My Book on VAMs on Pre-Order, and Available on May 4, 2014
The book I spent all last year writing, titled “Rethinking Value-Added Models in Education: Critical Perspectives on Tests and Assessment-Based Accountability” is to be released by my publisher, Routledge, on May 4, 2014, although it is now available for pre-order.
For those of you who are interested (and who have also inquired about this book’s release), you can (pre)order this book on Amazon, here, for $34.62 (free shipping, of course, on orders over $35); you can find it via Barnes & Noble, here, for $34.42; but you can also go directly to the Routledge site, here, and (pre)order it for $31.96 if you use the following 20% off discount code at checkout: IRK69.
Just so everybody knows, though, I am donating all of my personal royalties to theACODO Orphanage in Siem Reap, Cambodia. You can find out why I am doing this in the beginning of the book, where I explain how Cambodia relates to my take on VAMs. But on a more general note I have no financial interest in this. While I do care deeply about this topic, as evidenced herein with this blog, and I do feel like as a scholar I am fighting a good fight particularly against those who are not making very informed and/or research-based decisions when it comes to VAMs, I do have absolutely no interest in making any money off of the many (many of which are shameful) consequences coming about as a result of inappropriately attaching high-stakes consequences to, and/or making high-stakes decisions as based on VAMs.
Below are some of the more specific details on the book, in case this information helps you make your decision to purchase, and of course read, and hopefully use widely, and if the situation calls for it, wildly!
Paperback: 256 pages; Chapters: 8 and titled as follows:
- Socially Engineering the Road to Utopia
- Value-Added Models (VAMs) and the Human Factor
- A VAMoramic View of the Nation
- Assumptions Used as Rationales and Justifications
- Test-Based, Statistical, and Methodological Assumptions
- Reliability and Validity
- Bias and the Random Assignment of Students into Classrooms
- Alternatives, Solutions, and Conclusions