John Thompson: Fact Checking the National Council on Teacher Quality
Guest post by John Thompson
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), is a Gates-funded organization dedicated to data-driven, market-oriented "reform." It sees itself as a part of a coalition for "a better orchestrated agenda" for accountability, choice, and using test scores to drive the evaluation of teachers. Its forte is publishing non-peer reviewed opinion pieces under the guise of "policy analysis."
The latest NCTQ opinion piece, "Teacher Quality Roadmap," (downloadable here) seeks to shape Los Angeles school policy. The worst part of the latest attack on teachers is its saber-rattling statement that "economists recommend that districts routinely dismiss at least the bottom-performing 25% of teachers eligible for tenure." In fact, their source simply articulated a "thought experiment" and pulled the 25% figure out of thin air. Moreover, the source, "Assessing the Potential of Using Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Job Performance for Making Tenure Decisions," was a study which was also funded by the Gates Foundation. The study acknowledged its findings were mixed and would "reinforce views on both sides of the policy divide over whether VAM estimates of