacher evaluation law.
I agree! I signed! Let educators decide how to evaluate teachers, not politicians.
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=s.em.cp&r_hash=arkN4TBC
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I hope this can begin a nationwide effort.
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oh, that in our state “getting rid of VAM legislation” will become part of the conversation BEFORE the governor’s election in the fall: one of our current DFER-loyal gubernatorial candidates wrote up and pushed the terrible VAM legislation which was then adopted by a cluelessly enabling legislature
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The test-based “Value-Added Method” (VAM) of evaluating teachers has been “slammed” — quoting The Washington Post — by the very people who know the most about data measurement: The American Statistical Association (ASA). The ASA’s authoritative, detailed, VAM-slam analysis, titled “Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment” and has become the basis for teachers across the nation successfully challenging VAM-based evaluations.
Even though it’s anti-public school and anti-union, the Washington Post said the following about the ASA Statement: “You can be certain that members of the American Statistical Association, the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, know a thing or two about data and measurement. The ASA just slammed the high-stakes ‘value-added method’ (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been increasingly embraced in states as part of school-reform efforts. VAM purports to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the ‘value’ a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been. THESE FORMULAS CAN’T ACTUALLY DO THIS (emphasis added) with sufficient reliability and validity, but school reformers have pushed this approach and now most states use VAM as part of teacher evaluations.”
The ASA Statement points out the following and many other failings of testing-based VAM:
“System-level conditions” include everything from overcrowded and underfunded classrooms to district-and site-level management of the schools and to student poverty.
A copy of the VAM-slamming ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site throughout our nation and should be explained to every teacher by their union at individual site faculty meetings so that teachers are aware of what it says about how invalid it is to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers or principals — and teachers’ and principals’ unions should fight all evaluations based on student test scores with the ASA statement as a good foundation for their fight.
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“VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation: Effects – positive or negative – attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model.”
Value Added Methodology (VAM) cannot “measure” anything. That methodology attempts to ASSESS, CALCULATE, JUDGE, APPRAISE and/or any other in a long line of thoughts that are not/do not “measure” anything. Even the ASA misuses the term and meaning of “measure” in this statement.
How is a correlation measured? The correlation is an expression of the mathematical relationship between two variables. How does one “measure” that mathematical relationship? Once again, one can assess, calculate, judge, appraise, etc. . . said relationship but it is not a measurement per se. For what is the agreed upon standard unit of measure that delineates what is being measured in that “typically measure correlation”? Hint, there is none.
I’m not a statistician nor am I a psychometrician but for me, so many people misuse the term measure, and when they use it they certainly intend measure in a metrological sense and not just to take stock of, analyze, assess, etc. . . . It is that misusage of the meaning that serves to confuse and conflate the importance of and make “measure” to appear to be rationo-logically sound when it isn’t.
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That the correlations involved with VAM are negigible is actually a big red flashing light that indicates “Beware! Economist — aka Lala — Land ahead!”
Only an economist could consider a relationship between two variables real when one variable only accounts for between 1 and 14% of the variation in the other (as is the case with VAM).
In any real science, that would be considered no relationship at all –, ie, essentially random.
That’s precisely why a teacher can get a high VAM score one year and a low one the very next, because the so called “value added”models are basically random number generators.
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Yes! This. And one more thing – get rid of the high stakes standardized tests – all of them ELA, Math, NYSESLAT, edTPA and whatever else is out there!
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Signed.
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Cuomo is the impediment here. Mr. Ugly-face himself won’t budge. Parents are the biggest force for getting it overturned because they know it will only keep their kids taught to the test.
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Signed
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