Value Added Measures: What they are and what they’re not
Value Added Measures, also referred to as VAM, and sometimes referred to as Value Added Modeling or Value Added Assessments, has made it’s way to Seattle. It has been pushed by Bill Gates and other ed reformers who are not educated in the field of education or for that matter in mathematical formulas and their meanings.
In our state, this evaluation system was heralded by the League of Education Voters (LEV) and the Washington State PTA (WSPTA) as a way to judge “teacher effectiveness”, a big item on the agenda of the ed reformers. Legislation was pushed through by legislators with the lobbying efforts of LEV, Stand for Children (SFC) and WSPTA in Olympia and praised as a success by LEV when the legislation passed.
The reason for this push is to basically devalue the idea of seniority and place the emphasis of success or failure of our schools squarely on the shoulders of teachers rather than an entire set of circumstance that are not in
In our state, this evaluation system was heralded by the League of Education Voters (LEV) and the Washington State PTA (WSPTA) as a way to judge “teacher effectiveness”, a big item on the agenda of the ed reformers. Legislation was pushed through by legislators with the lobbying efforts of LEV, Stand for Children (SFC) and WSPTA in Olympia and praised as a success by LEV when the legislation passed.
The reason for this push is to basically devalue the idea of seniority and place the emphasis of success or failure of our schools squarely on the shoulders of teachers rather than an entire set of circumstance that are not in