The NY Opt Out and “Invalidated” Scores
In April 2015, approximately 20 percent of students in New York State opted out of the state’s tests in grades 3 through 8.
An August 12, 2015, Syracuse.com article opens as follows:
A large number of students opting out of New York state exams – about 220,000 or 20 percent – raises doubt about the validity of the results and may make them unsuitable to evaluate teachers or schools, according to a Syracuse University professor.
The problem with such a statement is that under no conditions is it a valid use of student test scores to evaluate teachers or schools.
The students are the test takers; these tests purportedly measure their achievement. There is no way to account for all of the possible variables that would enable the New York State Education Department (NYSED) to accurately evaluate teachers and schools using student test scores.
If NYSED could do so– if that $2.7 million it paid to American Institutes for Research (AIR) for the state’s value-added modeling (VAM) teacher evaluation system yielded a product that were really so accurate– then surely NYSED would publicize the details of its VAM calculations.
As it is, New York teachers are kept in the dark about those AIR-created, $2.7 million VAM calculation details– and apparent VAM capriciousness has resulted in acritical lawsuit from teacher Sheri Lederman– who was rated a 14 out of 20 on her “student growth” VAM component in 2012-13 and then 1 out of 20 via VAM in 2013-14.
The VAM stakes are higher for New York teachers in 2015-16, raised from 20 percent of the total teacher evaluation to 50 percent.
Again, this nonsense of grading teachers and schools using student scores was never a valid use of student tests.
Meanwhile, student opt outs in New York are only likely to increase in 2015-16 as parents seek to have their discontent with test-centric education– dare I write– validated by state legislators and education officials.
But it will be a fight: New York education officials confuse student learning with test The NY Opt Out and “Invalidated” Scores | deutsch29:
