How to Talk to Stakeholders About The Dangers of Value-Added Models (VAMs) When Applied to Teacher Education Programs

*Yesterday* I discussed the worrisome construct that is the Value-added Model of evaluation and accountability as it pertains to K12 public education and may soon pertain to teacher education programs across the country if the Department of Education yahoos have their way.

I'm no proponent of VAM as an aspect of a teacher's evaluation if it is weighted so heavily that the teacher can be fired for "failing" to prepare his or her students well enough to meet an arbitrary cut-off score on poorly-constructed standardized tests, which are among the least-useful metrics for detailing students' learning available but seem to be all many of the heavy-hitters in ed reform really care about when their double-speak and schadenfreude is revealed. (See the work of Anthony Cody, Valerie Strauss, Peter Greene, and Carol Burris for help peaking behind the not-so-veiled curtain of such politicians, philanthropists, and business people).

Certainly I'm no fan of applying that same flawed VAM system to teacher education programs at colleges and universities and/or, as I suspect will happen as Deans and department chairs and tenured faculty shirk punatives down the chain of the academic hierarchy, individual professors.

That's right, the Department of Education wants the power to praise or condemn, literally to even destroy, certain teacher prep programs if their professors and instructors do not yield teachers working in public schools whose K12 students do not measure up on a terrible metric (standardized tests).

VAM is a scam partly because of the poor utility of data garnered from standardized tests but also because research informs us that the teacher is not the most significant factor influencing a child's educational outcomes. Socioeconomics and parental involvement weigh heavily upon a child's chance to succeed based on most measures, including those standardized tests, and even those who promote VAM as part of a teacher's evaluation recognize that the teacher may account for, at best, 20% of the child's progress. Teachers and teacher educators are vitally important, but they can only account for so much, and their import likely is prevalent in aspects not so easily measured as Scantron sheets.

VAM applied to teacher education is like a demented version of an Aristotelian thought experiment where VAM for teacher education is the second step removed from the thing itself; VAM for K12 teachers is the first step removed; and VAM is the thing itself, except the thing itself is idealized but not at all ideal for anyone -- except those who seek to profit from its destructive fallout, like privatizers and corporate philanthropists eager to create new markets for aspiring teachers.

VAM?: This is not a quality education-making artiface

Currently,  DOE personnel have the proposed VAM changes posted online and are accepting comments from the public to, presumably, shape the final version of the changes. While * I encourage you to post your comments *, doing so could be an empty measure in that often these comment periods are rhetorically empty gestures, a way of making us think we had input when the decisions have been made already.

To that end, it is important to contact other stakeholders, local leaders, and political power brokers to let them know you oppose these regulations. But doing so is hard, I know. Luckily, you do not have to go it alone:

Associate Professor of Education at Pennsylvania State University *Anne Elrod Whitney* has prepared VAM talking points primer which can be accessed vie Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_sZciv9tEWTmFoVTFnVmJsdlE/edit?pli=1 

Dr. Whitney has urged all of us in the education community to share the document with university officials like Deans, Presidents, and Boards of Regents; to use it to help organize responses from teacher education professors in their own programs and professional organizations; and to pull from it when contacting state and national politicians as well.

Among Whitney's main points are:
1. VAM-connected testing is bad for students, and therefor represents bad practice pedagogy if professors are forced to coerce future teachers into seeing testing as their focus.
2. VAM represents government overreach, a point perhaps especially bothersome to Republicans.
3. The methods presented as based on sound research are flawed.

As well, and so you don't have to just take our words for it, she links to scholarly articles detailing the faulty logic in emphasizing VAM scores.

Please use this excellent, clear primer to help you contact those in power who might be able to look at what the DOE sees as a "done deed' and not let them get away with being so "dirt cheap" when it comes to their obvious and continued attempts to ruin -- not transform, but ruin -- the entirety of American education.