VAM May be Suspended for Another Year

Responding partly to growing uncertainty and declining support for PARCC, the Act 240 subcommitee made a wise recommendation that VAM be suspended for at least one more year.
This could remove much apprehension by ELA and Math teachers for next school year if the recommendation is approoved by BESE.

One of the key arguements in winning the extended delay was made by Louisiana Association of Principals  Executive Director Debbie Schum. Schum pointed out that in school systems where parents opt their children out of taking the PARCC, teachers could be saddled with unfair VAM scores and poor evaluations based on the zeros assigned to such students for the purpose of accountability.

The original motion for the suspension was made by State Rep. Frank Hoffmann, the original sponsor of the VAM system. Hoffmann has always insisted that he would try to stop the program if it turned out to be unfair, unworkable or innaccurate. In my opinion it failed on all three counts.

LAE president Debbie Meaux and LAP Exec. Schum succeeded in getting approval of several other motions to fine tune varioius aspects of the COMPASS evaluation system. LFT representatives also participated in formulating key proposals for improvements in the evaluation system.

Other major improvements are being recommended for VAM and COMPASS including the appointment of a special committee of principals, teachers and other educators with the responsibility of fixing the many flaws in the observation rubric.

Watch this blog for a more complete report as soon as I can review the committee actions.

This is good News!