UPDATED February 2, 2015: We submitted the link to this post to the official regulations.gov site where it was recorded. At the time of sending, almost 3500 comments from teachers, faculty at GSEs (graduate schools of education), and others with an interest in the training of public school teachers had submitted comments. In our submission, […]
The Failed Microsoft Corporate Origins of "Value-Added" Teacher Rankings
Readers of the Vanity Fair piece highlighting Microsoft’s decade of failure to innovate and resulting loss of market share can’t help but notice the close parallels between that company’s decline and their corporate practice of “stack ranking.” “Stack ranking,” as described in “Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Software […]
Connecticut Governor Malloy Calls Rhee 'Divisive', Declines A Joint Appearance
The Connecticut Parents Union is a statewide community-based group led by Gwen Samuel, a parent with a child in the New Haven city schools. The group had arranged a March 14, 2012 meeting with the Governor of Connecticut, Daniel Malloy, as part of a rally planned for that day. But Governor Malloy decided not to […]
#OccupyBigEd
When Republican Congressmen vote against higher nutrition standards for children’s school lunches, carrying out the wishes of “Big Ag” by making the tomato sauce on school lunch pizza the equivalent of a vegetable, we instantly know what that means. Public interests have been sold out again, and we the public have to rally our forces […]
LAUSD Releases Its Own "Value-Added" Rankings of Schools
The LA Times and LAUSD are focused on “value-added” measurements of teacher performance based on student standardized tests, despite flaws in methodology and data. Why is this foundation-driven effort–outside of any democratic process or accountability to the public–shaping the debate?
Go Read It: Columbia Journalism Review–"Tested: Covering Schools in the Age of Micro-Measurement"
Release of “value-added” student achievement scores as a way to measure teachers in the Los Angeles Times (and an attempt to release them in the NY Times) has roiled the discussion on education policy as shaped by billionaire philanthropists and business-minded school superintendents. The Columbia Journalism Review exhaustively documents editorial debates over the release of the data.
Evaluating Teachers: Data-Driven vs. Peer-Driven, or, Wal-Mart vs. Etsy
News flash: a test score doesn’t reflect every classroom situation or measure growth of the whole child.
Go Read It: Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Paper on Student-Surveyed Teacher Effectiveness
Read the entire study (Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Paper on student-surveyed teacher effectiveness), posted here by the LA Times.
Students Know What Makes for Effective Teaching
Students have savvy things to say about how effective their teachers are in helping them learn.