Latest News and Comment from Education

Friday, September 30, 2016

New Mexico’s “New, Bait and Switch” Schemes | VAMboozled!

New Mexico’s “New, Bait and Switch” Schemes | VAMboozled!:

New Mexico’s “New, Bait and Switch” Schemes

Image result for Bait and Switch

A Concerned New Mexico Parent” sent me another blog entry for you all to help you all stay apprised of the ongoing “situation” in New Mexico with its New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED). See “A Concerned New Mexico Parent’s” prior posts here, here, and here, but in this one (s)he writes a response to an editorial that was recently released in support of the newest version of New Mexico’s teacher evaluation system. The editorial was titled: “Teacher evals have evolved but tired criticisms of them have not,” and it was published in the Albuquerque Journal, as also written by the Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board themselves.
(S)he writes:
The editorial seems to contain and promote many of the “talking points” provided by NMPED with their latest release of teacher evaluations. Hence, I would like to present a few observations on the editorial.
NMPED and the Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board both underscore the point that teachers are still primarily being (and should primarily continue to be) evaluated on the basis of their own students’ test scores (i.e., using a value-added model (VAM)), but it is actually not that simple. Rather, the new statewide teacher evaluation formula is shownhere on their website, with one notable difference being that the state’s “new system” now replaces the previously district-wide variations that produced 217 scoring categories for teachers (see here for details).
Accordingly, it now appears that NMPED has kept the same 50% student achievement, 25% observations, and 25% multiple measures division as before. The “new” VAM, New Mexico’s “New, Bait and Switch” Schemes | VAMboozled!: