EVAAS’s SAS Inc.: “The Frackers of the Educational World”
David Patten, a former history teacher, college instructor, and author, recently wrote an exceelent article for the History News Network about VAMs in his state of Ohio (another state that uses the Education Value-Added Assessment System [EVAAS] statewide). He writes about what the state of Ohio is getting in terms of its bang for its buck, at a rate of $2.3 million bucks per year. Just to be clear, this includes the costs to calculate just the state’s value-added estimates, as based on the state’s standardized tests, and this does not include what the state also pays yearly for its standardized tests, in and of themselves.
You can read the full article here, but here are some of the key highlights as they directly pertain to VAMs in Ohio.
Patten explains that Ohio uses a five level model that combines teachers’ EVAAS scores with scores derived via their administrators’ observations into what is a 50/50 teacher evaluation model, that ultimately results in a four category teacher ranking system including the following teacher quality categories: 1. Ineffective, 2. Developing, 3. Skilled, and 4. Accomplished. While Ohio is currently using its state tests, it is soon to integrate and likely replace these with the Common Core tests tests and/or tests purchased from “approved vendors.”
As for the specifics of model, however, he writes that the EVAAS system (as others have written extensively) is pretty “mysterious” beyond that – the more or less obvious.
What exactly is the mathematical formula that will determine the fate of our teachers and our educational systems? Strangely enough, only the creators know the mysterious mix; and they refuse to reveal it.
The dominant corporation in the field of value added is SAS, a North Carolina company. Their Value Added Assessment and Research Manager is Dr. William Sanders [the topic of a previous post here] who is also the primary designer of their model. While working at the University of Tennessee, his remarkable research into agricultural genetics and EVAAS’s SAS Inc.: “The Frackers of the Educational World” |: