Arne Duncan’s Reaction to Recent VAM Research
Valerie Strauss wrote a recent piece for the Washington Post about an email she recently sent to Arne Duncan — the current U.S. Secretary of Education who is (still) advancing VAMs for the nation. She wrote him directly to get his take on the “growing mountain of evidence [that] has shown that the method now used in most states, known as “value-added measures,” is not reliable. With [specific attention paid to the] two [most] recent reports released” on VAMs, one being the position statement released by the American Statistical Association and the other being a peer-reviewed article recently published in which researchers also found “surprisingly weak” correlations among VAMs and other teacher quality indicators including teacher observations.
His response? As sent via email from Duncan’s Press Secretary:
“Including measures of how well students are learning as part of multiple indicators of educator effectiveness is part of a set of long-needed changes that will improve classroom learning for kids. Growth measures are a significant improvement over the system that existed before, which failed to produce useful distinctions in teacher performance. Growth Arne Duncan’s Reaction to Recent VAM Research |: