Controversial teacher evaluation method is on trial — literally — and the judge is not amused. (Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post) Here is a report on what happened this week in a New York court where a judge is hearing the case brought by Sheri G. Lederman, a fourth-grade teacher in the Great Neck public school district, against state education officials over their controversial method of evaluating her — and, by extension, other N.Y. teachers. The method is known as “value-added modeling,” or VAM, and it purports to be able to use student standardized test scores to determine the “value” of a teacher while factoring out every other influence on a student (including, for example, hunger, sickness, and stress). One way it works is by predicting, through a complicated computer model, how students with similar characteristics are supposed to perform on the exams, and teachers are then evaluated on how well their students measure up to the theoretical students.
New York is just one of the many states where VAM is a key component of teacher assessment. By Carol Burris Ms. WeAreTeachers sur Twitter : "We work so hard to meet our students where they are. #quote #teachers... Dear Bill: We’re teachers, and we can do so much, but… “What we can’t do, however, is address all of the problems that put or keep families in poverty.” | Teachers' Letters to Bill Gates. “Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.” - Bill Gates Dear Bill and Melinda ~ Bill and Melinda, we’d like to take on a complex issue with you. We’d like to discuss the impacts of poverty -- specifically: your role, and ours in serving children who live in poverty.
Stephen Krashen recently submitted this to the New York Times. We’d really like to know what you think since it seemed to be on your mind when you and Melinda wrote a letter posted on The Gates Foundation, where you write about poverty too: Our friend and co-trustee Warren Buffett once gave us some great advice about philanthropy: “Don’t just go for safe projects,” he said. And on The Gates Foundation website on your “what we do” page, it states: OUR GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT DIVISIONNearly 2.5 billion people worldwide live on less than US$2 a day, and more than 1 billion suffer from chronic hunger.
We like those first two statements. Guess what? Spotlight on Teacher Evaluation. The Education Week Spotlight on Teacher Evaluation is a collection of articles hand-picked by our editors for their insights on: Understanding how teacher evaluation models are changing Using combined measures to evaluate teacher performance Considering value added and growth index models carefully Boosting staff growth and development with teacher evaluation How to best evaluate special education teachers You get the six articles below in a downloadable PDF. Even with changes to evaluation systems, only subtle differences emerge between the best and the weakest teachers—as well as all those in the middle.
February 5, 2013 - Education Week Basing more than half a teacher's evaluation on student test scores seemed to compromise it, researchers also found. January 8, 2013 | Updated: January 18, 2013 - Education Week A who's who of researchers studying the use of student scores in staff reviews agrees on one point: Tread carefully. October 25, 2012 | Updated: November 19, 2012 - Education Week. On Teacher Evaluations, Between Myth And Fact Lies Truth. Controversial proposals for new teacher evaluation systems have generated a tremendous amount of misinformation. It has come from both “sides,” ranging from minor misunderstandings to gross inaccuracies.
Ostensibly to address some of these misconceptions, the advocacy group Students First (SF) recently released a “myth/fact sheet” on evaluations. Despite the need for oversimplification inherent in “myth/fact” sheets, the genre can be useful, especially about topics such as evaluation, about which there is much confusion. When advocacy groups produce them, however, the myths and facts sometimes take the form of “arguments we don’t like versus arguments we do like.”
This SF document falls into that trap. In fact, several of its claims are a little shocking. I would still like to discuss the sheet, not because I enjoy picking apart the work of others (I don’t), but rather because I think elements of both the “myths” and “facts” in this sheet could be recast as “dual myths” in a new sheet. National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) Homepage. NCTQ’s Varicose Reform. Decades ago, my mother had to have surgery for varicose veins. Though some people are prone to such maladies, I am sure that her giving birth to six children complicated the issue. What I learned years ago about varicose veins is that the blood flows backwards and produces the bulging, dark masses that I had become accustomed to seeing on the backs of my mother’s legs. I think it is easy to conceive that blood flowing backwards in the human body could cause problems. The same holds true when the lifeblood of an institution such as public education is forced into corporate-induced counterflow.
Aside from the corporations themselves, many groups are currently contributing to the corporate-induced counterflow. I would like to perform a little surgery of my own in this blog. Don’t worry. Having reviewed the members of the advisory board of the National Council on Teacher Quality, I will now review NCTQ in general and grade its performance. Let us first consider NCTQ’s background and position.
Key Issue: Teacher Evaluation. Teacher evaluation continues to be a subject of public debate in Pennsylvania and across the United States. Pennsylvania is now using a new teacher evaluation system, with a goal of more accurately measuring teacher effectiveness. PSEA supports strengthening Pennsylvania’s system of teacher evaluation. When assessment is a component of teacher evaluation, multiple measures of student learning must be used. These measures of student learning should include: curriculum-based assessments, teacher-created assessments, student projects and portfolios, district-based pre/post-assessments tied to academic standards, and other valid and reliable measures.
PSEA will continue efforts to make sure the new system is valid, reliable, and fair. PSEA Resources PDE Information Legislation and Policy Current Research on Teacher Evaluation. Edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/creating-comprehensive-system-evaluating-and-supporting-effective-teaching_1.pdf.