One of the most controversial trends sweeping across the US is the use of standardized test data to evaluate teachers.
Tests, originally designed to measure achievement on a narrow band of what students learn at school, suddenly became fit for measuring teacher quality. The tests haven’t changed, but states and school districts just sort of declared them to be suitable measures of teacher quality. That is, it was a declaration of their fitness for this purpose, not a change in their design.
Many testing experts have argued that this is illogical and inappropriate, but political leaders want to know how their schools are performing and they want to fire low-performing teachers in hopes of improving the quality of the school. For example, citing a 2009 report by Lisa Guisbond, Monty Neill, and Bob Schaeffer, here, the FairTest.org site writes:
Basing teacher evaluations on inadequate standardized tests is a recipe for flawed evaluations. Value-added and growth measures are only as good as the exams on which they are based. They are simply a different way to use the same data. Unfortunately, standardized tests are narrow and limited indicators of student learning. They leave out a wide range of important knowledge and skills. Most states assess only the easier to measure parts of math and English curricula.
This brings us to Stuyvesant High School, a selective high school in Manhattan.
In order to determine how much value was added to a student’s education by a teacher, it’s necessary to measure the student’s understanding of the state’s curriculum at the beginning of the school year so the overall “achievement” of his or her students can be subtracted, statistically with a rather convoluted formula, from their achievement at the end of the year.
Forget that not all teachers provide instruction in a subject that’s tested by the state. Forget that several teachers contribute to the education of each student. Forget that the starting number is already near the top of whatever assessment instrument is used at a place like Stuyvesant, leaving very little room for teachers to add value within the confines of the state’s learning standards. We have statisticians to work all those problems out. And what the statisticians can’t work out, we’ll just bring in the politicians.
As a result of this completely illogical use of data, several Stuyvesant students have decided they’re just not going to take the baseline tests, GothamSchools.org reports. The state won’t get the “starting” number for the school this year.
Of course, nothing is quite that simple, since some students still took the exam, and that might be enough for statisticians and politicians to get a number for all the teachers that can be subtracted later this year, when the final number is available. And if that’s not enough, the state is allowed to use “historical” data. That means, of course, that it doesn’t come from any student currently being taught by a given teacher, but it’s allowed under the law.
“This is very straightforward,” one spokesman for the State Education Department was quoted as stressing in the article. “We don’t require pre-tests for anyone. If they opt out … historical data would be used instead.”
“Historical [sic] data [sic],” he actually said?!
Somebody at the New York State Education Department, a spokesperson no less, actually referred to the number that will be used as “data”?! They actually referred to it as “historical” and called it “data,” huh? Check that quote, GothamSchools.org. The correct term for this number is “fiction.” It’s a great work of fiction, no doubt, but fiction nonetheless.
