Monthly Archives: September 2017

Call for Stories for An Education/Test-Based Musical

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Anne Heintz is a teacher and writer whom I met a couple of months ago. She is working on a musical about teachers in high-stakes testing environments, including environments in which high-stakes consequences (e.g., merit pay, tenure decisions, contract renewal, termination) are being attached to value-added model (VAM) output.
Accordingly, she is gathering stories from educational practitioners including teachers, principals, and staff, who are new to the profession as well as seasoned professionals, about their experiences working in such environments.
While it may not be the easiest sell to a producer, this topic has it all: absurdism, humor, and the pathos of seeing good people fighting for autonomy, caught in a storm of externally imposed aims.
Hence, if you have an especially good anecdote, an insider perspective, if you want to help her turn these stories into art, so that she and her creative colleagues can reach out to others and make these stories known, please send contact her directly via email at:
She is trying to get “it” as right as she can. Some of you out there may be the key!
Thank you in advance!

Much of the Same in Louisiana

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As I wrote into a recent post: “…it seems that the residual effects of the federal governments’ former [teacher evaluation reform policies and] efforts are still dominating states’ actions with regards to educational accountability.” In other words, many states are still moving forward, more specifically in terms of states’ continued reliance on the use of value-added models (VAMs) for increased teacher accountability purposes, regardless of the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Related, three articles were recently published online (here, here, and here) about how in Louisiana, the state’s old and controversial teacher evaluation system as based on VAMs is resuming after a four-year hiatus. It was put on hold when the state was in the process of adopting The Common Core.

This, of course, has serious implications for the approximately 50,000 teachers throughout the state, or the unknown proportion of them who are now VAM-eligible, believed to be around 15,000 (i.e., approximately 30% which is inline with other state trends).

While the state’s system has been partly adjusted, whereas 50% of a teacher’s evaluation was to be based on growth in student achievement over time using VAMs, and the new system has reduced this percentage down to 35%, now teachers of mathematics, English, science, and social studies are also to be held accountable using VAMs. The other 50% of these teachers’ evaluation scores are to be assessed using observations with 15% based on student learning targets (a.k.a., student learning objectives (SLOs)).

Evaluation system output are to be used to keep teachers from earning tenure, or to cause teachers to lose the tenure they might already have.

Among other controversies and issues of contention noted in these articles (see again here, here, and here), one of note (highlighted here) is also that now, “even after seven years”… the state is still “unable to truly explain or provide the actual mathematical calculation or formula’ used to link test scores with teacher ratings. ‘This obviously lends to the distrust of the entire initiative among the education community.”

A spokeswoman for the state, however, countered the transparency charge noting that the VAM formula has been on the state’s department of education website, “and updated annually, since it began in 2012.” She did not provide a comment about how to adequately explain the model, perhaps because she could not either.

Just because it might be available does not mean it is understandable and, accordingly, usable. This we have come to know from administrators, teachers, and yes, state-level administrators in charge of these models (and their adoption and implementation) for years. This is, indeed, one of the largest criticisms of VAMs abound.

“Virginia SGP” Overruled

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You might recall from a post I released approximately 1.5 years ago a story about how a person who self-identifies as “Virginia SGP,” who is also now known as Brian Davison — a parent of two public school students in the affluent Loudoun, Virginia area (hereafter referred to as Virginia SGP), sued the state of Virginia in an attempt to force the release of teachers’ student growth percentile (SGP) data for all teachers across the state.

More specifically, Virginia SGP “pressed for the data’s release because he thinks parents have a right to know how their children’s teachers are performing, information about public employees that exists but has so far been hidden. He also want[ed] to expose what he sa[id was] Virginia’s broken promise to begin [to use] the data to evaluate how effective the state’s teachers are.” The “teacher data should be out there,” especially if taxpayers are paying for it.

In January of 2016, a Richmond, Virginia judge ruled in Virginia SGP’s favor. The following April, a Richmond Circuit Court judge ruled that the Virginia Department of Education was to also release Loudoun County Public Schools’ SGP scores by school and by teacher, including teachers’ identifying information. Accordingly, the judge noted that the department of education and the Loudoun school system failed to “meet the burden of proof to establish an exemption’ under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act [FOIA]” preventing the release of teachers’ identifiable information (i.e., beyond teachers’ SGP data). The court also ordered VDOE to pay Davison $35,000 to cover his attorney fees and other costs.

As per an article published last week, the Virginia Supreme Court overruled this former ruling, noting that the department of education did not have to provide teachers’ identifiable information along with teachers’ SGP data, after all.

See more details in the actual article here, but ultimately the Virginia Supreme Court concluded that the Richmond Circuit Court “erred in ordering the production of these documents containing teachers’ identifiable information.” The court added that “it was [an] error for the circuit court to order that the School Board share in [Virginia SGP’s] attorney’s fees and costs,” pushing that decision (i.e., the decision regarding how much to pay, if anything at all, in legal fees) back down to the circuit court.

Virginia SGP plans to ask for a rehearing of this ruling. See also his comments on this ruling here.