From Jay Matthews - Washington Post - Class Struggles - Click Here
Posted at 01:39 PM ET,
05/13/2012
"I don’t spend much time debunking our most powerful educational
fad:
value-added
assessments to rate teachers. My colleague Valerie Strauss
eviscerates value-added several times a week on her
Answer
Sheet blog with the verve of a Samurai warrior, so who
needs me?
Unfortunately, value-added is still growing in every corner of
our nation, including D.C. schools, despite all that torn flesh
and missing pieces. It’s like those monsters lumbering through
this year’s action films.
We’ve got to stop them! Let me fling my
small, aged body in their way with the best argument against
value-added I have seen in some time.
It comes from
education analyst and teacher trainer Grant
Wiggins and his
“Granted, but .
. .” blog. He starts with the reasons many
people, including him and me, like the idea of value-added.
Why
not rate teachers by how much their students improve over time?
In theory, this allows us to judge teachers in low- and
high-income schools fairly, instead of declaring, as we do,
that
the teachers in rich neighborhoods are better than those in poor
neighborhoods because their students’ test scores are higher.
“I have seen this sham firsthand over many years,” Wiggins
writes. “Lots of so-called good N.J. and N.Y. suburban districts
are truly awful when you look firsthand (as I have for three
decades) at the pedagogy, assignments and local assessments; but
those kids outscore the kids from Trenton and New York City,
even though both city systems have a number of outstanding
schools and teachers.”
Money makes a big difference. “For every $10,000 increase in
family income, SAT scores rise approximately 15 points,” he
said."
