Four unintended consequences of using student test scores to evaluate teachers
As any even semi-regular reader of this blog knows, the practice of using student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers is riddled with problems. I’ve written before about some of the more ridiculous consequences, such as teachers being evaluated by students they don’t have and/or by subjects they don’t teach. (See here and here.) There are other consequences as well, some of them likely unintended. Here’s a post on the subject by Susan Moore Johnson, Jerome T. Murphy Research Professor in Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Johnson directs the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, which examines how best to recruit, develop, and retain a strong teaching force. This appeared on the theShanker Blog, the voice of the Albert Shanker Institute, a nonprofit organization established in 1998 to honor the life and legacy of the late president of the American Federation of Teachers.
By Susan Moore Johnson
Academic scholars are often dismayed when policymakers pass laws that disregard or misinterpret their research findings. The use of value-added methods (VAMS) in education policy is a case in point.
About a decade ago, some researchers reported that teachers are the most important school-level factor in students’ learning, and that that their effectiveness varies widely within schools (McCaffrey, Koretz, Lockwood, & Hamilton 2004; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain 2005; Rockoff 2004). Many policymakers interpreted these findings to mean that teacher quality rests with the individual rather than the school and that, because some teachers are more effective than others, schools should concentrate on increasing their number of effective teachers.
Based on these assumptions, proponents of VAMS began to argue that schools could be improved substantially if they would only dismiss teachers with low VAMS ratings and replace them with teachers who have average or higher ratings (Hanushek 2009). Although panels of scholars warned against using VAMS to make high-stakes decisions because of their statistical limitations (American Statistical Association, 2014; National Research Council & National Academy of Education, 2010), policymakers in many states and districts moved quickly to do just that, requiring that VAMS scores be used as a substantial component in teacher evaluation.
While researchers continue to analyze and improve VAMS models, it is Four unintended consequences of using student test scores to evaluate teachers - The Washington Post: