Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond at Vergara v. California
As you recall from my most recent post, this past Tuesday (March 18, 2014 – “Vergara Trial Day 28“), David C. Berliner, Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University (ASU), testified for six hours on behalf of the defense at Vergara v. California. He spoke, primarily, about the out-of-school and in-school peer factors that impact student performance in schools and how this impacts and biases all estimates based on test scores (e.g., VAMs).
Two days later, also on the side of the defense, Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond also took the stand (March 20, 2014 – “Vergara Trial Day 30“). For those of you who are not familiar with Linda Darling-Hammond, or her extensive career as one of the best, brightest, and most influential scholars in the academy of education, she is the nation’s leading expert on issues related to teacher quality, teacher recruitment and retention, teacher preparation, and, related, teacher evaluation (e.g., using value-added measures).
Thanks to a friend of Diane Ravitch, an insider at the trial, Darling-Hammond testified with the following as some of her highlights as they pertain directly to our collective interests on VAMboozled! here.
“On firing the bottom 5% of teachers…My opinion is that there are at least three reasons why firing the bottom 5 percent of teachers, as defined by the bottom 5 percent on an effectiveness continuum created by using the value-added test scores of their students on