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Last week I spent a few days in Austin, one day during which I provided expert testimony for a new state-level lawsuit that has the potential to impact teachers throughout Texas. The lawsuit — Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA) v. Texas Education Agency (TEA), Mike Morath in his Official Capacity as Commissioner of Education for the State of Texas.

The key issue is that, as per the state’s Texas Education Code (Sec. § 21.351, see here) regarding teachers’ “Recommended Appraisal Process and Performance Criteria,” The Commissioner of Education must adopt “a recommended teacher appraisal process and criteria on which to appraise the performance of teachers. The criteria must be based on observable, job-related behavior, including: (1) teachers’ implementation of discipline management procedures; and (2) the performance of teachers’ students.” As for the latter, the State/TEA/Commissioner defined, as per its Texas Administrative Code (T.A.C., Chapter 15, Sub-Chapter AA, §150.1001, see here), that teacher-level value-added measures should be treated as one of the four measures of “(2) the performance of teachers’ students;” that is, one of the four measures recognized by the State/TEA/Commissioner as an “observable” indicator of a teacher’s “job-related” performance.

While currently no district throughout the State of Texas is required to use a value-added component to assess and evaluate its teachers, as noted, the value-added component is listed as one of four measures from which districts must choose at least one. All options listed in the category of “observable” indicators include: (A) student learning objectives (SLOs); (B) student portfolios; (C) pre- and post-test results on district-level assessments; and (D) value-added data based on student state assessment results.

Related, the state has not recommended or required that any district, if the value-added option is selected, to choose any particular value-added model (VAM) or calculation approach. Nor has it recommended or required that any district adopt any consequences as attached to these output; however, things like teacher contract renewal and sharing teachers’ prior appraisals with other districts in which teachers might be applying for new jobs is not discouraged. Again, though, the main issue here (and the key points to which I testified) was that the value-added component is listed as an “observable” and “job-related” teacher effectiveness indicator as per the state’s administrative code.

Accordingly, my (5 hour) testimony was primarily (albeit among many other things including the “job-related” part) about how teacher-level value-added data do not yield anything that is observable in terms of teachers’ effects. Likewise, officially referring to these data in this way is entirely false, in fact, in that:

• “We” cannot directly observe a teacher “adding” (or detracting) value (e.g., with our own eyes, like supervisors can when they conduct observations of teachers in practice);
• Using students’ test scores to measure student growth upwards (or downwards) and over time, as is very common practice using the (very often instructionally insensitive) state-level tests required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and doing this once per year in mathematics and reading/language arts (that includes prior and other current teachers’ effects, summer learning gains and decay, etc.), is not valid practice. That is, doing this has not been validated by the scholarly/testing community; and
• Worse and less valid is to thereafter aggregate this student-level growth to the teacher level and then call whatever “growth” (or the lack thereof) is because of something the teacher (and really only the teacher did), as directly “observable.” These data are far from assessing a teacher’s causal or “observable” impacts on his/her students’ learning and achievement over time. See, for example, the prior statement released about value-added data use in this regard by the American Statistical Association (ASA) here. In this statement it is written that: “Research on VAMs has been fairly consistent that aspects of educational effectiveness that are measurable and within teacher control represent a small part of the total variation [emphasis added to note that this is variation explained which = correlational versus causal research] in student test scores or growth; most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability [emphasis added] to teachers. This is not saying that teachers have little effect on students, but that variation among teachers [emphasis added] accounts for a small part of the variation [emphasis added] in [said test] scores. The majority of the variation in [said] test scores is [inversely, 86%-99% related] to factors outside of the teacher’s control such as student and family background, poverty, curriculum, and unmeasured influences.”

If any of you have anything to add to this, please do so in the comments section of this post. Otherwise, I will keep you posted on how this goes. My current understanding is that this one will be headed to court.