Category Archives: From the Field

The Utility of Student Perception Surveys to Give Teachers Feedback : An Introduction to the My Teacher Questionnaire

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This is another guest post for the followers of this blog.

In short, Rikkert van der Lans of the University of Groningen’s Department of Teacher Education, emailed me a few months ago about an article I published with one of my PhD students titled “Student perception surveys for K-12 teacher evaluation in the United States: A survey of surveys.” In this piece, he was interested in our review of the “many untested [student] questionnaires that are applied by schools [to evaluate teachers],” and “thought [I] might also be interested [in his and his colleagues’] work around the ‘My Teacher’ questionnaire.” Apparently, it has been applied globally across 15 different countries and, importantly, not only given it is research-based but also researched with psychometric characteristics actually warranting its use. Hence, I asked him to write a guest post, particularly for those of you who, post the U.S.’s passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; see prior posts about ESSA here and here), are looking to implement a researched/validated instrument for student evaluation purposes. Below is his post.

*****

Thank you Audrey Amrein-Beardsley for inviting me to write this blog post. I live in the Netherlands and despite living across the Atlantic, I recognize many of the issues identified by you and your coauthor with student surveys, including their increased use, their novelty, and the small knowledge base about how to use them (reliably and validly). In my writing, I mentioned our own validated survey: the “My Teacher” questionnaire (MTQ) which currently is in use in 15 countries,1 with English and Spanish2 versions also having been developed.

In many ways, the MTQ is similar to other survey instruments, which is a good thing but not much of a selling point. So, let me introduce some evidence of validity unique to the MTQ and related to the topics (1) formative feedback and (2) use of multiple measures. Unique to the MTQ is the evidence in support of an interpretation of scores in terms of teachers’ stage of development (for details see these publications 3, 4, 5). I have myself used the MTQ to give feedback (face-to-face) with over 200 teachers, and what they generally appreciate most of the MTQ is that the outcomes can tell them: 1) what they have already achieved (e.g., ”you are skilled in classroom management and in structuring front class explanations”); 2) where they are now (e.g., “your skill in interactive teaching methods is currently developing”), and; 3) what according to our evidence is the most logical next step for improvement (e.g., focus on training and/or ask advice from colleagues about how to promote classroom interaction on the subject matter, like collaborative group work or having student explain topics to each other).     

The MTQ has been developed to complement the International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching (ICALT) observation instrument. The MTQ provides reliable information about teachers’ teaching quality 6, 7, but it is less sensitive to indicate lesson-to-lesson fluctuations in teaching quality. Therefore, the MTQ is valuable to set professional development goals for teachers, and it is advised to use the ICALT observation instrument to coach and train teachers.

The most recent evidence indicates that the MTQ can be used to inform ICALT observers 8. For example, if the MTQ outcomes in class A suggest that a beginning teacher A “is skilled in classroom management and is currently developing skill in front class explanation” then observers visiting teacher A in class A can be prompted to attend to issues with in front class explanations only. This type of use is only warranted when instruments are administered within the same class, however.

Both the MTQ and the ICALT instruments are freely available for use. The ICALT is published open access here 9. The MTQ is available upon request by mailing to directielo@rug.nl. Any questions can also be sent to this email address.

Again thank you for this opportunity. 

Rikkert van der Lans

University of Groningen

Department of Teacher Education

The Netherlands

Research gate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rikkert_Van_Der_Lans2

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rikkert-van-der-lans-986a2910/

Twitter: @RikkertvdLans

A Win in New Jersey: Tests to Now Account for 5% of Teachers’ Evaluations

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Phil Murphy, the Governor of New Jersey, is keeping his campaign promise to parents, students, and educators, according to a news article just posted by the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA; see here). As per the New Jersey Commissioner of Education – Dr. Lamont Repollet, who was a classroom teacher himself — throughout New Jersey, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test scores will now account for just 5% of a teacher’s evaluation, which is down from 30% as mandated for approxunatelt five years prior by both Murphy’s and Repollet’s predecessors.

Alas, the New Jersey Department of Education and the Murphy administration have “shown their respect for the research.” Because state law continues to require that standardized test scores play some role in teacher evaluation, a decrease to 5% is a victory, perhaps with a revocation of this law forthcoming.

“Today’s announcement is another step by Gov. Murphy toward keeping a campaign promise to rid New Jersey’s public schools of the scourge of high-stakes testing. While tens of thousands of families across the state have already refused to subject their children to PARCC, schools are still required to administer it and educators are still subject to its arbitrary effects on their evaluation. By dramatically lowering the stakes for the test, Murphy is making it possible for educators and students alike to focus more time and attention on real teaching and learning.” Indeed, “this is a victory of policy over politics, powered by parents and educators.”

Way to go New Jersey!

An Important but False Claim about the EVAAS in Ohio

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Just this week in Ohio – a state that continues to contract with SAS Institute Inc. for test-based accountability output from its Education Value-Added Assessment System – SAS’s EVAAS Director, John White, “defended” the use of his model statewide, during which he also claimed before Ohio’s Joint Education Oversight Committee (JEOC) that “poorer schools do no better or worse on student growth than richer schools” when using the EVAAS model.

For the record, this is false. First, about five years ago in Ohio, while the state of Ohio was using the same EVAAS model, Ohio’s The Plain Dealer in conjunction with StateImpact Ohio found that Ohio’s “value-added results show that districts, schools and teachers with large numbers of poor students tend to have lower value-added results than those that serve more-affluent ones.” They also found that:

  • Value-added scores were 2½ times higher on average for districts where the median family income is above $35,000 than for districts with income below that amount.
  • For low-poverty school districts, two-thirds had positive value-added scores — scores indicating students made more than a year’s worth of progress.
  • For high-poverty school districts, two-thirds had negative value-added scores — scores indicating that students made less than a year’s progress.
  • Almost 40 percent of low-poverty schools scored “Above” the state’s value-added target, compared with 20 percent of high-poverty schools.
  • At the same time, 25 percent of high-poverty schools scored “Below” state value-added targets while low-poverty schools were half as likely to score “Below.” See the study here.

Second, about three years ago, similar results were evidenced in Pennsylvania – another state that uses the same EVAAS statewide, although in Pennsylvania the model is known as the Pennsylvania Education Value-Added Assessment System (PVAAS). Research for Action (click here for more about the organization and its mission), more specifically, evidenced that bias also appears to exist particularly at the school-level. See more here.

Third, and related, in Arizona – my state that is also using growth to measure school-level value-added, albeit not with the EVAAS – the same issues with bias are being evidenced when measuring school-level growth for similar purposes. Just two days ago, for example, The Arizona Republic evidenced that the “schools with ‘D’ and ‘F’ letter grades” recently released by the state board of education “were more likely to have high percentages of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, an indicator of poverty” (see more here). In actuality, the correlation is as high or “strong” as r = -0.60 (e.g., correlation coefficient values that land between r = ± 0.50 and ± 1.00 are often said to indicate “strong” correlations). What this means in more pragmatic terms is that the better the school letter grade received the lower the level of poverty at the school (i.e., a negative correlation which indicates in this case that as the letter grade goes up the level of poverty goes down).

While the state of Arizona combines with growth a proficiency measure (always strongly correlated with poverty), and this explains at least some of the strength of this correlation (although combining proficiency with growth is also a practice endorsed and encouraged by John White), this strong correlation is certainly at issue.

More specifically at issue, though, should be how to get any such correlation down to zero or near-zero (if possible), which is the only correlation that would, in fact, warrant any such claim, again as noted to the JEOC this week in Ohio, that “poorer schools do no better or worse on student growth than richer schools”.

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!

Large-Scale Test Scores to Officially Count for 40% V. 50% of Nevada Teachers’ Annual Evaluations

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Written into my last post here were “The ‘Top Ten’ Research-Based Reasons Why Large-Scale, Standardized Tests Should Not Be Used to Evaluate Teachers…” really anywhere, but specific to this post in the state of Nevada. Accordingly, this post pertained to what were then the ongoing legislative negotiations in Nevada, and a testimony that I submitted and titled as such.

Well, it looks like those in Nevada who, as detailed more fully in another post here, were “trying to eliminate — or at least reduce — the role [students’] standardized tests play[ed] in evaluations of teachers, saying educators [were] being unfairly judged on factors outside of their control,” lost their legislative fight.

As per their proposed AB320, the state would have eliminated large-scale standardized test results as a mandated teacher evaluation measure, but the state would have allowed local assessments to account for 20% of a teacher’s total evaluation.

On Friday, however, the Nevada Independent released an article about how the state, instead, passed a “compromised bill.” Accordingly, large-scale standardized test scores are to still to be used to evaluate teachers, although they are to now count for 40% versus 50% of Nevada teachers’ overall evaluation scores. This is clearly a loss given the bill was passed as “something [so] much closer to the system already in place” (i.e., moving from 50% to 40%).

This is all  unfortunate, also given this outcome seemed to come down to a vote that fell along party lines (i.e., in favor of the 40% “compromise”), and this was ultimately signed by Nevada’s Republican Governor Sandoval, who also had the authority to see AB320 through (i.e., not in its revised form).

Apparently, Nevada will continue to put up a good fight. Hopefully in the future, the state will also fall in line with what seems to be trending across other states (e.g., Connecticut, Texas), in which legislators are removing such misinformed, arbitrary, and commonsensical (i.e., without research evidence and support) mandates and requirements.

Also Last Thursday in Nevada: The “Top Ten” Research-Based Reasons Why Large-Scale, Standardized Tests Should Not Be Used to Evaluate Teachers

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Last Thursday was a BIG day in terms of value-added models (VAMs). For those of you who missed it, US Magistrate Judge Smith ruled — in Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT) et al. v. Houston Independent School District (HISD) — that Houston teacher plaintiffs’ have legitimate claims regarding how their EVAAS value-added estimates, as used (and abused) in HISD, was a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment due process protections (i.e., no state or in this case organization shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process). See post here: “A Big Victory in Court in Houston.” On the same day, “we” won another court case — Texas State Teachers Association v. Texas Education Agency —  on which The Honorable Lora J. Livingston ruled that the state was to remove all student growth requirements from all state-level teacher evaluation systems. In other words, and in the name of increased local control, teachers throughout Texas will no longer be required to be evaluated using their students’ test scores. See prior post here: “Another Big Victory in Court in Texas.”

Also last Thursday (it was a BIG day, like I said), I testified, again, regarding a similar provision (hopefully) being passed in the state of Nevada. As per a prior post here, Nevada’s “Democratic lawmakers are trying to eliminate — or at least reduce — the role [students’] standardized tests play in evaluations of teachers, saying educators are being unfairly judged on factors outside of their control.” More specifically, as per AB320 the state would eliminate statewide, standardized test results as a mandated teacher evaluation measure but allow local assessments to account for 20% of a teacher’s total evaluation. AB320 is still in work session. It has the votes in committee and on the floor, thus far.

The National Center on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), unsurprisingly (see here and here), submitted (unsurprising) testimony against AB320 that can be read here, and I submitted testimony (I think, quite effectively 😉 ) refuting their “research-based” testimony, and also making explicit what I termed “The “Top Ten” Research-Based Reasons Why Large-Scale, Standardized Tests Should Not Be Used to Evaluate Teachers” here. I have also pasted my submission below, in case anybody wants to forward/share any of my main points with others, especially others in similar positions looking to impact state or local educational policies in similar ways.

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May 4, 2017

Dear Assemblywoman Miller:

Re: The “Top Ten” Research-Based Reasons Why Large-Scale, Standardized Tests Should Not Be Used to Evaluate Teachers

While I understand that the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) submitted a letter expressing their opposition against Assembly Bill (AB) 320, it should be officially noted that, counter to that which the NCTQ wrote into its “research-based” letter,[1] the American Statistical Association (ASA), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the National Academy of Education (NAE), and other large-scale, highly esteemed, professional educational and educational research/measurement associations disagree with the assertions the NCTQ put forth. Indeed, the NCTQ is not a nonpartisan research and policy organization as claimed, but one of only a small handful of partisan operations still in existence and still pushing forward what is increasingly becoming dismissed as America’s ideal teacher evaluation systems (e.g., announced today, Texas dropped their policy requirement that standardized test scores be used to evaluate teachers; Connecticut moved in the same policy direction last month).

Accordingly, these aforementioned and highly esteemed organizations have all released statements cautioning all against the use of students’ large-scale, state-level standardized tests to evaluate teachers, primarily, for the following research-based reasons, that I have limited to ten for obvious purposes:

  1. The ASA evidenced that teacher effects correlate with only 1-14% of the variance in their students’ large-scale standardized test scores. This means that the other 86%-99% of the variance is due to factors outside of any teacher’s control (e.g., out-of-school and student-level variables). That teachers’ effects, as measured by large-scaled standardized tests (and not including other teacher effects that cannot be measured using large-scaled standardized tests), account for such little variance makes using them to evaluate teachers wholly irrational and unreasonable.
  1. Large-scale standardized tests have always been, and continue to be, developed to assess levels of student achievement, but not levels of growth in achievement over time, and definitely not growth in achievement that can be attributed back to a teacher (i.e., in terms of his/her effects). Put differently, these tests were never designed to estimate teachers’ effects; hence, using them in this regard is also psychometrically invalid and indefensible.
  1. Large-scale standardized tests, when used to evaluate teachers, often yield unreliable or inconsistent results. Teachers who should be (more or less) consistently effective are, accordingly, being classified in sometimes highly inconsistent ways year-to-year. As per the current research, a teacher evaluated using large-scale standardized test scores as effective one year has a 25% to 65% chance of being classified as ineffective the following year(s), and vice versa. This makes the probability of a teacher being identified as effective, as based on students’ large-scale test scores, no different than the flip of a coin (i.e., random).
  1. The estimates derived via teachers’ students’ large-scale standardized test scores are also invalid. Very limited evidence exists to support that teachers whose students’ yield high- large-scale standardized tests scores are also effective using at least one other correlated criterion (e.g., teacher observational scores, student satisfaction survey data), and vice versa. That these “multiple measures” don’t map onto each other, also given the error prevalent in all of the “multiple measures” being used, decreases the degree to which all measures, students’ test scores included, can yield valid inferences about teachers’ effects.
  1. Large-scale standardized tests are often biased when used to measure teachers’ purported effects over time. More specifically, test-based estimates for teachers who teach inordinate proportions of English Language Learners (ELLs), special education students, students who receive free or reduced lunches, students retained in grade, and gifted students are often evaluated not as per their true effects but group effects that bias their estimates upwards or downwards given these mediating factors. The same thing holds true with teachers who teach English/language arts versus mathematics, in that mathematics teachers typically yield more positive test-based effects (which defies logic and commonsense).
  1. Related, large-scale standardized tests estimates are fraught with measurement errors that negate their usefulness. These errors are caused by inordinate amounts of inaccurate and missing data that cannot be replaced or disregarded; student variables that cannot be statistically “controlled for;” current and prior teachers’ effects on the same tests that also prevent their use for making determinations about single teachers’ effects; and the like.
  1. Using large-scale standardized tests to evaluate teachers is unfair. Issues of fairness arise when these test-based indicators impact some teachers more than others, sometimes in consequential ways. Typically, as is true across the nation, only teachers of mathematics and English/language arts in certain grade levels (e.g., grades 3-8 and once in high school) can be measured or held accountable using students’ large-scale test scores. Across the nation, this leaves approximately 60-70% of teachers as test-based ineligible.
  1. Large-scale standardized test-based estimates are typically of very little formative or instructional value. Related, no research to date evidences that using tests for said purposes has improved teachers’ instruction or student achievement as a result. As per UCLA Professor Emeritus James Popham: The farther the test moves away from the classroom level (e.g., a test developed and used at the state level) the worst the test gets in terms of its instructional value and its potential to help promote change within teachers’ classrooms.
  1. Large-scale standardized test scores are being used inappropriately to make consequential decisions, although they do not have the reliability, validity, fairness, etc. to satisfy that for which they are increasingly being used, especially at the teacher-level. This is becoming increasingly recognized by US court systems as well (e.g., in New York and New Mexico).
  1. The unintended consequences of such test score use for teacher evaluation purposes are continuously going unrecognized (e.g., by states that pass such policies, and that states should acknowledge in advance of adapting such policies), given research has evidenced, for example, that teachers are choosing not to teach certain types of students whom they deem as the most likely to hinder their potentials positive effects. Principals are also stacking teachers’ classes to make sure certain teachers are more likely to demonstrate positive effects, or vice versa, to protect or penalize certain teachers, respectively. Teachers are leaving/refusing assignments to grades in which test-based estimates matter most, and some are leaving teaching altogether out of discontent or in professional protest.

[1] Note that the two studies the NCTQ used to substantiate their “research-based” letter would not support the claims included. For example, their statement that “According to the best-available research, teacher evaluation systems that assign between 33 and 50 percent of the available weight to student growth ‘achieve more consistency, avoid the risk of encouraging too narrow a focus on any one aspect of teaching, and can support a broader range of learning objectives than measured by a single test’ is false. First, the actual “best-available” research comes from over 10 years of peer-reviewed publications on this topic, including over 500 peer-reviewed articles. Second, what the authors of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Studies found was that the percentages to be assigned to student test scores were arbitrary at best, because their attempts to empirically determine such a percentage failed. This face the authors also made explicit in their report; that is, they also noted that the percentages they suggested were not empirically supported.

Nevada (Potentially) Dropping Students’ Test Scores from Its Teacher Evaluation System

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This week in Nevada “Lawmakers Mull[ed] Dropping Student Test Scores from Teacher Evaluations,” as per a recent article in The Nevada Independent (see here). This would be quite a move from 2011 when the state (as backed by state Republicans, not backed by federal Race to the Top funds, and as inspired by Michelle Rhee) passed into policy a requirement that 50% of all Nevada teachers’ evaluations were to rely on said data. The current percentage rests at 20%, but it is to double next year to 40%.

Nevada is one of a still uncertain number of states looking to retract the weight and purported “value-added” of such measures. Note also that last week Connecticut dropped some of its test-based components of its teacher evaluation system (see here). All of this is occurring, of course, post the federal passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), within which it is written that states must no longer set up teacher-evaluation systems based in significant part on their students’ test scores.

Accordingly, Nevada’s “Democratic lawmakers are trying to eliminate — or at least reduce — the role [students’] standardized tests play in evaluations of teachers, saying educators are being unfairly judged on factors outside of their control.” The Democratic Assembly Speaker, for example, said that “he’s always been troubled that teachers are rated on standardized test scores,” more specifically noting: “I don’t think any single teacher that I’ve talked to would shirk away from being held accountable…[b]ut if they’re going to be held accountable, they want to be held accountable for things that … reflect their actual work.” I’ve never met a teacher would disagree with this statement.

Anyhow, this past Monday the state’s Assembly Education Committee heard public testimony on these matters and three bills “that would alter the criteria for how teachers’ effectiveness is measured.” These three bills are as follows:

  • AB212 would prohibit the use of student test scores in evaluating teachers, while
  • AB320 would eliminate statewide [standardized] test results as a measure but allow local assessments to account for 20 percent of the total evaluation.
  • AB312 would ensure that teachers in overcrowded classrooms not be penalized for certain evaluation metrics deemed out of their control given the student-to-teacher ratio.

Many presented testimony in support of these bills over an extended period of time on Tuesday. I was also invited to speak, during which I “cautioned lawmakers against being ‘mesmerized’ by the promised objectivity of standardized tests. They have their own flaws, [I] argued, estimating that 90-95 percent of researchers who are looking at the effects of high-stakes testing agree that they’re not moving the dial [really whatsoever] on teacher performance.”

Lawmakers have until the end of tomorrow (i.e., Friday) to pass these bills outside of the committee. Otherwise, they will die.

Of course, I will keep you posted, but things are currently looking “very promising,” especially for AB320.

New Mexico’s Mountains and Molehills

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“A Concerned New Mexico Parent” sent me another blog entry for you all to review. In this post (s)he explains and illustrates another statistical shenanigan the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED) recently pulled to promote the state’s value-added approach to reform (see this parent’s prior posts here and here).

(S)he writes:

The New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED) should be ashamed of themselves.

In their explanation of the state’s NMTEACH teacher evaluation system, cutely titled “NMTEACH 101,” they present a PowerPoint slide that is numbing in it’s deceptiveness.

The entire presentation is available on their public website here (click on “NMTEACH101” under the “Teachers” heading at the top of the website to view the 34-slide presentation in its entirety).

Of particular interest to us, though, is the “proof” NMPED illustrates on slide 11 about the value of their value-added model (VAM) as related to students’ college-readiness. The slide is shown here:

scatterplot

Apparently we, as an unassuming public, are to believe that NMPED has longitudinal data showing how a VAM score from grades 3 through 12 (cor)relates to the percent of New Mexico students attending college at age 20. [This is highly unlikely, now also knowing a bit about this state’s data].

But even if we assume that such an unlikely longitudinal data set exists, we should still be disconcerted by the absolutely minimal effect of “Normalized Teacher Value Added” illustrated on the x-axis. This variable is clearly normalized so that each value represents a standard deviation (SD) with a range from -1.5 SD to + 1.5 SD — which represents a fairly significant range of values. In layman’s terms, this should cover the range from minimally effective to exemplary teachers.

So at first glance, the regression line (or slope) appears impressive. But after a second and more critical glance, we notice that the range of improvement is from roughly 36% to 37.8% — a decidedly and significantly much less impressive result.

In other words, by choosing to present and distort both the x- and y-axes this way, NMPED manages to make a statistical mountain out of what is literally a statistical molehill of change!

Shame on NMPED, again!

See prior posts about New Mexico, for example, here, as also related to the preliminary injunction already granted but also ongoing lawsuit, for example, here.

A Case of VAM-Based Chaos in Florida

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Within a recent post, I wrote about my recent “silence” explaining that, apparently, post the passage of federal government’s (January 1, 2016) passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that no longer requires teachers to be evaluated by their student’s tests score using VAMs (see prior posts on this here and here), “crazy” VAM-related events have apparently subsided. While I noted in the post that this also did not mean that certain states and districts are not still drinking (and overdosing on) the VAM-based Kool-Aid, what I did not note is that the ways by which I get many of the stories I cover on this blog is via Google Alerts. This is where I have noticed a significant decline in VAM-related stories. Clearly, however, the news outlets often covered via Google Alerts don’t include district-level stories, so to cover these we must continue to rely on our followers (i.e., teachers, administrators, parents, students, school board members, etc.) to keep the stories coming.

Coincidentally — Billy Townsend, who is running for a school board seat in Polk County, Florida (district size = 100K students) — sent me one such story. As an edublogger himself, he actually sent me three blog posts (see post #1, post #2, and post #3 listed by order of relevance) capturing what is happening in his district, again, as situated under the state of Florida’s ongoing, VAM-based, nonsense. I’ve summarized the situation below as based on his three posts.

In short, the state ordered the district to dismiss a good number of its teachers as per their VAM scores when this school year started. “[T]his has been Florida’s [educational reform] model for nearly 20 years [actually since 1979, so 35 years]: Choose. Test. Punish. Stigmatize. Segregate. Turnover.” Because the district already had a massive teacher shortage as well, however, these teachers were replaced with Kelly Services contracted substitute teachers. Thereafter, district leaders decided that this was not “a good thing,” and they decided that administrators and “coaches” would temporarily replace the substitute teachers to make the situation “better.” While, of course, the substitutes’ replacements did not have VAM scores themselve, they were nonetheless deemed fit to teach and clearly more fit to teach than the teachers who were terminated as based on their VAM scores.

According to one teacher who anonymously wrote about her terminated teacher colleagues, and one of the district’s “best” teachers: “She knew our kids well. She understood how to reach them, how to talk to them. Because she ‘looked like them’ and was from their neighborhood, she [also] had credibility with the students and parents. She was professional, always did what was best for students. She had coached several different sports teams over the past decade. Her VAM score just wasn’t good enough.”

Consequently, this has turned into a “chaotic reality for real kids and adults” throughout the county’s schools, and the district and state apparently realized this by “threaten[ing] all of [the district’s] teachers with some sort of ethics violation if they talk about what’s happening” throughout the district. While “[t]he repetition of stories that sound just like this from [the districts’] schools is numbing and heartbreaking at the same time,” the state, district, and school board, apparently, “has no interest” in such stories.

Put simply, and put well as this aligns with our philosophy here: “Let’s [all] consider what [all of this] really means: [Florida] legislators do not want to hear from you if you are communicating a real experience from your life at a school — whether you are a teacher, parent, or student. Your experience doesn’t matter. Only your test score.”

Isn’t that the unfortunate truth; hence, and with reference to the introduction above, please do keep these relatively more invisible studies coming so that we can share out with the nation and make such stories more visible and accessible. VAMs, again, are alive and well, just perhaps in more undisclosed ways, like within districts as is the case here.

Virginia SGP’s Side of the Story

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In one of my most recent posts I wrote about how Virginia SGP, aka parent Brian Davison, won in court against the state of Virginia, requiring them to release teachers’ Student Growth Percentile (SGP) scores. Virginia SGP is a very vocal promoter of the use of SGPs to evaluate teachers’ value-added (although many do not consider the SGP model to be a value-added model (VAM); see general differences between VAMs and SGPs here). Regardless, he sued the state of Virginia to release teachers’ SGP scores so he could make them available to all via the Internet. He did this, more specifically, so parents and perhaps others throughout the state would be able to access and then potentially use the scores to make choices about who should and should not teach their kids. See other posts about this story here and here.

Those of us who are familiar with Virginia SGP and the research literature writ large know that, unfortunately, there’s much that Virginia SGP does not understand about the now loads of research surrounding VAMs as defined more broadly (see multiple research article links here). Likewise, Virginia SGP, as evidenced below, rides most of his research-based arguments on select sections of a small handful of research studies (e.g., those written by economists Raj Chetty and colleagues, and Thomas Kane as part of Kane’s Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) studies) that do not represent the general research on the topic. He simultaneously ignores/rejects the research studies that empirically challenge his research-based claims (e.g., that there is no bias in VAM-based estimates, and that because Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff “proved this,” it must be true, despite the research studies that have presented evidence otherwise (see for example here, here, and here).

Nonetheless, given that him winning this case in Virginia is still noteworthy, and followers of this blog should be aware of this particular case, I invited Virginia SGP to write a guest post so that he could tell his side of the story. As we have exchanged emails in the past, which I must add have become less abrasive/inflamed as time has passed, I recommend that readers read and also critically consume what is written below. Let’s hope that we might have some healthy and honest dialogue on this particular topic in the end.

From Virginia SGP:

I’d like to thank Dr. Amrein-Beardsley for giving me this forum.

My school district recently announced its teacher of the year. John Tuck teaches in a school with 70%+ FRL students compared to a district average of ~15% (don’t ask me why we can’t even those #’s out). He graduated from an ordinary school with a degree in liberal arts. He only has a Bachelors and is not a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT). He is in his ninth year of teaching specializing in math and science for 5th graders. Despite the ordinary background, Tuck gets amazing student growth. He mentors, serves as principal in the summer, and leads the school’s leadership committees. In Dallas, TX, he could have risen to the top of the salary scale already, but in Loudoun County, VA, he only makes $55K compared to a top salary of $100K for Step 30 teachers. Tuck is not rewarded for his talent or efforts largely because Loudoun eschews all VAMs and merit-based promotion.

This is largely why I enlisted the assistance of Arizona State law school graduate Lin Edrington in seeking the Virginia Department of Education’s (VDOE) VAM (SGP) data via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit (see pertinent files here).

VAMs are not perfect. There are concerns about validity when switching from paper to computer tests. There are serious concerns about reliability when VAMs are computed with small sample sizes or are based on classes not taught by the rated teacher (as appeared to occur in New Mexico, Florida, and possibly New York). Improper uses of VAMs give reformers a bad name. This was not the case in Virginia. SGPs were only to be used when appropriate with 2+ years of data and 40+ scores recommended.

I am a big proponent of VAMs based on my reviews of the research. We have the Chetty/Friedman/Rockoff (CFR) studies, of course, including their recent paper showing virtually no bias (Table 6). The following briefing presented by Professor Friedman at our trial gives a good layman’s overview of their high level findings. When teachers are transferred to a completely new school but their VAMs remain consistent, that is very convincing to me. I understand some point to the cautionary statement of the ASA suggesting districts apply VAMs carefully and explicitly state their limitations. But the ASA definitely recommends VAMs for analyzing larger samples including schools or district policies, and CFR believe their statement failed to consider updated research.

To me, the MET studies provided some of the most convincing evidence. Not only are high VAMs on state standardized tests correlated to higher achievement on more open-ended short-answer and essay-based tests of critical thinking, but students of high-VAM teachers are more likely to enjoy class (Table 14). This points to VAMs measuring inspiration, classroom discipline, the ability to communicate concepts, subject matter knowledge and much more. If a teacher engages a disinterested student, their low scores will certainly rise along with their VAMs. CFR and others have shown this higher achievement carries over into future grades and success later in life. VAMs don’t just measure the ability to identify test distractors, but the ability of teachers to inspire.

So why exactly did the Richmond City Circuit Court force the release of Virginia’s SGPs? VDOE applied for and received a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver like many other states. But in court testimony provided in December of 2014, VDOE acknowledged that districts were not complying with the waiver by not providing the SGP data to teachers or using SGPs in teacher evaluations despite “assurances” to the US Department of Education (USDOE). When we initially received a favorable verdict in January of 2015, instead of trying to comply with NCLB waiver requirements, my district of Loudoun County Publis Schools (LCPS) laughed. LCPS refused to implement SGPs or even discuss them.

There was no dispute that the largest Virginia districts had committed fraud when I discussed these facts with the US Attorney’s office and lawyers from the USDOE in January of 2016, but the USDOE refused to support a False Claim Act suit. And while nearly every district stridently refused to use VAMs [i.e., SGPs], the Virginia Secretary of Education was falsely claiming in high profile op-eds that Virginia was using “progress and growth” in the evaluation of schools. Yet, VDOE never used the very measure (SGPs) that the ESEA [i.e., NCLB] waivers required to measure student growth. The irony is that if these districts had used SGPs for just 1% of their teachers’ evaluations after the December of 2014 hearing, their teachers’ SGPs would be confidential today. I could only find one county that utilized SGPs, and their teachers’ SGPs are exempt. Sometimes fraud doesn’t pay.

My overall goals are threefold:

  1. Hire more Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) majors to get kids excited about STEM careers and effectively teach STEM concepts
  2. Use growth data to evaluate policies, administrators, and teachers. Share the insights from the best teachers and provide professional development to ineffective ones
  3. Publish private sector equivalent pay so young people know how much teachers really earn (pensions often add 15-18% to their salaries). We can then recruit more STEM teachers and better overall teaching candidates

What has this lawsuit and activism cost me? A lot. I ate $5K of the cost of the VDOE SGP suit even after the award[ing] of fees. One local school board member has banned me from commenting on his “public figure” Facebook page (which I see as a free speech violation), both because I questioned his denial of SGPs and some other conflicts of interests I saw, although indirectly related to this particular case. The judge in the case even sanctioned me $7K just for daring to hold him accountable. And after criticizing LCPS for violating Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by coercing kids who fail Virginia’s Standards of Learning tests (SOLs) to retake them, I was banned from my kids’ school for being a “safety threat.”

Note that I am a former Naval submarine officer and have held Department of Defense (DOD) clearances for 20+ years. I attended a meeting this past Thursday with LCPS officials in which they [since] acknowledged I was no safety threat. I served in the military, and along with many I have fought for the right to free speech.

Accordingly, I am no shrinking violet. Despite having LCPS attorneys sanction perjury, the Republican Commonwealth Attorney refused to prosecute and then illegally censored me in public forums. So the CA will soon have to sign a consent order acknowledging violating my constitutional rights (he effectively admitted as much already). And a federal civil rights complaint against the schools for their retaliatory ban is being drafted as we speak. All of this resulted from my efforts to have public data released and hold LCPS officials accountable to state and federal laws. I have promised that the majority of any potential financial award will be used to fund other whistle blower cases, [against] both teachers and reformers. I have a clean background and administrators still targeted me. Imagine what they would do to someone who isn’t willing to bear these costs!

In the end, I encourage everyone to speak out based on your beliefs. Support your case with facts not anecdotes or hastily conceived opinions. And there are certainly efforts we can all support like those of Dr. Darling-Hammond. We can hold an honest debate, but please remember that schools don’t exist to employ teachers/principals. Schools exist to effectively educate students.