A single missing suffix among thousands of lines of programming code led a public school teacher in Washington, D.C., to be erroneously fired for incompetence, three teachers to miss out on $15,000 bonuses and 40 others to receive inaccurate job evaluations.
The miscalculation has raised alarms about the increasing reliance nationwide on complex “value-added” formulas that use student test scores to attempt to quantify precisely how much value teachers have added to their students’ academic performance. Those value-added metrics often carry high stakes: Teachers’ employment, pay and even their professional licenses can depend on them.
The Obama administration has used financial and policy levers, including Race to the Top grants and No Child Left Behind waivers, to nudge more states to rate teachers in part based on value-added formulas or other measures of student achievement. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has credited D.C.’s strong recent gains on national standardized tests in part to the district’s tough teacher evaluation policy, which was launched by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee. But teachers have complained that the results fluctuate wildly from year to year — and can be affected by human error, like the missing suffix in the programming code for D.C. schools.
“You can’t simply take a bunch of data, apply an algorithm and use whatever pops out of a black box to judge teachers, students and our schools,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said this week. The AFT and its affiliates have signed off on contracts that use value-added measures as a significant portion of teacher evaluations — including in D.C. — but Weingarten called the trend “very troubling” nonetheless.
The problem in D.C. stemmed from “a very small typo” inserted into complex programming code during an upgrade earlier this year, said Barbara Devaney, chief operating officer of Mathematica Policy Research, the private firm that holds the contract to calculate value-added scores for the district.
God I am SO tired of this teacher evaluation crap!
The conservatives have been trying to break the public school system for decades and it seems that they have almost achieved their goal.
Public education is the backbone of our democracy and our progress as a nation, and as Americans we should be defending it at every opportunity.
Oh and by the way that Michelle Rhee woman is a fraud, just read what research professor on education Diane Ravitch had to say about her and her methods.
This is one area that I think Obama is failing in. You cannot judge a teacher by the results odf the students. I was in education for a number of years (still am, but now I am a contracted employee for a band, not an actual school employee) and the principal didn't get along with my lead teacher, so she always got the behavior problems, the kids on meds, the ones whose parents didn't request a teacher. We had to work our butts off to get these kids caught up and reading. We had little help from parents, and zero office support. Meanwhile, the other two sections of 1st grade had parent helpers, anything they needed from the counselor and office, and yes, their kids 'scored' higher on the spring tests. Big whoop.
ReplyDeleteRhee is a scammer, and Duncan appears to be bought and paid for my the GOP. Come on, Mr. President, you are the product of public education..give the majority of American kids a break. Support teachers. Support our vital schools.
His biggest mistake was hiring Arne Duncan, also not an educator.
DeleteDuncan has a vote of no confidence from the majority of teachers in this country. Does Obama listen?
No.
And that in a nutshell is where respect for educators stands in this country.
Michelle Rhee has a degree in Government and a master's in policy. She is NOT an educator and never was. She just saw it as an opportunity for a quick buck.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest, I have been a teacher for 35 years. I love teaching. But I have seen a lot of changes over my career and not for the better.
I'll be retiring in June 2015 and I am ready. As much as I love teaching I hate what is being done to it by amateurs that have more authority than the experts in the classroom. I'm tired of the bashing, the micromanaging, the disrespect, the ingratitude.
Once I retire that will be it. I won't sub. I won't consult. I won't volunteer. I will not be back for any reason.
Sometimes you just have to let someone who thinks they know it all fail, then tell them "told you so" before they'll finally shut up and listen.
Unfortunately, by the time that finally happens, our public school system in this country will have been irreparably destroyed.
I've spent the last 15 years of my career trying to prevent that from happening and I'm tired and just can't fight any more.
So next year I will be letting go and concentrating on my own classroom and it will be the best teaching I will have done in my entire career.
Not that anyone will notice.
>>>Unfortunately, by the time that finally happens, our public school system in this country will have been irreparably destroyed. <<<
ReplyDeleteThat has always been the real plan behind education deform.
The GOP (well, the corporations behind them) has been after two pots of Federal tax dollars that they've never been able to access. Social Security and Education.
DeleteIn the last 30 years they've swung back and forth between trying to privatize them. Under Bush they passed No Child Left Behind that started to drain public school budgets. With a 2014 deadline they turned their attention back to Social Security. They managed to change the rules on pensions to make them look insolvent and to allow Wall St. to access previously unavailable pension money toward investments. When Wall St. tanked they had to switch from their attack on privatizing Social Security back to education.
People are still smarting from the Wall St. crash. But give them time and you'll see them switch back to privatizing Social Security. It will accelerate once they've got their hands on enough education money to tip the balance.