Archives for category: Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Common Core Tests in NY Spur Opt Out Movement

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2013 //
62

The most amazing thing is happening. The Common Core tests were made so “rigorous” that most students were expected to fail, and they did. Less than a third across the state “passed” the tests because the passing mark was set very high and the content of the test was so challenging that many students couldn’t finish the test.

But parents didn’t get angry at their children’s school or their children’s teachers. They got angry at the New York State Education Department, which set the cut scores or passing marks. They got angry at Pearson, which constructed the tests.

And as a result, the opt out movement is growing by leaps and bounds. Parents are outraged, especially in the suburbs, where the local schools are an integral part of the community. Suburban parents know that their children are not “failures,” and they reject the labels that the state put on them.

And the movement to boycott the tests next spring is growing.

Even in Buffalo, not a leafy suburb by any means, the local community is furious. A few days ago, an amazing 2,500 people turned out to protest the tests. The audience included parents, teachers, administrators, and scholars from local universities. It was not just parents from Buffalo, but also suburban parents. They joined in common cause.

Here is a quote from the article about the event:

Reform of high-stakes testing for schoolchildren, a groundswell movement of lawn signs and small-scale protests, became an earthquake Wednesdayevening.

The Summit for Smarter Schools, organized by a group called the Partnership for Smarter Schools and hosted by State Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo; Assemblyman Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo; and State Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, filled Kleinhans Music Hall with more than 2,500 parents, teachers and school administrators.

Cheers erupted as Kennedy and Ryan called out the names of districts represented in the audience. It sounded like a school closing list in the middle of a blizzard, encompassing schools from Barker to Allegany-Limestone, with a couple from the Rochester area thrown in for good measure.

“We’ve had a lot of quote-unquote educational reform in the past decades aimed at poor schools in the cities,” Ryan said before the session started, “but now all schools are feeling the pain, regardless of their previous performance. This is why you see a lot of suburban parents here tonight. They’re all being treated poorly. They’re mad about these tests.”

The stage, decorated with a banner that read, “Get Testing Right,” looked like a Western New York State Legislature roll call. In addition to the hosts, there were Assembly Members Ray Walter, R-East Amherst; John Ceretto, R-Lewiston; Michael Kearns, D-Buffalo; and Jane Corwin, R-Clarence. State Sen. Mark Grisanti, R-Buffalo, was in the front row of the audience.

After the introduction by Kennedy, Ryan and Amherst principal Mike Cornell, a succession of speakers laid out the case against standardized testing in a series of 12-minute speeches that were followed by standing ovations.

West Seneca School Superintendent Mark Crawford charged that the tests fail to provide a diagnosis of student strengths and weaknesses.

“They only create a lot of anxiety for students and parents and teachers,” he said. “Why do we want to bunch children into groups of 1, 2, 3 or 4?”

Tonawanda Principal John McKenna argued that testing doesn’t take into account differences among students and communities, a point illustrated by Naomi Cerre, principal of Buffalo’s Lafayette High School, who talked about the difficulties of getting resources to work with and test students from 30 nations who speak 45 different languages.

Jaekyung Lee, dean of the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, gave a PowerPoint outline that showed how high-stakes testing does little to improve student performances and how high-achieving nations like Japan and Korea are de-emphasizing testing and encouraging creative thinking.

Maybe I am overly optimistic, but I feel the ground shifting. I feel the tide turning. I feel the beginning of a grassroots rebellion that will sweep away the bad ideas that are ruining the lives of children, teachers, principals, and communities.

Get ready, friends. The Common Core testing may be the death knell for corporate reform.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Make Them Stop, Make Them Go Away, Leave the Children Alone!

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2013 //
30

A teacher-blogger in New York City sent me this post.

I have a grandson who just started second grade.

I look at this techno-trash and pray that his teachers are not required to pay attention to it.

If this is the kind of “work” that comes out of Tweed (the headquarters of New York City’s “Department of Education”), I have advice for the next Mayor:

Clean out the whole bunch of people who make up these charts, graphs, instructions, mumbo-jumbo statistical nonsense.

Clearly, none of them has ever been a teacher of first grade.

Probably, none of them has ever had a child.

Maybe, none of them ever was a child.

They see children as data.

They see teaching and learning as a statistical exercise.

They value metrics, not children.

Please, Mr. Mayor, send them all packing.

Let them go back to the corporate world where they belong.

Keep them far, far away from children and their teachers.

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing

This Parent at Jenks Middle School Supports Rob Miller

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2013 //
7

A comment by a parent at Jenks Middle School, where the principal, Rob Miller, is being investigated for encouraging parents to opt out of a field test. (I mistakenly referred to him as the superintendent, he is the principal).

As you will read here, the parents are fed up with the endless testing:

“As a JMS opt-out parent, I can attest that this was a parent-led move. Of course Principal Miller had contact with Ms. Barnes and those who had questions, but there’s a difference between answering questions and instigating trouble. Barresi’s vindictiveness is well established; her SDE had earlier published personal details of students appealing the withholding of their diplomas. These details included troubled home life and disability information — all identifiable by name for the world to see.

“Jenks parents are nowhere near finished standing up for our kids by challenging the takeover of our classrooms by the corporate assessment complex. And Barresi is gone after Nov. 2014, if not in the primary. It’s just a question of how many backs she’ll try to stab on the way out.”

“

Categories Oklahoma, Principals, Testing

Is Free Speech Dead in Oklahoma?

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2013 //
32

I just learned that Rob Miller, principal of the Jenks Middle School in Oklahoma, is under investigation for possibly encouraging parents to opt out of a field test.

According to the Tulsa World:

Jenks Public Schools participated in and encouraged a movement to opt students out of field tests last April, an Oklahoma State Department of Education investigation found.

In a July 7 report provided to the Tulsa World this week in response to an open records request, the state said it had evidence that Jenks Middle School Principal Rob Miller “initiated a movement to opt out ‘teachers and students’ from all field tests administered at Jenks Middle School. This occurred while on ‘school time’ and through school district email,” the report says.

The parents at the school say that the decision to opt out of field testing was their own, and they acted without the principal being involved:

In April, the school received a flurry of opt-out forms from parents asking that their children not be subjected to field tests, which are used by testing companies to evaluate questions for future use.

They do not count in either a student’s grade or in a school’s state grade.

“Our kids are being used as unpaid subjects by CTB/McGraw-Hill (a testing vendor) without our consent or permission,” PTA President Deedra Barnes said at the time.

She said the opt-out movement was led by Jenks parents who were frustrated by too much testing and who had heard of similar efforts by parents throughout the country.

After hearing about the opt-out initiative, the state Education Department on April 24 requested numerous records under the Open Records Act related to testing from Jenks Public Schools.

The state received 529 pages of documentation, including 216 redacted email communications, as well as around 800 student opt-out letters, according to its report.

But there may be another reason that Principal Miller is under investigation. On his blog, he wrote critically about the State Superintendent Janet Barresi, a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change and former dentist.

Worse, he wrote a dazzling review of Reign of Error.

He started his review with a quote tweeted by the Tulsa World’s education writer, Andrea Eger: “The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose and it will defend itself. – St. Augustine”

Principal Miller went from there to write: “Diane is a lioness of truth who roars with authority, credibility and conviction. She leads a pride of like-minded Americans who believe that corporate reformers have gone too far and that overemphasis on testing and grading of schools has damaged public education and by extension, millions of students and teachers nationwide.”

The parents in Jenks Middle School say they initiated the opt out. In the emails cited in the story, Miller says he tried to dissuade the parents, but he did not seem to be giving them direct orders not to opt out. He walked a fine line.

Trust the parents. Oklahoma should not punish this conscientious educator who is trying to walk a fine line, both to obey his superiors and to listen to his parents.

Will he be punished for (perhaps) expressing his own thoughts? He knows the test doesn’t count.

Is there freedom of speech and freedom of conscience in Oklahoma? Or is obedience to authority, even when authority is wrong, the highest value?

Principal Miller, I hope your parents and community stand with you. Can Oklahoma bear to debate what is right and what is true?

You are my hero.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Oklahoma, Parents, Testing

Arne Duncan’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Day

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2013 //
29

Are the supporters of corporate reform coming unglued?

Mike Klonsky thinks so. Of a sudden, Secretary Arne Duncan says his critics are “inhabitants of this alternative universe.” What has happened to make him angry? Why would he mischaracterize critics as people who insist that we can’t fix the schools until we fix poverty. I don’t know anyone who makes that claim. Duncan, au contraire, seems to think that the way to “fix” the schools  is with more testing, more merit pay, more charters, more test-based evaluation of teachers, more school closings. No one, including Duncan, has ever explained how his way will fix the schools or someday fix poverty.

Jersey Jazzman says that Duncan’s rant reached “new depths of sanctimony.” He writes: “No one is saying schools shouldn’t be improved. Perhaps someone should draw a warm bath for the SecEd so he can rest his weary, weary arms after the toil of building so many straw men. The plain fact is that no one here in the “bubble” has ever said our schools are “just fine.”

The Jazzman offers a simple list (created by Rutgers’ Bruce Baker) of the determinants of low-performing schools. These are the factors that stand out: high proportions of low-income students; high proportions of minority students; high proportions of English language learners; larger class sizes.

Here, says Jersey Jazzman, is what Secretary Duncan doesn’t know or refuses to acknowledge:

The link between poverty and learning is the most obvious thing in the world. It is ridiculous to pretend that firing a few more teachers based on student test scores or starting a few more charter schools or giving out vouchers or implementing merit pay will overcome the challenges facing a child living in poverty.
 
I, and everyone else in the “bubble,” do believe well-resourced schools can help ameliorate the effects of poverty — to a degree. But the problems of chronic poverty and inequity in this country have far more to do with a regressive tax code, a capital market that is little better than a rigged casino, a lack of a living minimum wage, a monetary policy that puts full employment on the back burner, and a whole host of other public policies that have nothing to do with public schools.
Wendy Lecker, a civil rights attorney writing in the Stamford (CT) Advocate, says that Arne Duncan is living in an “alternate universe.” She says that Duncan insists that standardized tests are necessary to tell us the truth about our students’ poor performance, but Lecker points out that state officials game the system to tell us whatever they want about the test results. In some states, they set the bar high, to produce failure, while in others, they adjust it downward to make themselves look better. She writes:
These test scores are not objective. Student success, school quality and teacher effectiveness are all political moving targets, set by officials far removed from students and schools. Secretary Duncan is the one in an alternate universe, and our students, teachers and taxpayers are paying the price.
Secretary Duncan is angry because his narrative, his claim that our schools are failing, and only his plans can save them, is falling apart. Teachers and principals are angry and demoralized. The backlash against high-stakes testing gets larger every day. The opt out movement is growing. Education Week reported that Duncan has spent $100 billion, and what results are there?
According to the same story:
In contrast to the early years of the Obama administration, Mr. Duncan is now “wildly unpopular,” said Maria Ferguson, the executive director of the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University. “He’s got three years to secure his legacy and defend his record,” she said. “I’m not sure he’s going to have the ammo to do that.”It is easy to be popular when you are handing out $100 billion. Not so easy when all you have left is a bully pulpit to urge people to keep doing what doesn’t work.

Categories Race to the Top, Testing

Mole in Success Academy Speaks

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2013 //
159

I received an email from an anonymous teacher in Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain called Success Academy (formerly known as Harlem Success Academy until Eva decided to move into other neighborhoods in New York City).

When everyone else in the state bombed on the Common Core tests, Eva’s schools had high scores.

I asked the teacher about what happens inside these hallowed halls. The teacher said the typical work day is 7 am-6 pm at school, plus work at home. And here are the methods:

“Focus on English Language Arts and Math. We spend the vast majority of class time teaching ELA and Math all year long. Kids have several blocks of each daily. We do not teach history or foreign languages in elementary school. We do have a good science program. They have a Specials period every day too. Aside from that, it’s reading, writing, math from 8:00AM to 5:00PM. Obviously the extended day and extended school year helps in terms of sheer volume of time.

“Put the best teachers in testing grades. During the first few months of school, teachers and assistant principals are shuffled between grades and even schools. The goal is to put the strongest teachers in grades 3 and up. So a strong Kindergarten teacher might suddenly find herself teaching fourth grade.

“Test prep starts in November: ELA test prep starts in November for two periods a week. After winter break, we have daily hourlong ELA test prep. Then we add math. By late February, we spend several hours a day on it. The last few weeks are almost all day test prep.

“Custom Test Prep Materials: I think many schools use practice workbooks from publishers like Kaplan, etc. We have people whose job it is to put together custom test prep packets based on state guidance. Much more aligned to common core and closer to the test than the published books I’ve seen. Also, teachers are putting together additional worksheets and practice based on what we see in the classroom. Huge volume of practice materials for every possible need (and we use it all, too). Also many practice tests and quizzes that copy format of the test.

“Intensive organization-wide focus on test prep: For the last months and weeks before the test, everyone from Eva on down is completely focused on test prep. Just a few examples….

“We have to give kids 1/2/3/4 scores daily. Kids are broken up into small groups based on the data and get differentiated instruction. If they get a 1, they stay back from recess or after school for extra practice.

“Thousands of dollars spent on prizes to incentivize the kids to work hard. Some teachers have expressed concern about bribing them with basketballs and other toys instead of learning for the sake of learning. The response is “prizes aren’t optional.”

“We get daily inspirational emails from principals with a countdown, anecdotes about the importance of state tests, and ever-multiplying plans for “getting kids over the finish line” (these get old fast).

“Old-fashioned hard work: Teachers are working nonstop during test prep. Literally pour 100% of yourself into it day in and day out. We work hard all year, but test prep brings the hours and workload to a new level. I think the same is true of all staff in schools and at Network.

“I think those are the main points. We do not cheat on the tests, as some critics speculate. But we do devote an extraordinary amount of resources to them each year, arguably at the expense of actual learning. The justification I’ve heard is that these tests can determine our kids’ futures and we owe it to them to make sure they’re prepared. Obviously we as an organization are judged by them as well, so we make it a priority. What I find most disturbing is that we claim that the test scores are a result of our excellent curriculum…no mention of test prep. If we have faith in the curriculum, why not allow us to teach it and skip the test prep?

Then came this email:

Ms. Ravitch,

I wrote to you earlier about Success Academy’s forced march. I apologize for remaining anonymous. I’m sure our PR team monitors all media outlets and I am really worried about losing my job.

It seems the news on the mandatory march is all over the web now, and I have an internal email to share, written by one of our directors, Jim Manly, in response to the backlash. It is copied below. To justify the march and everything else, senior management focuses on the positives and completely ignores the negatives. Eva employs the same techniques (one of her emails to teachers started, “When I walk through your classrooms, and see the incredible work that you are doing with our scholars, I just can’t understand how someone could try to oppose it. Why would anyone work against your tireless efforts to provide our scholars with a world-class education? How could science 5 days a week, and chess, and art, and sports, and raising the bar in math and reading be controversial? But it is.”)

Here is Jim Manly’s email:

Inspiration

“Why are we under attack?”

Eva asked this question at the leader-training day and it got me to thinking. Why do so many people, whose politics on many issues are described as progressive, have such a problem with charter schools? Consider the work we do each day and the families we serve who have been too long denied a realistic shot at upward social mobility in this country. Consider the failure factories that so many of us have worked in that produce absolutely abysmal results for the children they serve. Consider our results – truly the most outstanding in the state when demographic factors like income and parent education levels are considered. We are a true public policy success – proving that there is a solution to the issue of dysfunctional urban public schools that plagues our country and our educational establishment.

The honest answer to this question is clearly complicated. Part of it revolves around the very success that makes us so proud to work here. Many families who see our scholars clad in their orange and blue, in gorgeous classrooms, with high performing teachers get frustrated that this opportunity is denied their child. To them it doesn’t seem like their kids are possibly receiving the same amount of money and care that is being bestowed on our scholars. From this perspective the teacher’s union uses this apparent inequity to drum up suspicions that our schools operate beyond the public domain and are money machines created by big business. The fact is that teacher’s unions, with their huge bureaucracies and incredibly generous pension benefits, have so driven up the cost of public education that there is little room to spend on scholars and the resources they need to succeed. In addition, the job protections that have safeguarded teachers and principals alike are not as ironclad in our model and that is scary to those who fear that management will act capriciously and terminate employees without cause (in the most generous description of this fear). Politicians also fall in line because the unions have clout – they have money that is generated from mandatory dues and a motivated membership who remains politically active. Because charter schools serve such a small number of scholars it is easier to side with the majority rather than take a position that will embitter a well-funded and motivated supporter.

That leaves us at Success feeling like we work for Morgan Stanley. If you dare go on Gotham Schools’ blog you will see an outpouring of anger aimed at our work. While some of the questions are legitimate ones that we wrestle with everyday, the majority are either exaggerated examples of one scholar or teacher or completely fabricated hysteria designed to fire our opponents up. So despite our strong commitment to serve every scholar who walks through our doors, we are defined by the few who leave. Thus we cannot engage in the debate, like every public school, about the dilemma of how far we can go before we risk an entire class’ education in order to (poorly) serve a student with more severe needs who would benefit from a more appropriate setting. Unfortunately valid debates like this are lost in the noise about corporate privatization, rampant greed and other wild-eyed accusations that are the domain of the radical left and right. The rhetoric on the blogs is worthy more of conspiracy theories and tabloid journalism, not legitimate public policy debate. The sad truth is that the majority of the country simply doesn’t care enough about urban poverty and public schooling to rally around a cause that that is being fought on the fringes. So despite our incredible results we find ourselves characterized as the enemy by those with something to lose if we succeed.

The trick for our movement is to take the argument out of the fringes and in to the light of day. Success has built a better educational mousetrap that is reversing an endemic pattern of failure that haunts our urban public schools. We have shown that the staggeringly poor results of schools that serve predominantly poor children are grossly over-inflated. While there are educational issues that still require debate, the fundamental myth of destiny by tax bracket that lies at the heart of our country’s educational system has been exposed. So we must march. We need to take our case out to the mainstream and let them see that the only truly successful school in the city is going to have to pay rent. They need to understand that the way our city will reward a blue ribbon school in Harlem is by forcing it to cut its funding by 30%. We need to make people uncomfortable with the thought that under the name of progressive policy we are trying to close the only doors to opportunity that are available to children in poor communities. It would be easier if we didn’t have this burden and could just focus on teaching and learning. This work was never about our convenience however – it is about standing up for what is right. I look forward to standing with you on October 8th.”

That leaves unanswered this question: If a public school principal closed his or her school to conduct a political march, what would be the consequences?

Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Testing

What to Do with Your Child’s Test Scores: Send ’em Back!

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2013 //
26

Some parents in New York have devised a creative way to protest the absurdly hard Common Core tests that most kids “failed” last spring. They are sending the scores back to the State Commissioner John King.

The word is getting out. The tests were designed to create failure. Test makers know exactly how each item will “function.” Whether the question is hard, easy, or in the middle. When they assemble a test, they know what proportion of students will faIl or pass. They typically design a bell curve. Why did New York commission tests that were supposed to make the public schools look bad? The joke was that the charters performed even worse than the publics!

Send ’em back.

Better yet, plan now to opt out in the spring.

Make this your watchword: Not with my child!

Categories New York, Testing

Matthew Di Carlo Deciphers Latest DC Test Scores

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2013 //
1

Given that D.C. has become a Petri dish for Rhee-style reform, every test score release is treated as earth-shattering.

Matthew Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute says not so fast.

Reporting on test scores is far more complicated than it seems, and the public never understands that the setting of the cut scores is a decision made by humans, not a matter of scientific weights and measures.

He writes:

“Until the general public understands that cross-sectional proficiency rate changes are truly poor measures of student progress, and that raw changes, whether cross-sectional or longitudinal, cannot tell us much about whether policies are “working,” officials and advocates on both “sides” will keep firing empirical blanks at each other, in a battle that neither can actually win.”

Categories Testing

Why VAM Is a Sham

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2013 //
8

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley of Arizona State University is one
of the nation’s leading authorities on teacher evaluation. She has
the advantage of having taught middle school math for several
years. She understands better than almost any other researcher just
how flawed value-added measurement is.

Next year, her book on the
limitations of test-based accountability will be published.

I invited her to contribute to the blog so you would become familiar
with her valuable work.

She writes:

Stock Your Bunkers with VAMmunition

While “Top Ten Lists” have become a recurrent trend in
periodicals, magazines, blogs, and the like, one “Top Ten List,”
presented here, should satisfy readers’ of this blog and hopefully
other educators’ needs for VAMmunition, or rather, ammunition
practitioners need to protect themselves against the unfair
implementation and use of VAMs (i.e., value-added models).

Likewise, as “Top Ten Lists” typically serve reductionistic
purposes, in the sense that they often reduce highly complex
phenomenon into easy-to-understand, easy-to-interpret, and
easy-to-use strings of information, this approach is more than
suitable here whereas those who are trying to ward off the unfair
implementation and use of VAMs do not have the VAMmunition they
need to defend themselves in research-based ways.

Hopefully this list will satisfy at least some of these needs. Accordingly, I
present here the “Top Ten Bits of VAMmunition” research-based
reasons, listed in no particular order, that all public school
educators should be able to use to defend themselves against VAMs.

1. VAM estimates should not be used to assess teacher
effectiveness. The standardized achievement tests on which VAM
estimates are based, have always been, and continue to be,
developed to assess levels of student achievement and not levels
growth in student achievement nor growth in achievement that can be
attributed to teacher effectiveness. The tests on which VAM
estimates are based (among other issues) were never designed to
estimate teachers’ causal effects.

2. VAM estimates are often
unreliable. Teachers who should be (more or less) consistently
effective are being classified in sometimes highly inconsistent
ways over time. A teacher classified as “adding value” has a 25 to
50% chance of being classified as “subtracting value” the following
year(s), and vice versa. This sometimes makes the probability of a
teacher being identified as effective no different than the flip of
a coin.

3. VAM estimates are often invalid. Without adequate
reliability, as reliability is a qualifying condition for validity,
valid VAM-based interpretations are even more difficult to defend.
Likewise, very limited evidence exists to support that teachers who
post high- or low-value added scores are effective using at least
one other correlated criterion (e.g., teacher observational scores,
teacher satisfaction surveys). The correlations being demonstrated
across studies are not nearly high enough to support valid
interpretation or use.

4. VAM estimates can be biased. Teachers of
certain students who are almost never randomly assigned to
classrooms have more difficulties demonstrating value-added than
their comparably effective peers. Estimates for teachers who teach
inordinate proportions of English Language Learners (ELLs), special
education students, students who receive free or reduced lunches,
and students retained in grade, are more adversely impacted by
bias. While bias can present itself in terms of reliability (e.g.,
when teachers post consistently high or low levels of value-added
over time), the illusion of consistency can sometimes be due,
rather, to teachers being consistently assigned more homogenous
sets of students.

5. Related, VAM estimates are fraught with
measurement errors that negate their levels of reliability and
validity, and contribute to issues of bias. These errors are caused
by inordinate amounts of inaccurate or missing data that cannot be
easily replaced or disregarded; variables that cannot be
statistically “controlled for;” differential summer learning gains
and losses and prior teachers’ residual effects that also cannot be
“controlled for;” the effects of teaching in non-traditional,
non-isolated, and non-insular classrooms; and the like.

6. VAM estimates are unfair. Issues of fairness arise when test-based
indicators and their inference-based uses impact some more than
others in consequential ways. With VAMs, only teachers of
mathematics and reading/language arts with pre and post-test data
in certain grade levels (e.g., grades 3-8) are typically being held
accountable. Across the nation, this is leaving approximately
60-70% of teachers, including entire campuses of teachers (e.g.,
early elementary and high school teachers), as VAM-ineligible.

7. VAM estimates are non-transparent. Estimates must be made
transparent in order to be understood, so that they can ultimately
be used to “inform” change and progress in “[in]formative” ways.
However, the teachers and administrators who are to use VAM
estimates accordingly do not typically understand the VAMs or VAM
estimates being used to evaluate them, particularly enough so to
promote such change.

8. Related, VAM estimates are typically of no
informative, formative, or instructional value. No research to date
suggests that VAM-use has improved teachers’ instruction or student
learning and achievement.

9. VAM estimates are being used inappropriately to make consequential decisions. VAM estimates do not have enough consistency, accuracy, or depth to satisfy that
which VAMs are increasingly being tasked, for example, to help make
high-stakes decisions about whether teachers receive merit pay, are
rewarded/denied tenure, or are retained or inversely terminated.
While proponents argue that because of VAMs’ imperfections, VAM
estimates should not be used in isolation of other indicators, the
fact of the matter is that VAMs are so imperfect they should not be
used for much of anything unless largely imperfect decisions are
desired.

10. The unintended consequences of VAM use are
continuously going unrecognized, although research suggests they
continue to exist. For example, teachers are choosing not to teach
certain students, including those who teachers deem as the most
likely to hinder their potentials to demonstrate value-added.
Principals are stacking classes to make sure certain teachers are
more likely to demonstrate “value-added,” or vice versa, to protect
or penalize certain teachers, respectively. Teachers are
leaving/refusing assignments to grades in which VAM-based estimates
matter most, and some teachers are leaving teaching altogether out
of discontent or in protest.

About the seriousness of these and
other unintended consequences, weighed against VAMs’ intended
consequences or the lack thereof, proponents and others simply do
not seem to give a VAM.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Should the Gates Foundation Be Sued for Wrongful Termination?

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2013 //
19

This reader notes that Bill Gates admits that we won’t know if his education “stuff” works for a decade. Yet based on Gates’ support for evaluating teachers by student test scores, teachers are losing their jobs. These are real people, who need to feed their children, not data points in an experiment.

Meanwhile, most researchers agree that the metric is flawed, unreliable, and unstable. Thus comes this reader’s suggestion:

“Here’s a suggestion offered only partly tongue-in-cheek.. The Gates Foundation should be joined as a repondent in every suit filed for wrongful termination as a consequence of any Gates sponsored or designed teacher evaluation system. What could be more quintessentially American than that? Moreover, when suing, it’s always better to go after the party with deep pockets. After all, should cash-strapped urban districts that have had these evaluation systems forced upon them be held solely liable?”

Categories Accountability, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »