VAM Nauseum: Bleeding the Patient
In recent days, and even going back months (years?), I’ve been pestering John Fensterwald about certain details in the overall media coverage of teacher evaluation and value-added measures. Let me say up front that I know John personally from numerous encounters at various events, and I have great respect for the work he does on his blog, Thoughts on Public Education. I have faith in his objectivity and his sincere desire to understand the complete story on any issue, and even when I disagree with him, I appreciate what he brings to the discussion. That said, I have some comments below that might be seen as rather blunt, but I feel confident that they are taken as intended, as a friendly disagreement among people of mutual good will.
On June 1, John wrote “Experiments in Evaluating Teachers” to provide some interesting developments on the issue of teacher evaluations in California. This topic is of great interest to me as a co-author of the ACT report on teacher evaluation (see Publications, above), as a member of a union negotiating team working on teacher