The Forgotten VAM: The A-F School Grading System
Here is another post from our “Concerned New Mexico Parent” (see prior posts from him/her here and here). This one is about New Mexico’s A-F School Grading System and how it is not only contradictory, within and beyond itself, but how it also provides little instrumental value to the public as an invalid indicator of the “quality” of any school.
(S)he writes:
- What do you call a high school that has only 38% of its students proficient in reading and 35% of its students proficient in mathematics?
- A school that needs help improving their student scores.
- What does the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED) call this same high school?
- A top-rated “A” school, of course.
Readers of this blog are familiar with the VAMs being used to grade teachers. Many states have implemented analogous formulas to grade entire schools. This “forgotten” VAM suffers from all of the familiar problems of the teacher formulas — incomprehensibility, lack of transparency, arbitrariness, and the like.
The first problem with the A-F Grading System is inherent in its very name. The “A-F” The Forgotten VAM: The A-F School Grading System | VAMboozled!: