A new study finds that students fare better in K-8 schools than in traditional middle schools. (Post, WSJ)
Value-added models to assess performance are already in use widely, including in NYC. (Times)
A new state law mandates that schools tell parents if bedbugs appear in the building. (Daily News)
A judge ruled that the city can cut school bus service to some middle-school students. (WSJ, NY1)
Teachers union head Michael Mulgrew says city schools should drop test prep this year. (Daily News)
The state has advised school districts not to ask enrollees about their immigration status. (Times)
Parents at the private Horace Mann School are suing over their son’s 3-day suspension. (Times)
Texas is encouraging schools to pool their resources to pay for bureaucratic help. (Reuters)
Michael M.
How will “value-added models” account for tutors and involved parents… or the absence thereof?
“Value-added models” are starting to remind me of “subliminal advertising”: it’s not whether they sold product, it’s whether the ad campaign could be sold to gullible consumer goods product managers. Same fleece. Different sheep.
Math teacher Bklyn
It won’t many students only do well on those tests because of prep-books that parents by and tutoring test programs that students attend. So some students’ teacherd do not have a major influence on their test scores.
Michael M.
I love GS, but the teaser about the Mulgrew editorial in the DailyNews buries the lede:
It’s not so much that Mulgrew wants test prep dropped, as he is saying that the entire Score-apalooza throws the entire Kleinberg strategy into disarray.
To paraphrase Mr. Mulgrew:
1) Test prep ain’t teaching. (Muppet News Flash for Kleinberg; “Duh!” for the rest of us.)
2) The Achievement Gap is hardly closed — it’s gaping.
3) High School is no place for well more than the 3% of kids coming out of 8th grade who were formerly ranked at Level 1.
4) Data, shmatta!
I would add, Score-apalooza, had the news broken a few months earlier, would have had a potent impact on the last mayoral election.
Heck, given the boosterism of the NYDN editorial page, I’m almost amazed it got printed.
I noticed that…
MM brought out good points about the “value-added models” with respect to tutoring students,etc.
I would like to know how is it going to be used when there are so many program changes at the high school level. A student might be in social studies, period 4 for two weeks and then changed to another teacher, on the third week. There are those students who seem to get in trouble constantly are in the save room more often than classes or have several principal/superintendent suspensions. How is the “value-added models” used here? Who’s responsibility for that student so as to add those values?
Here’s another concern. The student who moves away for two months to live temporarily with a relative and then comes back? When students move away and then come back, is there a “value-subtracted model” so teachers can keep track of tally added and subtracted values?
Peter
VAM only impacts teachers in grade 3-8 whose students take the State ELA and Math tests …
my question: what are the qualities of the teachers in the top 10% and bottom 10% over a three year span?
From what I understand in NYC the Teacher Data Reports are a form of VAM, many teachers had wide swings in the two years that scores were distributed, making the scores useless. However, for those teachers whose scores are consistent the scores can be used to identify “particular teaching techniques or qualities” for use in pre-service and in-service professional development and mentoring.
I noticed that…
Peter, I understand that teachers’ tenure in grade 3-8 will be based on TDR (also known as VAM), which I don’t agree with this evaluative system to grant/deny tenure. Nonetheless, the reason why I bring this up is the mere fact that there will be HS principals who never taught a class or taught for less than the required years to get tenure that will use VAM at the HS level. Next thing you know HS teachers (untenured) will be monitored by the principal, checking if the VAM is implemented. Look at the freaking SMART Goals that principals were asking teachers to compile of each and every student at the HS level. How about the freaking curriculum binders that teachers had to have ready at the end of the school year showing all 125-150 students’ work, lessons, resource material, yada, yada, yada. This is what happens when you have principals out there who will look at a strategy or model or approach and then feel that it can be implemented across the board. That why I mentioned it.
However, the following statement I made does apply to grades 3-8:
“There are those students who seem to get in trouble constantly are in the save room more often than classes or have several principal/superintendent suspensions. How is the “value-added models” used here? Who’s responsibility for that student so as to add those values?”
Is there an answer for that?
Peter
I Noticed That
VAM methodology, a type of regression analysis, allows u to include whatever variables u chose into the equation, you could add suspensions, attendance, SES status, the NYC model is designed by the VARC at the U of Wisconsin and to the best of my knowledge have not made the methodolgy public.
Read a recent paper from the Economic Policy Institute that raises a number of significant issues
I am at a loss to figure out how VAM is applicable to HS teachers. The new State Evaluation model (begin in 2011-12) will use a locally negotiated model for the “other” 20% … maybe student portfolios evaluated by peers.
Michael M.
Peter nails it with “whatever variables u (sic) choose.”
As with many things in quasi-science, you only find what you look for.
Michael M.
Tying two themes here together, how can VAM possibly be meaningful if the underlying tests are bunk?
It’s one thing to give 98% of the schools A’s and B’s, and later say “oops” — it’s quite another to use such data shmatta to pass judgment on teachers’ (let alone administrators’) careers.
Peter
Michael:
Statistical analysis is a valid mathematical tool, u (in a decade or less “you” will be an archaic usage) can run huge sets of data, adjust for variables, and within an error range draw conclusions. The report card school grades cut scores were arbitrarily set by the DOE. If they determine that the bottom 5% is an “F” and the top 40% an “A” that decision does not reflect the test scores, it reflects a subjective judgment.
If over an extended period of time, in LA the time period was seven years, the scores in a particular teacher’s classroom are well below those of other teachers teaching similar kids, should management “intervene”? And, conversely, if a teacher’s scores are well above those teaching similar kids, should management investigate the qualities that teacher possess?
The Teacher Data Reports in NYC have only two years of scores, the methodolgy is not, to the best of my knowlege, available, and there are wide discrepancies from year to year. At this point the scores are not “valid and reliable” indicators of teacher quality.
As the methodology improves, the data sets grow over time, the “validity” and “reliability” will increase. VAM scores should NEVER be the sole tool in any teacher evalauation, however, it cannot be ignored. For example I believe peer review, the judgment of other colleagues should be part of any teacher evaluation metric.
Should teacher evaluations continue to be the domain of the school leader, using a range of imputs, or, as in some other nation’s school systems, the role of outside evaluators?
Michael M.
Peter,
Points all well taken, and I’m more than fine with numbers. Meaningful ones.
A few points:
1) Para 1: The school evaluation grades were based on “progress”, which amplified “inflation.”
2) Para 2: What about comparisons across different schools? Two teachers within a school? Trust the principal and spare the Cray Superputer.
3) Para 4: What, no parent input?
A: School leader, aka Principal. The last thing we need are “outside evaluators”, whether Tweedies or consultants. After all, we’re all about principal “empowerment” here in NYC. Ironic, ain’t it?
http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator
Mulgrew is correct, of course, that the testing craze is not productive. It’s a curious message from someone who’s just co-created and endorsed a plan to tie teacher evaluation and employment directly to test scores.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.