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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Schools Matter: The Crucial Missing Value in Using Value Added Modeling (VAM) for Teacher Evaluation

Schools Matter: The Crucial Missing Value in Using Value Added Modeling (VAM) for Teacher Evaluation

The Crucial Missing Value in Using Value Added Modeling (VAM) for Teacher Evaluation

I was at a social justice conference on Saturday and heard a great deal of concern related the ethical breach created when children and teachers are evaluated using a standardized test. What was missing in the discussion, however, was an understanding of how the "new and improved" version of pre and post testing represents just another in a long line of pseudo-scientific impositions that eventually ended up in the dustbin of technocratic ed interventions.

The excerpted piece below that appears in Change helps to add some much-needed technical clarity to a policy that is dangerous for many other reasons than the ones laid out here based on technical non-feasibility and the inherent messiness of application venue for a method that would be much easier to apply to, let's say, an agricultural experiment (perhaps that is where the mad Dr. Sanders should return).

For even though Dr. Wainer below lays out 3 big reasons that this current use of pseudoscience is not ready for prime time, he does not even touch upon the lack of validity and reliability of the junk tests that the testing corporations have sold to state and locals school systems, and he does not delve into the ethical and