In a startling development, the State Board of Education in Tennessee made clear at its meeting on Friday that it may eliminate or modify value-added measurement (VAM).
State Commissioner Keven Huffman was stunned.
Tennessee is the state where VAM got started, launched in the 1980s by agricultural statistician William Sanders. Based on his experience, Sanders assumed that it was possible to hold all other variables constant and attribute the rise or fall of test scores to teachers. Most social scientists understand that children are not corn, and it is impossible to hold all other variables constant. But Sanders now has a consulting business, and his methods are proprietary information, c.osely held.
In the future, if the board sticks to its guns, VAM will not play a part in deciding whether teachers may be licensed to work in the state of Tennessee. Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, an expert on VAM, celebrates that major victory here. Beardsley includes links to the three YouTube videos that the TEA shared with the board, called “The Trouble with TVAAAS.”
Given this background, the discussion at Fridays board meeting was indeed welcome to critics of test-based accountability, which has failed wherever it has been put into place.
Joey Garrison of the Tennessean reports:
” At its meeting in Nashville on Friday, the board stepped away from the new policy, promising an April rewrite eliminating learning gains as the overriding factor in whether teachers can work in Tennessee. The state’s educators claimed victory after a three-year pounding that also ended the promises of contract negotiations and annual raises, then tied their tenure to student test scores.
“Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, who backed the original policy, and state education board Chairman Fielding Rolston downplayed the vote, characterizing it as a small and appropriate tweak before the policy takes effect in 2015. Education reform advocates took the same tack, pointing out that basing licenses on overall teacher evaluation scores, which include learning gains but give more weight to principal observations, is still progress….
“But the vote coincides with a bipartisan bill gaining ground in the legislature this session. The Educator Respect and Accountability Act, sponsored by Rep. Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, and Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, would prevent the state from yanking teachers’ licenses based on “any statistical estimate utilizing standardized test scores.”
Huffman, who is heartily disliked by both teachers and administrators (nearly half the state’s district superintendents signed a petition decrying his top-down, non-collaborative style), was clearly outraged by the board’s second thoughts but leveled his criticism at the union. (Tennessee withdrew collective bargaining rights in 2011, and the TEA is weak.)
He said “he was flummoxed to see the union withdrawing its support of any use of value-added scores in evaluations and licensing after the state received a $500 million federal Race to the Top grant in part based on it.
“This is a very significant change in their position, and to be frank, I find it incredibly hypocritical that TEA would support the inclusion of value-added scores when there’s a bunch of federal money at the table and then turn around a few years later when that money is no longer going to be around,” he said.
“In a media release, the 46,000-member TEA countered that it endorsed the Race to the Top plan under former Gov. Phil Bredesen’s administration, but Huffman and Gov. Bill Haslam didn’t honor the agreements.
“Since Bredesen’s administration, teachers have complained of abysmal morale over the loss of union contract negotiations and use of student test data in their evaluations — even if the subjects they teach aren’t tested.”
Another way to look at the change of view of the board and the teachers is that they know now that VAM doesn’t wrk, that it is inaccurate, and they are acknowledging the realities.
