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Educational value add

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  1. #51

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    Firstly, I have read the link to the LA Times article in its entirety. Have you? In the Q and A section we read the following:
    Q: Do value added scores tell you everything you need to know about a teacher or school?
    A: Not at all. Even advocates of the method say it should count for half or less of a teacher's overall evaluation. In reviewing a teacher's performance, ad- ministrators may want to consider their classroom evaluations...

    This last suggestion is actually what I am contending for. Teachers should be
    evaluated and held to professional standards. (By the way, teacher's unions
    have no argument with this no matter how many times Paenme and Freetrader say otherwise.) These evaluations should be based on observations
    by other pedagogical professionals-as they have been since time immemorial.
    So you see, I am not actually shirking responsibility and saying teachers should never be held accountable. I am saying they should be held accountable in a way that is consistent with common sense.
    Furthermore, I should point out that, according to the LA Times article, the value-added methodology has a margin of error of 5 percent for some subjects and as much as 7 percent for others between the 20th and 80th percentiles of teachers. Whether this is a minor detail is a question upon which reasonable minds can disagree.
    Also, we should take a skeptical look at the implied premise behind the publication of these data by The LA Times, namely, that public servants who have responsibility for modifying other peoples' behavior should be held accountable by the general public on the basis of their success or failure in so doing. Does this argument apply to low-ranking soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq?
    Does it also apply to police officers and prison guards? How about low-ranking officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the DEA, the ATF, and the INS? Don't they too, then, share some part of the blame for policy failures in those areas?


  2. #52

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    Additionally, I paraphrase Paenme thus: 'Politicians have a lot of other responsibilities but teachers are only responsible for education.' So the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is not a politician and solely responsible for education? How about the various State Superintendents of Public Instruction (or their jurisdictional equivalents)-an elected office in my home state? How about the various elected members of local school boards? Somebody had better tell these people they are not in charge of education because they generally seem to think otherwise.
    Also, I did not say it was unfair to rank teachers. I agree that in any ranking system there will be people on both sides of the bell curve. Again - I don't think you actually read what I wrote - the ranking system should be based on factors that are within a teacher's ability to control. Teachers cannot control how well their students perform on standardized exams because this depends upon too many factors which have nothing to do with teacher-pupil interactions. Again, it is much more reasonable to base teacher assessments on administrators' classroom evaluations and students' classroom work, a suggestion made in the LA Times article if you actually bother to read the whole thing.


  3. #53

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    Quote Originally Posted by dansande:
    Teachers cannot control how well their students perform on standardized exams because this depends upon too many factors which have nothing to do with teacher-pupil interactions.
    The measure is a value add measure taken over 6 years of data. Can you explain why you believe there would be no correlation between teacher ability and the value add as measured by standardised tests.
    Last edited by East_coast; 23-09-2010 at 06:35 PM.
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  4. #54

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    dansandeFirstly, I have read the link to the LA Times article in its entirety. Have you?
    What is amazing about your post is that we don't really have that much to disagree about but you still manage to be condescending and annoying and miss the whole point. You could only be a teacher! BTW, who are you addressing in this post?

    First of all, I did read the articles (plural) when they were first published - over a month ago. I first read about the study in Slate magazine, and since I am i.) a former denizen of Los Angeles who until just a couple of months ago actually still read the LA Times online, and ii.) a person who owns a home there, with iii.) kids who have attended schools there, I read the articles at that time. At the time, the real story was the irrational anger of the teacher's unions at this stuff being made public.

    In the Q and A section we read the following:
    Q: Do value added scores tell you everything you need to know about a teacher or school?
    A: Not at all. Even advocates of the method say it should count for half or less of a teacher's overall evaluation. In reviewing a teacher's performance, ad- ministrators may want to consider their classroom evaluations...
    That is accurate. So what is your point? Nobody said that this methodology should account for 100% of a teacher's performance evaluation.

    And then there's this:

    Also, we should take a skeptical look at the implied premise behind the publication of these data by The LA Times, namely, that public servants who have responsibility for modifying other peoples' behavior should be held accountable by the general public on the basis of their success or failure in so doing. Does this argument apply to low-ranking soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq?

    Does it also apply to police officers and prison guards? How about low-ranking officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the DEA, the ATF, and the INS? Don't they too, then, share some part of the blame for policy failures in those areas?
    My, what an incredibly foolish comment. Of course all public employees, low and high, are held accountable for their results. They are paid by the public, to perform a service for the public. Teachers are not responsible for policy, they are responsbile for teaching. The issue is whether or not a teacher is effective. Your comment represents, once again, the "teachers are special" fallacy that for some reason seems to be so widely held in the teaching trade and seems to be the motivating force behind the teacher's unions. Let's get it straight right now: teachers aren't special. If they do a poor job, they should be given training until they become better. The best teachers should be paid more. A certain number should be culled every year pour encourage les autres. What is needed in order to mprove teacher performance is no mystery - but all of the above are opposed by the unions.

    Furthermore, I should point out that, according to the LA Times article, the value-added methodology has a margin of error of 5 percent for some subjects and as much as 7 percent for others between the 20th and 80th percentiles of teachers. Whether this is a minor detail is a question upon which reasonable minds can disagree.
    I'm struggling to understand what that last comment even means. All statistical studies have margins of error. It is a part and parcel of statistical analysis. How mentioning it helps your case is a mystery to me.
    Last edited by Freetrader; 23-09-2010 at 06:41 PM.
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  5. #55

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    dansande
    You rambled on all over the place, but your arguments are basically:

    1. Teachers are not solely responsible, the politicians/administrators should share the blame.
    Not disagreeing with this and no one said ALL teachers are responsible or to blame. But the truth is even under such a bad education system such as the one in LA, there are teachers that consistently outperform others over a number of years, in the same school teaching students of similar socioeconomic background. This guide helps parents to understand the effectiveness of the teachers and the performance differences among them.

    2. No one argues that classroom evaluations and work are not important, while those should also be taken into consideration, you do realize ratings purely on that basis are a lot more subjective (see the 90% example in east_coast previous post) than standardized test scores? And exactly how the rating on that basis should be done in your opinion to ensure more objectivity, after all it is not reasonable to expect a single evaluator to physically visit every class and evaluate all teachers? Test scores, for all their flaws, are after all one of the more objective indicators easily measured and are, let's be frank, a significant part of the criteria used in colleges/universities admissions.

    No one says the LA Times ratings are perfect, but overall they are reasonably objective and serve as one of the important indicators to help parents evaluate the schools and teachers (when combined with other ratings such as API/SAT etc). As I said, something has to change. Given the lack of better alternatives, this is well worth a try. In the end, the paying customers (parents/taxpayers) have a right to know, and that is the bottom line.

    If the taxpayers demand to see performance ratings of soldiers and police, they certainly have a right to also.

    By the way, where did/do you teach?

    Last edited by paenme; 23-09-2010 at 07:11 PM.

  6. #56

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    To East_Coast: I can explain why the methodology is flawed whether its based on 6 years of data or any other time period. The value added method is founded on a fictitious extrapolation of a student's likely test scores based on her already existing test scores. The extrapolated scores are then compared to the actual scores. However, past performance is not always a reliable indicator of future performance, in any field. Even brokerages in Hong Kong have to make this disclaimer when offering investments to the public. It may have some bearing on future performance but it is not quantifiable unless all potential variables are rigorously accounted for.
    To Freetrader: For the millionth time, I am not saying teachers are a special case. I am not saying they shouldn't be held accountable if they do a bad job. I am not saying they don't have to be effective at what they do; teaching. I am saying that standardized test scores are not the way to measure that effectiveness. Yes, like all public employees they should be held accountable; they should be held accountable for things they can control. My analogies to other public employees were an attempt to convey the elementary moral principle that people are only responsible for what they do, not what other people do. That is why our society, rightly so, does not blame border patrol agents for illegal immigration, prison guards for prison riots, police officers for crime, etcetera.


  7. #57

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    'By the way, where do you teach?' Firstly, I never said I was a teacher. Secondly, my personal details are none of your god-damned business. I thought we were discussing a public issue, not making irrelevant ad hominem remarks.


  8. #58

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    Quote Originally Posted by dansande:
    'By the way, where do you teach?' Firstly, I never said I was a teacher. Secondly, my personal details are none of your god-damned business. I thought we were discussing a public issue, not making irrelevant ad hominem remarks.
    With that kind of language, I certainly hope you are not a teacher.

  9. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by dansande:
    The value added method is founded on a fictitious extrapolation of a student's likely test scores based on her already existing test scores.
    Can you dig out some academic papers that show there is no link between past academic performance and future academic performance for an extremely large sample size?

  10. #60

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    We aren't dealing with 'an extremely large sample size'. The sample size for a particular teacher could be as low as 60 students. However, if you genuinely care about empirical research on the accuracy of the value added methodology you can go to the Rand Corporation website and read the papers, already referenced by a previous poster.


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