VAMing and slamming teachers in Los Angeles
Within the last few days, the Bureau of Land Management, at the encouragement of a group of House members, has asked the National Research Council (NRC) to review its policies for wild horses and burros. If only someone would show the same kind of concern about the nation’s school children and education.
Actually the NRC, the highest scientific body in the nation, developed an unsolicited review of test use in teacher evaluation to include in a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
The NRC cautioned against an over-reliance on test scores in making high-stakes decisions on teachers. As the NRC put it: “Although the idea has intuitive appeal, a great deal is unknown about the potential and the limitations of alternative statistical models for evaluating teachers.”
The NRC specifically questioned the use of “value added methodology” (VAM), a technique using student test