In case you missed it, from a post on Diane Ravitch’s blog, about U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan withdrawing the state of Washington’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Waiver for noncompliance re: VAMs:
The Education Department is pulling Washington state’s No Child Left Behind waiver because the state has not met the department’s timeline for tying teacher evaluations to student performance metrics.
Washington is the first state to lose its waiver. The loss will give local districts less flexibility in using federal funds. For instance, they may now be required to spend millions on private tutoring services for at-risk students. The waiver revocation could also result in nearly every school across the state being labeled as failing under NCLB.
Washington had pledged in its waiver application to make student growth a significant factor in teacher and principal evaluations by the 2014-15 school year. But the state Legislature refused to pass a bill mandating that student performance on statewide assessments be included in teacher evaluations. The department placed the state on “high-risk” status in August. Arizona, Kansas and Oregon are also at risk of losing their waivers.
We have been told that the letter is as far as it has gone. After our insubordination, then came the mass un-adoptions of Common Core which is much worse than our refusal to submit to the sham-that-is-VAM. Thus word from the district and the state has been business as usual until we hear otherwise. Many districts aren’t even planning to or didn’t send out the dreaded “failing schools letter”.
Also, student growth is a part of our evaluations. It’s just that the measures we use are chosen at the discretion of the teacher and the principal, not the standardized high-stakes tests that Arne Duncan wanted.. We choose to use items that actually show growth – assessments that are taken multiple times per year rather than one high stakes test, student work on tasks that show growth and learning over time, etc. Arne can stick his waiver and petulance where the sun doesn’t shine.
Thanks for the added details and points of clarification!