Formula to Grade Teachers’ Skill Gains Acceptance, and Critics

[Francesca9]

Source: NY Times

A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles — with some saying it is an effective method for increasing teacher accountability, and others arguing that it can give an inaccurate picture of teachers’ work.

The system calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grade.

People who analyze the data, making a few statistical assumptions, can produce a list ranking teachers from best to worst.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/education/01teacher.html?ref=todayspaper

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The worst ranked teachers don't like it. Their unions oppose this.

[lolly]

1. I don't like it

My last child is entering her last year in elementary school in LAUSD.

I have personal experience with about 15 of the teachers on the list, in 3 different schools.

The two WORST teachers any of my children ever had were ranked "highly effective."

I'm not talking about strict--I like that in a teacher. I'm talking moody, insulting, bizarre personality issues.

In both cases, students left the schools to get away from these women.

In one case, I kept my daughter home an average of a day a week during the last 6 weeks of school.

And my daughter had been a model student before having this teacher.

She had a MUCH better teacher this last year. Very well organized, intelligent. My daughter came home excited at the end of the day. She was reading non-stop, studying science seriously for the first time (note that they aren't even tested on that).

That teacher got a lower-than-average effectiveness.

Other teachers I checked out had thoroughly random results.

I don't know how they did it, but they managed to come up with an utterly useless and misleading system with this one.

Forget teacher unions--parents should be angry.

[msanthrope]

2. LAUSD doesn't use value-added modeling. The Times did.

You've raised an interesting point---do anecdotes about single children defeat statistical analysis?

It's entirely possible that your daughter's 'mean' teacher is 'highly effective.' I mean, you've heard of Catholic school nuns, right?

[lolly]

4. LATIMES does

The scores published on the LATIMES website were the result of the value-added calculations.

The LATIMES ran articles about it for days beforehand. Went on and on about how great value-added was, and how helpful it would be.

NOT

[msanthrope]

5. Yes, I've linked to that study previously.

As I've asked, how does anecdote about single children defeat statistical analysis?

Being a mean teacher, doesn't mean you can't be a highly effective one....

[lolly]

8. If you're chasing children away, yes it does

Over the years, several children have left the school due to this particular teacher.

Children who hate school don't learn very effectively.

Staying home and reading on her own probably helped her test scores more in that class than anything the teacher did.

I'd like to think the Value Added system worked--I had high hopes for it.

But seeing these 2 teachers' rankings leaves no doubt in my mind that it's worthless.

[boppers]

12. The plural of anecdote is not data.

One of the best teachers I had regularly reduced students to tears, because he was forcing them to actually think, rather than letting them coast.

To kind of explain the point, should military soldiers really *like* their drill instructor?

[Hannah Bell]

16. do you think children "think" well when they're in tears?

do you think classrooms where children are "regularly reduced to tears" are effective learning environments?

gad. drivel.

[Hissyspit]

6. Most evaluation methods on people are crap.

Just my life experience speaking.

[JDPriestly]

9. I would not want my child in a classroom in which the teacher is mean.

My children had a mean nun in kindergarten (not in this country). One of my daughters wisely refused to go back that nun's classroom. A mean person, as the previous poster explained, not simply a strict one. A mean person, a mean teacher, is one who likes to make other people feel uncomfortable, maybe even worthless. One of my daughters was an excellent student. She had such a teacher for English her last year in high school. She got excellent grades, but she really did not like her teacher.

Some of these mean teachers frighten students into performing well in their classroom. But, watch out, because when the child leaves that situation in which fear was used to get students to perform, the child will not like the subject matter and the child's performance after leaving the mean teacher's class can actually worsen.

How do you measure a personality? What is value when it comes to human relationships?

How do you measure whether a person is truly inspiring another person to find personal goals and pursue them with joy and creativity? I think that the ability to inspire students to explore subjects about which they are curious is the most important quality a teacher can have. It can't be measured.

[Hannah Bell]

15. The times didn't. Bill Gates' paid RAND analyst did. RAND = military.

statistics can lie & liars can use statistics. and do.

[Starry Messenger]

13. Thank you lolly.

<3 from a teacher.

[mbperrin]

3. Value added cannot be made to work.

First premise of any measurement: hold everything else constant. Can't be done. Life is complicated, and yet these tiny thinkers believe that they can isolate the effect of one human being on another's life with a standardized test or two.

Nobody would accept a scientific study that measured temperatures of objects when the objects were located in rooms where the temperature varied from 80 in one to 105 in another to 32 in another. You'd get meaningless numbers. That's what value-added is.

Even the OP says that analysts make a "few statistical assumptions." Nice. Very nice.

[lolly]

7. I had hopes, but you're correct

One bizarre trend we noticed: The high performers at the schools we checked out were disproportionately 3rd grade teachers.

At our current school, 4 out of 6 were 3rd grade teachers; at a school my oldest daughter attended, over 1/2 were 3rd grade teachers.

It would be interesting to see if this is an anomaly, or holds for other schools. If it's across the board, it would indicate that the 3rd grade standardized tests were easier in comparison to grade level development than other grades.

It would also mean 4th grade teachers are getting a bad rap, since the inflated 3rd grade scores would lead to lowered 4th grade scores under the value added system.

[JDPriestly]

11. It may have to do with the fact that third grade is an easy

grade to teach. After we kids left home, my mother went back to school, finished her degree and taught. She liked third and fourth grades best. The children are easy to manage at that age (compared to other ages). Junior high is very difficult.

[JDPriestly]

10. mbperrin you are right.

Too many factors influence test scores and performance. One of them is the teacher. But that is just one of many factors. In the end, those trying to measure teachers as if they were substances in a test tube will realize they have failed. A lot of good teachers will be fired in the process.

[Hannah Bell]

14. The "system" is analogous to rolling a dice. It measures nothing. It's not statistically sound.

It's not a stable measure.

It's only value is to give the ed deformers some pseudo-scientific yet opaque rationale for separating teachers into a hierarchy & making that hierarchy public.

divide & rule mccarthyism.

[Recursion]

17. That's the argument that most persuades me against value added

If it isn't more or less consistent from year to year for a given teacher, it's clearly not good at measuring something intrinsic to the teacher.

[Hannah Bell]

18. The instability also describes one of the reasons it's statistically invalid.

seriously, the only reason they're pushing it is to be able to divide teachers into sheeps & goats & have an opaque, scientific-sounding "rating" to demagogue the public with.

it's fascist politics. i'm very serious.