Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #6 of 9): VAMs as Tools for “Egg-Crate” Schools
Recall that the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher (ER) – published a “Special Issue” including nine articles examining value-added measures (VAMs). I have reviewed the next of nine articles (#6 of 9), which is actually an essay here, titled “Will VAMS Reinforce the Walls of the Egg-Crate School?” This essay is authored by Susan Moore Johnson – Professor of Education at Harvard and somebody who I in the past I had the privilege of interviewing as an esteemed member of the National Academy of Education(see interviews here and here).
In this article, Moore Johnson argues that when policymakers use VAMs to evaluate, reward, or dismiss teachers, they may be perpetuating an egg-crate model, which is (referencing Tyack (1974) and Lortie (1975)) a metaphor for the compartmentalized school structure in which teachers (and students) work, most often in isolation. This model ultimately undermines the efforts of all involved in the work of schools to build capacity school wide, and to excel as a school given educators’ individual and collective efforts.
Contrary to the primary logic supporting VAM use, however, “teachers are not inherently effective or ineffective” on their own. Rather, their collective effectiveness is related to their professional development that may be stunted when they work alone, “without the benefit of ongoing collegial influence” (p. 119). VAMs then, and unfortunately, can cause teachers and administrators to (hyper)focus “on identifying, assigning, and rewarding or penalizing individual [emphasis added] teachers for their effectiveness in raising students’ Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #6 of 9): VAMs as Tools for “Egg-Crate” Schools | VAMboozled!: