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Monday, June 4, 2012

A Florida Teacher Explains Why She Thinks VAM is a Scam - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

A Florida Teacher Explains Why She Thinks VAM is a Scam - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:

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A Florida Teacher Explains Why She Thinks VAM is a Scam

Guest post by kafkateach, originally posted at her blog here.
In my previous post about VAM, I chose to discredit value added models on a purely humanistic level and to leave the attacks on the validity and reliability of the algorithm to the mathematicians. In the past week, I have learned so much about how VAMs will now be used in annual teacher evaluations in Florida that I can completely leave the pseudo science behind the algorithm out of the equation. I do not even need to prove that value added models are merely overpriced tarot card readings to demonstrate the truly malicious nature of how these models will be used to evaluate teachers. The master plan to use value added models to dismantle the teaching profession and anyone's chance of ever collecting a pension again is truly brilliant in design. Keep reading to see the scam for yourself.
This week I was called in to sign on the 50% of my evaluation that is actually based on MY performance instead of my students' performance. Teachers have been working this entire year without a clear idea of how they would be evaluated, even the administrators do not understand the new evaluation system. My administrator tried to tell