Addendum (and a catchy tune): Ethics, Social Science Research and VAMing Teachers
A few days ago, I posted my concerns regarding the contorted logic of the Brookings report on evaluating teacher evaluation systems. More recently, NEPC posted a slightly revised version of that blog post here:http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Passing%20muster%20fails%20muster.pdf
Below is an addition to the NEPC version which was not in my original post, but rather, a comment I had made in response to a comment in my post.
The awkward issue here is that this brief and calculator are prepared by a truly exceptional group of scholars, and not just reform-minded pundits. It strikes me that we technocrats have started to fall for our own contorted logic – that the available metric is the true measure – and the quality of all else can only be evaluated against that measure. We’ve become myopic in our analysis, and we’ve forgotten all of the technical caveats of our own work, simply assuming the
technical caveats of any/all alternatives to be far greater.Beyond all of that, I fear that technicians working within the political arena are deferring judgment