My release of the John White, Alan Seabaugh taped conversation
Posted on May 26, 2013
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I have been getting requests to release the taped conversation between Alan Seabaugh and John White discussing the manipulation of VAM, or the Value Added Modeling system devised by the state to evaluate teacher performance to serve a few of Seabaugh’s constituents. I did not receive the full 14 minutes that Tom Aswell received, just 3 or so minutes of some of the more interesting points, but without the full context. I think I have mined my piece pretty well for interesting nuggets but feel free to review it yourselves to see if you spot anything else interesting.
I think it’s kinda cute how John White is using his big boy voice to talk to one of our legislators. You tell he’s really straining his diaphragm to summon up a deeper voice, and at points I worry he will let out a little squeak or perhaps exhaust himself before the conversation is over. Boy, that would be embarrassing. As it is, he just calmly explains how you can’t always rely on the data, especially when the data doesn’t show what you want it to show. No problem, and no need to bring this point up to BESE. Its much easier to randomly assign “bonus points” to favored teachers or teacher groups to get them to have the scores you want them to have. What’s nice about this