Category Archives: Teacher Evaluation

CCSS, Education, Educational Research, No Excuses Reform, Rhee, Social Context Reform, Standards, Teacher Evaluation, VAM

Assembled Pieces Reveal Disturbing Reform Picture

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Every time I write about Michelle Rhee, as I noted in a recent post, I feel like I should reenact the shower and wire-brush scene in Silkwood to purge myself of participating in the ceaseless media attention disproportionately afforded Rhee while the voices, daily efforts, and expertise of K-12 practitioners are not just ignored, but marginalized and even demonized.

So it is with a shared reservation (see Jose Vilson’s excellent post) that I once again wade into the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) debate—not to rehash my unequivocal opposition to the CCSS movement, but to offer a brief look at the picture revealed once all the pieces of the corporate/ “no excuses” reform movement puzzle are assembled. First, then, let me identify the primary pieces of that puzzle:

CCSS

National high-stakes tests built on CCSS

Reformed teacher evaluation driven by VAM-based teacher ranking

Teach for America

Charter schools

These various pieces are an effective strategy with a common thread because separately each reform element creates a focal point of debate; for an educator or researcher to challenge any one of these policies is a seemingly endless task since the reform agenda is being set by those with political and financial power. Refuting the need for new standards, much less the flaws with implementing those new standards, immediately positions educators as reactionary and allows the self-appointed reformers to characterize those challenges as being for the status quo and against reform and accountability.

For example, teachers in my home state of South Carolina who have spoken against VAM-style teacher evaluation reform have been publicly labeled by the state superintendent of education, Mick Zais, as trying to avoid being held accountable for their work.

The picture these reform pieces show is not a patchwork of evidence-based and innovative strategies for improving public education, but a carefully unified process of infusing even more deeply the power of high-stakes standardized testing into the fabric of public schools. Look beneath any of the elements listed above and find the allure of new and better tests, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2010) celebrated himself:

Today is a great day! I have looked forward to this day for a long time–and so have America’s teachers, parents, students, and school leaders. Today is the day that marks the beginning of the development of a new and much-improved generation of assessments for America’s schoolchildren. Today marks the start of Assessments 2.0. And today marks one more milestone, testifying to the transformational change now taking hold in our nation’s schools under the courageous leadership and vision of state and district officials.

Duncan’s entusiasm doesn’t stop there:

This new generation of mathematics and English language arts assessments will cover all students in grades three through eight and be used at least once in high school in every state that chooses to use them. In addition, the PARCC consortium will develop optional performance tasks to inform teachers about the development of literacy and mathematics knowledge and skills in kindergarten through second grade.

I am convinced that this new generation of state assessments will be an absolute game-changer in public education. For the first time, millions of schoolchildren, parents, and teachers will know if students are on-track for colleges and careers–and if they are ready to enter college without the need for remedial instruction. Yet that fundamental shift–re-orienting K-12 education to extend beyond high school graduation to college and career-readiness–will not be the only first here.

For the first time, many teachers will have the state assessments they have longed for– tests of critical thinking skills and complex student learning that are not just fill-in-the-bubble tests of basic skills but support good teaching in the classroom.

And what provides the basis upon which Duncan makes these claims?:

Yet existing assessments are only part of the problem. An assessment system and curriculum can only be as good as the academic standards to which the assessments and curriculum are pegged. We want teachers to teach to standards–if the standards are rigorous, globally competitive, and consistent across states. Unfortunately, in the last decade, numerous states dummied down their academic standards and assessments. In effect, they lied to parents and students. They told students they were proficient and on track to college success, when they were not even close.

The Common Core standards developed by the states, coupled with the new generation of assessments, will help put an end to the insidious practice of establishing 50 different goalposts for educational success. In the years ahead, a child in Mississippi will be measured against the same standard of success as a child in Massachusetts.

Even if we account for the sort of soaring rhetoric associated with political discourse, Duncan clearly envisions policy that must include a staggering and unprecedented commitment to testing that rises to the level of parody. But for all stakeholders in public education, the results of all the policies linked to standardized testing must include a brave new world of testing that boggles the mind in terms of the amount of time and funding required to design, field test, implement, and manage pre- and post-tests aligned with CCSS for every single course and teacher year after year after year.

As Yong Zhao has detailed carefully in an exchange with Marc Tucker, commitments to education reform policy linked to CCSS and the high-stakes tests built on these new standards are not anything new, are not justified by any clearly identified problems or needs, and are not consistent with the larger democratic goals of universal public education:

[L]et me restate my main point: it is impossible, unnecessary, and harmful for a small group of individuals to predetermine and impose upon all students the same set of knowledge and skills and expect all students progress at the same pace (if the students don’t, it is the teachers’ and schools’ fault). I am not against standards per se for good standards can serve as a useful guide. What I am against is Common and Core, that is, the same standards for all students and a few subjects (currently math and English language arts) as the core of all children’s education diet. I might even love the Common Core if they were not common or core.

Classroom teachers, educational researchers, and educational historians have offered and continue to offer a clear and valid voice that Duncan’s claims and the resulting policies are deeply flawed, but as Brian Jones asks, “If all of this testing is so bad for teaching and learning, why is it spreading?” According to Jones, the answer detailed in the full picture is clear:

As the tests spread and the consequences associated with them rise, absurdities abound….

The shift toward using student data to evaluate teachers is part of a larger trend of restructuring public education to align it with the rest of the economy. As one of the last heavily unionized groups of workers in the country, teachers stand in the way of privatization. And to the extent that they are self-governed, self-motivated and enjoy professional autonomy, teachers are a ‘bad’ example for other workers.

Even though it may not make for great teaching or genuine learning, high-stakes standardized testing is spreading because it is the perfect tool for controlling and disciplining teachers–and for training the next generation to internalize the priorities of the system.

The attempt to quantify and track every aspect of an employee’s ‘performance’ is not new.

Standardized testing—the inevitable consequence of commitments to CCSS, reformed teacher evaluation, and each piece of the corporate reform puzzle—combines the veneer of objectivity with the power of perpetual control over schools, teachers, and students, what Foucault characterized as “…entering the age of infinite examination and of compulsory objectification” (p. 200):

The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible….

[T]he art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power, is aimed neither at expiation, nor precisely at repression….It differentiates individuals from one another, in terms of the following overall rule: that the rule be made to function as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected, or as an optimum toward which one must move. It measures in quantitative terms and hierarchizes in terms of value the abilities, the level, the ‘nature’ of individuals….The perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institution compares, differentiates, hierachizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes….

The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of normalizing judgment. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish….

In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is the fact of their being constantly seen…that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection. And the examination is the technique by which power…holds them in a mechanism of objectification. (pp. 177, 170, 197, 199)

Now, in the context of whether or not the U.S. is committed to universal public education as a central element of a commitment to democracy and individual liberty, and then whether or not education reform is seeking that foundational goal, time has come to set aside the puzzle-piece-by-puzzle-piece dismantling of the corporate reform agenda and confront directly the central flaw with the picture itself, as Jones acknowledges:

The solution to this dilemma is not to develop better tests, but to tear down the whole enterprise of high-stakes standardized assessment and replace it with authentic assessments that are organic to the process of real teaching and learning.

In sum, the attempt to quantify learning and teaching in a standardized manner is extremely expensive; takes up weeks and, in some places, months of time in school; narrows the curriculum; undermines the intrinsic joy of learning; and leads to a culture of corruption and cheating. As a measure of student learning, standardized tests are an extremely limited instrument. As a measure of teacher effectiveness, they are even more flawed.

Measuring, labeling, ranking, and then sorting students, teachers, and schools is an anti-democratic process, a dehumanizing process, and a mechanism for control. At the center of this process being antithetical to both our democracy and our faith in education is the fundamental flaw of high-stakes standardized testing.

Do many of the puzzle pieces of the corporate reform puzzle misuse standardized tests and the data drawn from those tests? Yes.

But we must not fall prey to the simplistic claim that the problem is how tests are used and not the tests themselves.

The ugly full picture of corporate reform shows that the problem is testing. Period.

No Excuses Reform, Statistics, Teacher Evaluation, Teaching, VAM

Teacher Quality Mania: Backward by Design

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Let’s return to the allegory of the river.

Throughout the Land, people discovered babies floating in the river. A few were chosen to save those babies. While many survived, too many babies perished.

Technocrats, Economists, and Statisticians gathered all the Data that they could and discovered that at least 60% of the reason the babies survived or perished in the river was due to babies being tossed in the river; about 10-15% of the reason babies survived or perished was due to the quality of those trying to save babies in the river.

So the Leaders of the Land decided to focus exclusively on increasing the quality of those trying to save the babies floating in the river, saying, “There is nothing we can do about babies being tossed in the river, and there are no excuses for not saving these babies!”

And so it goes…

•

While this altered tale above reads like a dystopian allegory, it is a fair and accurate portrayal of the current mania to address teacher quality—a mania that simply has the entire reform process backward.

First, the body of research shows a clear statistical pattern about the array of factors influencing measurable student outcomes, as summarized by Di Carlo:

But in the big picture, roughly 60 percent of achievement outcomes is explained by student and family background characteristics (most are unobserved, but likely pertain to income/poverty). Observable and unobservable schooling factors explain roughly 20 percent, most of this (10-15 percent) being teacher effects. The rest of the variation (about 20 percent) is unexplained (error). In other words, though precise estimates vary, the preponderance of evidence shows that achievement differences between students are overwhelmingly attributable to factors outside of schools and classrooms (see Hanushek et al. 1998; Rockoff 2003; Goldhaber et al. 1999; Rowan et al. 2002; Nye et al. 2004).

When educators and education researchers note that teacher quality is dwarfed by other factors, primarily out-of-school factors associated with affluence and poverty, Corporate and “No Excuses” Reformers respond with straw man arguments that quoting statistical facts is somehow saying teachers cannot have an impact on students or that quoting those facts is simply an excuse for not trying to educate all students (see Larry Ferlazzo and Anthony Cody for examples of this phenomenon in the debate over teacher quality).

To be clear, however, the problem is not that teacher quality doesn’t matter or that teachers do not want to be evaluated or held accountable. The problem is that addressing in a single-minded way teacher quality is self-defeating since (as the altered allegory above shows) it has the priorities of reform backward.

Teacher quality reform should occur, but it must come after the primary factors impacting learning and teaching conditions are addressed, thus making it possible to make valid and reliable evaluations of teacher quality. That process should be:

(1) Address first and directly the inequity of opportunity in the lives of children to create the conditions within which schools/teachers can succeed and thus school and teacher quality can be better evaluated and supported. As stated in a recent review of misleading “no excuses” and “miracle” school claims: “Addressing out-of-school factors is primary and fundamental to resolving education inequality” (Paige, 2013, January).

(2) Address next equity and opportunity within schools. Teaching conditions must be equitable in all school and for all students. Currently, affluent and successful students have the most experienced certified teachers and also sit in AP and IB classes with low student/teacher ratios while poor and struggling students have new and un-/under-certified teachers, sitting in high student/teacher ratios classes that are primarily test-prep. Inequitable teaching/learning conditions actually mask our ability to identify quality teachers.

(3) And then, once out-of-school equity is addressed and then in-school equity is addressed focusing on teaching and learning conditions, teachers must be afforded autonomy; and finally, we can gather credible evidence to begin identifying valid teacher quality metrics to inform evaluating, supporting, and retaining teachers.

The first and second priorities can be implemented simultaneously and immediately, with the third priority delayed until conditions are equitable enough to make authentic assessments of teacher impact on student learning. [And regardless, everyone involved in teaching and learning can and must continue to teach as well as possible; that is a given.]

Current arguments that only teacher quality matters are neither statistically accurate nor an effective reform priority.

Current arguments that only teacher quality matters are a frantic effort to save the babies floating in the river while ignoring the real crisis of babies being thrown in the river in the first place.

LWV, Teacher Evaluation, VAM

Review [UPDATED]: “How to Evaluate and Retain Effective Teachers” (League of Women Voters of SC)

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The League of Women Voters of South Carolina has released a report entitled “How to Evaluate and Retain Effective Teachers” (2011-2013) with the identified purpose “to examine the growing movement toward ‘results based’ evaluation nationally and in South Carolina.”

Before examining the substance of the report, several problems with the larger context of teacher evaluation and retention as they intersect with important challenges facing SC need to be identified:

• The report fails to clarify and provide evidence that teacher quality and retention are primary problems facing SC. Without a clear and evidence-based problem, solutions are rendered less credible. However, SC, like most of the US, has a teacher assignment problem that has been clearly documented: students of color, students from poverty, English language learners (ELL), and special needs students are disproportionately assigned to un-/under-certified and inexperienced teachers (Peskey & Haycock, 2006). As well, the implied problem of the report marginalizes the greatest obstacles facing SC schools, poverty and the concentration of poverty (notably the Corridor of Shame along I-95).

• The report compiles and bases claims on a selection of references that are not representative of the body of research on teacher quality and value-added methods (VAM) or performance-based systems of identifying teacher quality. As detailed below, the claims and research included in this report misrepresent the reports themselves as well as the current knowledge-base on teacher quality and retention.

In that context, the report fails the larger education reform needs facing SC as well as the stated purpose of the study.

Do Teachers Matter?

The opening claim of the report asserts “the most important school-based factor is an effective teacher,” and then cites Hanushek, among others. While the report is careful to note teacher quality is an important in-school factor, it repeatedly overstates teacher quality’s impact with terms such as “overwhelmingly” and fails to clarify that in-school factors are dwarfed by out-of-school factors. Matthew Di Carlo offers a balanced picture of the proportional impact of teacher quality, including an accurate interpretation of many of the same references (such as Hanushek):

“But in the big picture, roughly 60 percent of achievement outcomes is explained by student and family background characteristics (most are unobserved, but likely pertain to income/poverty). Observable and unobservable schooling factors explain roughly 20 percent, most of this (10-15 percent) being teacher effects. The rest of the variation (about 20 percent) is unexplained (error). In other words, though precise estimates vary, the preponderance of evidence shows that achievement differences between students are overwhelmingly attributable to factors outside of schools and classrooms (see Hanushek et al. 1998; Rockoff 2003; Goldhaber et al. 1999; Rowan et al. 2002; Nye et al. 2004).” [1]

Along with misrepresenting the impact of teacher quality on measurable student outcomes, the report lends credibility to a misrepresented and flawed study by Chetty, Friendam and Rockoff  (2011):

“[T]hose using the results of this paper to argue forcefully for specific policies are drawing unsupported conclusions from otherwise very important empirical findings.” (Di Carlo)

“These are interesting findings. It’s a really cool academic study. It’s a freakin’ amazing data set! But these findings cannot be immediately translated into what the headlines have suggested – that immediate use of value-added metrics to reshape the teacher workforce can lift the economy, and increase wages across the board! The headlines and media spin have been dreadfully overstated and deceptive. Other headlines and editorial commentary has been simply ignorant and irresponsible. (No Mr. Moran, this one study did not, does not, cannot negate  the vast array of concerns that have been raised about using value-added estimates as blunt, heavily weighted instruments in personnel policy in school systems.)” (Baker)

The teacher quality impact is misrepresented in this report and perpetuates popular and agenda-driven research myths such as the need for consecutive years of high-quality teachers; the claim is inaccurate and should not drive policy:

“This is important, because the ‘X consecutive teachers’ argument only carries concrete policy implications if we can accurately identify the ‘top’ teachers. In reality, though, the ability to do so is still extremely limited [emphasis added].

“So, in the context of policy debates, the argument proves almost nothing. All it really does – in a rather overblown, misleading fashion – is illustrate that teacher quality is important and should be improved, not that policies like merit pay, higher salaries, or charter schools will improve it.

“This represents a fundamental problem that I have discussed before: The conflation of the important finding that teachers matter – that they vary in their effectiveness – with the assumption that teacher effects can be measured accurately at the level of the individual teacher (see here for a quick analogy explaining this dichotomy)….

“But the ‘X consecutive teachers’ argument doesn’t help us evaluate whether this or anything else is a good idea. Using it in this fashion is both misleading and counterproductive. It makes huge promises that cannot be fulfilled, while also serving as justification for policies that it cannot justify. Teacher quality is a target, not an arrow.” (Di Carlo)

Has Traditional Teacher Evaluation Failed?

One of the implied and cited reasons for addressing teacher quality and retention rests on wide-spread criticism of traditional teacher evaluation policies and practices. This report lends a great deal of credibility to those criticisms while relying on The Widget Effect from The New Teacher Project (TNTP). [2] However, a review of this report calls into question, again, the credibility of the study’s claims as well as using it as a basis for policy decisions:

“Overall, the report portrays current practices in teacher evaluation as a broken system perpetuated by a culture that refuses to recognize and deal with incompetence and that fails to reward excellence. However, omissions in the report’s description of its methodology (e.g., sampling strategy, survey response rates) and its sample lead to questions about the generalizability of the report’s findings.”

Di Carlo has also documented that TNTP continues to misrepresent and overstate the impact of teacher quality and the effectiveness of identifying high-quality teachers:

“I just want to make one quick (and, in many respects, semantic) point about the manner in which TNTP identifies high-performing teachers, as I think it illustrates larger issues. In my view, the term ‘irreplaceable’ doesn’t apply, and I think it would have been a better analysis without it….

“Based on single-year estimates in math and reading, a full 43 percent of the NYC teachers classified as ‘irreplaceable’ in 2009 were not classified as such in 2010. (In fairness, the year-to-year stability may be a bit higher using the other district-specific definitions.)

“Such instability and misclassification are inevitable no matter how the term is defined and how much data are available – it’s all a matter of degree – but, in general, one must be cautious when interpreting single-year estimates (see here, here and here for related analyses).

“Perhaps more importantly, if you look at how they actually sorted teachers into categories, the label irreplaceable,’ at least as I interpret it, seems inappropriate no matter how much data are available.”

Performance-Based Teacher Evaluations: Is VAM Credible?

A significant portion of the report makes claims about value-added methods (VAM) of teacher evaluations in the context of performance-based approaches to identifying teacher quality. Nationally, VAM and other performance-based policies are being implemented quickly, but with little regard to the current understanding of the effectiveness and limitations of those policies; this report fails to represent the current state of research on VAM accurately and depends on research and think tank advocacy (National Council on Teacher Quality [NCTQ]) that distorts the importance of teacher quality and the effectiveness of identifying teacher quality based on measurable student outcomes.

The report remains supportive of performance-based policy recommendations, but does identify cautions about test-based teacher evaluations while also encouraging teacher evaluations include multiple measures and include teachers in the creation of a new evaluation system.

Two failures, however, of this report’s endorsement of VAM and/or performance-based teacher evaluations systems include couching that endorsement in the distorted claims about teacher quality’s impact on measurable student outcomes and depending on reports and claims made by NCTQ and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. [3]

What, then, are the current patterns from the research on VAM and performance-based models and how should those patterns shape policy? [4]

• VAM and test-based evaluations for teachers remain both misleading about teacher quality and misrepresented by research, the media, and political leadership. Numerous researchers have detailed that teachers identified as high-quality or weak one year are identified differently in subsequent years: Numerous factors beyond the control of teachers remain reflected in test scores more powerfully than the individual impact of any specified teacher. The debate over teacher quality and measuring that quality, then, is highly distorted, as Di Carlo explains: “Whether or not we use these measures in teacher evaluations is an important decision, but the attention it gets seems way overblown.” This report makes that mistake.

• VAM and performance-based teacher evaluations in high-stakes settings distort teaching and learning by narrowing the focus of both teaching and learning to teaching to the test and test scores. VAM and test-based data  are likely valuable for big picture patterns and in-school or in-district decision making regarding teacher assignment, but VAM and performance-based evaluations of individual teachers remain inaccurate and inappropriate for evaluation, pay, or retention.

Particularly in a state such as SC where poverty and state budget concerns burden the state and the public school system, VAM and performance-based systems that rely on extensive retooling of standards, testing, and teacher evaluation systems are simply not cost effective (Bausell, 2013): “VAM is not reliable or valid, and VAM-based polices are not cost-effective for the purpose of raising student achievement and increasing earnings by terminating large numbers of low-performing teachers” (Yeh, 2014).

And further, rejecting VAM and using significant percentages of student test scores to evaluate and retain teachers is not rejecting teacher accountability, but confronting the misuse of data. Ewing (2011) clarifies that VAM is flawed math and thus invalid as a tool in teacher evaluation:

“Of course we should hold teachers accountable, but this does not mean we have to pretend that mathematical models can do something they cannot. Of course we should rid our schools of incompetent teachers, but value-added models are an exceedingly blunt tool for this purpose. In any case, we ought to expect more from our teachers than what value-added attempts to measure.”

If SC choses to reform teacher evaluation—which remains a project far less urgent than other problems being ignored—the state would be guided better by Gabriel and Allington (2012), who have analyzed and challenged the Gates Foundations MET Project, which has prompted misguided and hasty implementation of VAM-style teacher evaluation reform:

“Although we don’t question the utility of using evidence of student learning to inform teacher development, we suggest that a better question would not assume that value-added scores are the only existing knowledge about effectiveness in teaching. Rather, a good question would build on existing research and investigate how to increase the amount and intensity of effective instruction.”

Gabriel and Allington (2012) recommend five questions to guide teacher evaluation reform, instead of VAM or other student-outcome-based initiatives:

“Do evaluation tools inspire responsive teaching or defensive conformity?…

“Do evaluation tools reflect our goals for public education?…

“Do evaluation tools encourage teachers to use text in meaningful ways?…

“Do evaluation tools spark meaningful conversations with teachers?…

“Do evaluation tools promote valuable education experiences?”

Again, these guidelines are evidence-based alternatives to discredited and experimental commitments to the misrepresented evidence in the report from LWV SC, but SC remains overburdened by issues related to equity and opportunity that outweigh the need to reform teacher evaluation at this time.

How Should SC Proceed with Teacher Quality and Retention?

On balance, this report misrepresents teacher quality and overstates the need and ability to identify high-quality teachers using VAM and other performance-based policies. The flaws in this report grow from an over-reliance on misguided and misrepresented research and advocacy while ignoring the rich and detailed evidence from the full body of research on teacher quality. Finally, the report concludes by discrediting SC’s current teacher evaluation system (ADEPT) in the context of the inaccurate and distorted claims in the report.

Ultimately, the report encourages SC to spend valuable time and resources on policies that are dwarfed by more pressing needs facing the state and its public schools—a failure of state leadership replicated in the perpetual retooling of state education standards (Common Core State Standards adoption) and high-stakes testing based on revised standards. In short, SC has a number of social and educational challenges that need addressing before the state experiments with revising teacher evaluation and retention policies, including the following:

• Identify how better to allocate state resources to address childhood and family poverty, childhood food security, children and family access to high-quality health care, and stable, well paying work for families.

• Replace current education policies based on accountability, standards, and testing with policies that address equity and opportunity for all students.

• Address immediately the greatest teacher quality issue facing SC’s public schools—inequitable distribution of teacher quality among students in greatest need (high-poverty children, children of color, ELL, and special needs students).

• Address immediately the conditions of teaching and learning in the state’s schools, including issues of student/teacher ratios, building conditions and material availability, administrative and community support of teachers, equitable school funding and teacher salaries, teacher job security and academic freedom in a right-to-work state, and school safety.

Any policy changes that further entrench the culture of testing in SC as a mechanism for evaluating students, teachers, and schools perpetuate the burden of inequity in the state and schools.

SC does not need new standards, new tests, or a new teacher evaluation system. All of these practices have been implemented in different versions with high-stakes attached for the past thirty years—with the current result being the same identified failures with public schools that were the basis of these policies.

SC, like much of the US, needs to come to terms with identifying problems first before seeking solutions. The problems are ones of equity and opportunity, and no current teacher evaluation plan is facing those realities, including this report.

[1] For additional examinations of out-of-school factors compared to teacher quality and in-school factors see Berliner, 2009, 2014; Hirsch, 2007; Rothstein, 2010; Traub, 2000.

[2] Also see Di Carlo, 2011, on TNTP.

[3] For evaluations of NCTQ and Gates see the following: (a) NCTQ: Benner, 2012; Merrill & Ingersoll, 2010; Baker, 2010, January 29; Baker, 2010, October 8; Baker, 2010, December 4, and (b) Gates: Baker, 2010, December 13; Baker, 2011, March 2; Libby, 2012; [Gates MET Project] Gabriel & Allington, 2012; Rubinstein, 2013, January 13; Rubinstein, 2013, January 9; Baker, 2013, January 9; Glass, 2013, January 14; Rothstein & Mathis, 2013

[4] For comprehensive examinations of research on VAM, see Di Carlo, 2012, November 13*; Di Carlo, 2012, April 12 (reliability); Di Carlo, 2012, April 18 (validity); Baker, 2012, May 28 (misrepresentations of VAM); Baker, et al., 2010, August 27; Ewing, 2011, May. For recent concerns about legal action and VAM-based teacher evaluation, see Baker, Oluwole, & Green, 2013; Pullin, 2013

* Di Carlo remains a proponent of including VAM in teacher evaluations.

References

Berliner, D. C. (2014). Effects of inequality and poverty vs. teachers and schooling on America’s youth. Teachers College Record, 116(1). Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16889

Berliner, D. C. (2009). Poverty and potential: Out-of-school factors and school success. Boulder, CO and Tempe, AZ: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/poverty-and-potential

Gabriel, R., & Allington, R. (2012, November). The MET Project: The wrong 45 Million dollar question. Educational Leadership, 70(3), 44-49. Retrieved from http://216.78.200.159/Documents/RandD/Teacher%20Evaluation/MET%20Project%20-%20Wrong%2045%20Millon%20Question%20-%20Gabriel.pdf

Hirsch, D. (2007, September). Experiences of poverty and educational disadvantage. York, North Yorkshire, UK: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/2123.asp

Peske, H. G., & Haycock, K. (2006, June). Teaching inequality: How poor and minority students are shortchanged on teacher quality. Washington DC: The Education Trust, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/publications/files/TQReportJune2006.pdf

Rothstein, R. (2010, October 14). How to fix our schools. Issue Brief 286. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/ib286

Thomas, P. L. (2011, December). Teacher quality and accountability: A failed debate. Daily Censored. Retrieved from http://www.dailycensored.com/teacher-quality-and-accountability-a-failed-debate/

Traub, J. (2000, January 16). What no school can do. New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from http://local.provplan.org/pp170/materials/what%20no%20school%20can%20do.htm