Letters: Rating system hurts good teachers

I am one of those teachers who also rated ineffective last year with the majority of my students scoring mastery and advanced. I have about 25 years of teaching experience, a master’s degree plus about 39 additional college hours of credit. I have been praised for being an excellent eighth-grade teacher of gifted English by students, parents and administrators here at my school, Caddo Middle Magnet School, in Shreveport. Many parents of seventh-graders even request to have me as the teacher of their child. The high school teachers tell me, “We want to get your students because they know how to write!”

Labeling me as ineffective is like branding me with a scarlet letter professionally, and I have to say, it has come as one of the most devastating blows I have ever received. I always heard, “No one can take your education away from you.” I feel as if that is what is being done to me.

I have contributed to society by preparing many students for high school and college, and this is what I get?

I have three more years to go to get to my 2 ½ percent level of retirement (this year and two more). Sadly, this is just enough to knock me (a widow) out of this and make me have to take 38 percent of my salary instead of 50 percent. What a travesty! I know there are many others like me. I beseech the governor and Legislature to put in the provision that at least takes teachers of the gifted outside the VAM formula, or many “babies will be thrown out with the bath water.”

Kathy Parrish

teacher

Shreveport

Comments

1) Comment by bourbon-soda - 29/10/2012

Success seems to be correlated with the United States largely picking up the tab for national defense plus much less demographic diversity than that of the United States. Is there any evidence of schools' improving based on any measures or reforms, or is it all just the sound and fury of competing pigs at the tax trough?

2) Comment by 8.3 - 27/10/2012

the most successful nations in the world, such as Finland, South Korea, Germany, and Japan, have built strong public school systems, not systems with large degrees of private management. Evidence based on research seems to generally be more credible and dependable than ideology in most disciplines except the pseudo-science of politics.

3) Comment by 8.3 - 27/10/2012

There is no evidence from any district or state that can show that its schools improved because it uses value-added assessment to measure teacher quality. Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford has studied and written about this process extensively, and she says that the teacher ratings tied to value-added assessments are inaccurate, unreliable and unstable. A teacher who is rated ineffective one year is likely to be effective the next year, and vice versa. She reports that Houston fired its Teacher of the Year. She says that those who teach special education students and English language learners are likely to get lower ratings. However, as these comments demonstrate, " a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" especially in the hands of politicians.

4) Comment by agagent - 26/10/2012

I do not agree with the assertion that improvement is impossible with advanced students. If students do not improve teachers do not need to teach and students do not need schooling. You could make an argument that the percentage change might be less with advanced students. However, improvement in grade level equivalency should be valid for teacher evaluation purposes.

5) Comment by InPVille - 26/10/2012

@joey.esposito: "The VAM rating system appears to be simplistic on the surface. . ." -[**]- It may appear simplistic. However, it is a very complex statistical application with lots of room for error. the following are some comments from a number of references on the subject. - - - - - - What of VAM testing models. Is the model reliable and how difficult is it to achieve reliable statistics using it? This is controversial. I looked at several articles written by critics - from different viewpoints. One of them was from a maven of the American Enterprise Institute which some might think would favor VAM. He didn't. http://www.kyepsb.net/documents/Stats/Journals/Heterogeneity%20of%20regression.pdf "VAM models, by their nature, are very complex, and a high level of statistical expertise – far beyond that held by a typical administrator at the school, district, or state level – is required to understand them. This lack of intuitive simplicity has contributed to their premature implementation as normative evaluation models, as statisticians with an interest in selling the methodology have glossed over some very real theoretical problems in the interests of simplifying the results so that they can be understood by the consumer." -[**]- "As a result, legislatures, administrators, and other policy-makers often make implementation decisions without an understanding of the limitations of these models. There are a number of different models in use in this field. Differences in the models stem from efforts by statisticians to resolve the various technical problems that have arisen as the field has developed. None of the models solves all of the known technical problems, and some problems have proven intractable. As a result, while some of the models have proven useful for specific limited purposes, no one can claim to have developed a VAM model of general applicability whose results can be trusted implicitly for the purpose of rank-ordering teachers or schools with enough precision to justify their use in a high-stakes environment." -[**]- "We should not attempt to use these models to apply rewards and sanctions on a broad scale to any large number of teachers or schools. We could use them productively to identify teachers and schools that are especially effective or egregiously ineffective. If VAM measures were used in this way, it would be advisable to use them in conjunction with other measures of school or teacher performance." http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/nov05/vol63/num03/Challenges_of_Value-Added_Assessment.aspx "A large body of research, however, suggests that year-to-year curricular variation is significant (Schmidt, Houang, & McKnight, 2005). Other researchers have demonstrated that the process used to create the vertical scales is a statistical challenge in itself and can actually introduce more error in longitudinal analyses (Doran & Cohen, 2005; Michaelides & Haertel, 2004)." "These findings suggest that value-added modeling may need to evolve into newer forms. The research emerging in this area is too new, however, to allow solid conclusions." http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic245006.files/Kane_Staiger_3-17-08.pdf Are Teacher-Level Value-Added Estimates Biased? http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG158.pdf Evaluating Value-Added Models For Teacher Accountability http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2011/01/beyond_value-added_modelsgetting_the_mechanics_of_high-stakes_teacher_effectiveness_policies_right.html Education policy maven Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute think tank offers straight talk on matters of policy, politics, research, and reform. Follow Rick and AEI's Education Program on Twitter. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/leading-mathematician-debunks-value-added/2011/05/08/AFb999UG_blog.html

6) Comment by mcarter - 26/10/2012

Many teachers are in the same situation. If you students are advanced (as high as they can go), you cannot improve therefore you are rated ineffective.

7) Comment by joey.esposito - 26/10/2012

I am positive Mrs. Parrish is an excellent teacher. The VAM rating system appears to be simplistic on the surface. If a student shows improvement, then the value to the teacher increases. If a student remains at the same level as the previous year, there is no numerical value added. It appears to be weighted in moving up a level. How do you statistically measure a student who remains at the advanced level? The achievement gap should never close; if it does, that means the students at the high end are not improving. That is the reason Mrs. Parrish's rating is reported as ineffective. Her students are outstanding, she is a great educator, yet her students' scores didn't improve from the previous years' high levels.

8) Comment by nimby? - 26/10/2012

twinkie1cat , agreed . the "system" doesn't like those who go against the grain , think outside the box . I too have stories ...

9) Comment by twinkie1cat - 26/10/2012

Nimby, you are probably right. Tenured teachers are confident in their abilities and professionalism and tend to speak out. They are leaders, not robots and they care about their students, their professions and their jobs. As a result, they are a threat to incompetent administrators and politicians who will do whatever they can to get rid of them. I am a teacher and I can tell some stories.

10) Comment by twinkie1cat - 26/10/2012

This lady is clearly an effective teachers if her colleagues and parents praise her work. But the new law is not intended to improve the public schools. It is intended to destroy them and replace them with for-profit businesses and conservative religious institutions. Quality teachers will get the shaft. Teachers in high performing schools are already feeling the effect because their students can get no higher. They are already at the top. Remember that Jindal says that degrees and experience do not matter for teachers. All he wants is Teach for America non-teachers who can drill the kids on test taking skills and then leave the profession after two years. The evaluation system must be repealed.

11) Comment by agagent - 26/10/2012

The system was already in use by 12 districts and 75 schools and the concept of basing evaluation on behavior change has been used for many years. There is an assumption by one commenter that Ms. Parrish was rated ineffective because of student achievement scores. If the evaluation is not fair for her situation the system should be modified but not repealed.

12) Comment by nimby? - 26/10/2012

sounds like Ms. Parrish upset the wrong person . teachers are easy targets . why anyone would want to be a teacher nowadays is beyond thought ....

13) Comment by agagent - 26/10/2012

The 50% “traditional methods” include such things as principal observations, peer reviews and other subjective criteria. Student achievement is predicted based on “socio-economic background, academic history, exceptionalities and other factors.”

14) Comment by agagent - 26/10/2012

From the LDOE: “The new law calls for student academic growth to count for 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. The remaining 50 percent will be based on traditional methods . . . . Teachers who are rated as Ineffective will receive targeted professional development to help them improve. Teachers who are rated as Ineffective three or more times during their certification cycle will not be recertified unless an appeal is made by the school board.”

15) Comment by 8.3 - 26/10/2012

right, market models have been proven so effective for parents to raise their children. AH, the glorious future, baby factories and assembly line schools while frolicking capitalists and givers enjoy the fruits of their beneficence. That will solve all the problems, a veritable paradise of industrial mayhem. .

16) Comment by [e-mail] - 26/10/2012

Such letters are highly suspect, and while they tug at our heartstrings they are of no benefit to those who are trying to get sensability into the education system for which cost has exploded exponentially. It has to stop somewhere, it can't go on like it is now.

17) Comment by tradewinns - 26/10/2012

why was she rated as ineffective? it would have been a more effective letter if she had explained the norm and her place in it. as it is, i just assume she is an ineffective teacher.

18) Comment by bourbon-soda - 26/10/2012

Next in the guillotine line: the doctors.

19) Comment by bourbon-soda - 26/10/2012

VAM-like evaluations are a nonpartisan culmination of the industrial model of education as the calliope slows down or stops after many decades of insulation from market discipline.

20) Comment by InPVille - 26/10/2012

@postscript56: " but an intentional first salvo in the war he was about to wage on teachers. I understand why the radical loonies and the uber wealthy love Jindal." I also have doubts about the validity of VAM as a method for evaluating teacher effectiveness. But would you offer the same opinion about the leadership in the states of California, Washington, New York, and Illinois which have also adopted VAM but are largely in the opposite camp from Jindal?

21) Comment by bourbon-soda - 26/10/2012

Command economics is great until the wrong commander gets in.

22) Comment by lovemykids - 26/10/2012

Kathy, I am proud of your years of dedication to the children under your care. I am not proud of the way Jindal and his accessories have treated dedicated professionals that have the best interest of our children at heart.

23) Comment by postscript56 - 26/10/2012

I feel for you Ms. Parrish. Making teachers the scapegoat was predictable from the moment Jindal first compared tenured teachers to crack addicts. That comment was no accident, but an intentional first salvo in the war he was about to wage on teachers. I understand why the radical loonies and the uber wealthy love Jindal. I don't understand why so many regular working folks support the guy.