Thursday, September 02, 2010
WOWY Teachers
This is exactly like baseball.
A report released this month by several education researchers warned that the value-added methodology can be unreliable. “If these teachers were measured in a different year, or a different model were used, the rankings might bounce around quite a bit,� said Edward Haertel, a Stanford professor who was a co-author of the report. “People are going to treat these scores as if they were reflections on the effectiveness of the teachers without any appreciation of how unstable they are.�
...
Dr. Sanders helped develop value-added methods to evaluate teachers in Tennessee in the 1990s. Their use spread after the 2002 No Child Left Behind law required states to test in third to eighth grades every year, giving school districts mountains of test data that are the raw material for value-added analysis. In value-added modeling, researchers use students’ scores on state tests administered at the end of third grade, for instance, to predict how they are likely to score on state tests at the end of fourth grade. A student whose third-grade scores were higher than 60 percent of peers statewide is predicted to score higher than 60 percent of fourth graders a year later. If, when actually taking the state tests at the end of fourth grade, the student scores higher than 70 percent of fourth graders, the leap in achievement represents the value the fourth-grade teacher added.
...
In many schools, students receive instruction from multiple teachers, or from after-school tutors, making it difficult to attribute learning gains to a specific instructor. Another problem is known as the ceiling effect. Advanced students can score so highly one year that standardized state tests are not sensitive enough to measure their learning gains a year later.
I disagree with the bolded part, if the reporter is reporting it accurately. Say it with me: REGRESSION TOWARD THE MEAN. I’m sure the reporter is wrong, and the professor is probably doing it right. If you beat 60% of students in a standardized test, you are probably at the 55th percentile in true talent. So, if a teacher inherits 30 kids who are each at the 60th perecentile, and then those kids once again are at the 60th percentile, then those kids IMPROVED. If they use the fact that they were at the 60th percentile two years in a row, then they are probably at the 58th percentile, and the third teacher would get evaluated against that level.
Not to mention there are aging issues to account for. We need a height and weight database on these kids as well, to see how physically they’ve matured. You’d need to know if they’ve been introduced to sex, drugs, and rock&roll, as that might influence their scores more than anything (each of those things would lead you to infer a change in thought-processing and lifestyle). (I say these things facetiously because they are kids. If they were college kids, I’d be serious.)
A perfect group for WOWY processing.
Glove-slap: Bryan.
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