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Friday, January 11, 2013

NYC Educator: It's Not Value-Added! It's Growth Model!

NYC Educator: It's Not Value-Added! It's Growth Model!:


It's Not Value-Added! It's Growth Model!

The latest round of negotiations to bring junk science to New York City is about to begin, and boy do they have surprises for us! One is that yes, your Regents exams will indeed be used to determine whether or not you are fit to keep your job. I'd previously been under the impression that since these tests were not designed to determine whether or not we add value, they would not be used for that purpose.

Boy was I wrong! It turns out the city can make up some pre-test, then give the Regents exam at the end of the year, and figure out how well you did. And that's not value-added because there's no complicated mathematical formula attached to it, and no one's fretting over how many high-poverty students you have, or how many ESL students, or how they're disabled. It's just straght scoring.

If anyone watched the Michelle Rhee Frontline piece, you can