Court Throws out VAM Teacher Evaluation System in Texas

This article describes the basis for a court decision in Texas throwing out the VAM based teacher evaluation system there. The same arguments against VAM are valid in Louisiana.

Here are the key findings in Texas against the use of VAM for evaluating teachers:

• The VAM system which was originally designed to measure farm efficiency is not comparable to teaching effectiveness.
• The American Statistical Association found that the impact of teacher quality on student scores was 14% at most. All the other factors such as socioeconomic deficiencies make the teacher portion almost insignificant in determining VAM.
• Some administrators were found to be basing the teacher observation portion of the teacher evaluation on the teacher's VAM score which totally invalidated the observation portion.
• High stakes tests which are used as the basis for VAM were never designed for teacher evaluation.
• The stability of VAM scores was found to be so erratic that it could not be relied upon to reliably evaluate teachers.

In addition to the flaws found in Texas, other states have fired teachers based on VAM only to find out later that the teacher from the previous year had cheated or otherwise improperly boosted student scores causing the next year VAM to be artificially low.

The major proponent of continuing to use VAM in Louisiana is the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI). LABI has appointed itself as the expert on teacher evaluation, and uses its power over the legislature to keep the VAM evaluation going. LABI likes the VAM system because it results in stack ranking of teachers, with the bottom portion of the ranking being subject to dismissal or humiliation leading to resignations. It is interesting to note that when stack ranking was used in private business it was quickly abandoned because it resulted in productivity losses. Why then is LABI insisting it be used on teachers?

LABI also does not take into account that only about 35% of teachers are subject to VAM because the other 65% do not teach students taking state tested subjects. This fact puts VAM rated teachers at a disadvantage in receiving merit pay or facing dismissal. Why would Louisiana want to continue a system of evaluation that punishes only certain teachers teaching core subjects? This is serious discrimination!

Educators May be Taking Charge of Their Profession

This recent article in The Guardian suggests a promising new activism by the members of the teaching profession. Up until the surprising recent job actions by teachers in several states I had assumed that teachers would continue to be bullied and blamed for problems in education with new waves of recrimination and reform while public funding for schools continued to be reduced to finance tax cuts for huge corporations.

But the author of the Guardian article, Thomas Frank, believes that teachers are achieving a new level of respect and support from the public and even the politicians who have been bashing teachers in recent years. Here is his account of this apparent change in attitude of teachers:

"For decades we have been told that the way to fix education is to fire people but red-shirted marchers across the country have shown the power of solidarity.

What I like best about the wave of teachers’ strikes that have swept America these last few months is how they punch so brutally and so directly in the face of the number one neoliberal educational fantasy of the last decade: that all we need to do to fix public education is fire people.

Tithi Bhattacharya 

 

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Fire teachers, specifically. They need to learn fear and discipline. That’s what education “reformers” have told us for years. If only, the fantasy goes, we could slay the foot-dragging unions and the red-tape rules that keep mediocre teachers in their jobs, then things would be different. If only some nice “tech millionaires” would step in and help us fire people! If only we could get a thousand clones of Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor who fired so many people she even once fired someone on TV! "

Here is an interesting reform fact: The idea of value added evaluations (VAM) and the accompaning "stack ranking" of teachers' evaluations based upon the standardized test scores of their students came from a similar evaluation program that was developed at Microsoft Corp. (you know, Bill Gates' company). The idea was to fire the bottom 5 or 10 percent of the employees and give merit pay to the top 5 or 10 percent. Microsoft abandoned the evaluation system after only a couple of years because they found out that it damaged collaboration between employees and actually resulted in lower overall productivity. The value added system in Louisiana education has had the same negative result, but our big business bosses at LABI have refused to admit it was a mistake and still instruct their puppets in the legislature to keep VAM (as a reduced percentage of the teacher evaluation). 

The Guardian article continues:

"Now just look at what’s happened. We’ve seen enormous teacher protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona, with more on the way. Actions that look very much like strikes by people who, in some of these states, are legally forbidden to strike. It was the perfect opportunity for education “reformers” to fire people, and fire them en masse. It was the politicians’ chance to show us what a tough-minded boss could do."

And in most cases, it was state governments that capitulated. It was hard-hearted believers in tax cuts and austerity and discipline who caved, lest they themselves get fired by voters at the next opportunity. 

Only a short while ago it looked as though organized labor was in deep trouble, with Republican governors declaring war on public employees and a supreme court case threatening to defund public-sector unions. 

Now, in a beautiful reversal, it is the shibboleths of the conservative era that are shaking. Not because the DC punditburo has changed its mind about things, of course. It’s happening because vast throngs of people in red T-shirts have gone marching through the streets of their red-state towns to let the world know they’ve had enough."

Now that the non-educators have had free rein to experiment with students and teachers for almost 20 years resulting in stagnation of test scores and a total demoralization of teachers, maybe we should give professional educators a chance.

Teachers Have Strong Support and Respect by the General Public

Teachers who took the extreme action of temporarily shutting down schools in several states to push for better teacher salaries and funding for materials of instruction have been pleasantly surprised by almost unanimous public support! Teachers who have been demoralized by low pay and a lack of respect from governors, and legislators have found out that the general public supports them and wants them well paid and respected. What a surprise for teachers who for the past twenty years have been told by politicians to just shut up and teach better! Now several state legislators and governors have responded by approving teacher raises and more funding for instruction. As teachers wrap up the school year, exhausted and burned out by the latest round of standardized testing abuse, they can at least hold up their heads with the knowledge that most parents really like them and respect them.

In addition, in response to the teacher job actions, most news stories and commentators have also been firmly on the side of teachers. There has been almost no condemnation of the teacher strikes by opinion makers in the media. I think that most people respect teachers for standing up for themselves and their students.

This is a welcome relief from the years of teacher bashing by politicians and self appointed education reformers. Teachers have been the targets of education reformers since the passage of "no child left behind" federal law in 2001. Teachers have been and still are blamed for the lack of academic performance of many of their students even though many other public school students are doing quite well. It has been assumed by most non-educator education reformers that if some students have low scores on standardized tests that it must be because of bad teachers. Our state even tried to tie teacher pay to student performance Reformers have classified schools as failing based on student test scores.

It has been considered politically incorrect to ever utter the term "failing students". Students who score poorly on the latest standardized tests are referred to as "struggling students". The implication is that such students are somehow being held back by inferior schools and teachers.

Legislators claim to have implemented higher standards, but most recently in Louisiana, our State Board of Education has effectively removed all standards for promotion of students from one grade to the next. This blog has pointed out the lack of student standards in recent posts.

Only teachers and schools can now fail according to our latest regulations. Students who score poorly are assumed by reformers to be the victims of our failing schools and teachers. None of this makes any sense at all.

The fact is that many students who perform poorly in school are not struggling with school. Some are not making even the tiniest effort to learn the required material in school. There are many factors that cause students to lack motivation to perform in school. The real culprits are usually poverty, hunger, illness, lack of sleep, insecurity, physical and mental abuse, and terrible role models. Many children start school knowing only half the words that are understood by typical middle class students and  often have no books in their homes. Some have no permanent homes and have no assurance of their next meal, much less  time for homework.

Many of the reformers who formed "no excuses" charter schools claiming to be able to overcome the effects of poverty on student performance, are often looking for ways to dump their low performing students either to the real public schools or even the streets. Does anyone remember "Advance Baton Rouge".

Our LDOE is no longer interested in taking over failing schools because takeover schools have often done worse under state control.

I can only hope that teachers everywhere will insist on being treated as professionals who should be given proper control over their profession just as other professions. Teachers who are teaching in challenging schools need to be supported and rewarded not bashed for conditions over which they have no control.

My advice to teachers today: Join and get active in your teacher union, (Not the fake one, but the LAE or LFT) which is your mechanism for improving your lot and that of your students. Vote out the enemies of public education and continue insisting on being treated as professionals even if you have to go on strike!