Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/15938
Teacher effectiveness should not be measured by test scores alone Editor’s note: In late August, as this issue was headed to press, CTA learned that the Los Angeles Times had published an article using student results on California Standards Tests to evaluate teacher e° ec- tiveness for nearly 6,000 UTLA third- through ÿ fth-grade teachers. Publishing the database assembled by the Times as an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness or even as a “value- added” assessment model is irresponsi- ble and disrespectful to the hardworking teachers of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times model oversimplifies what defines an effective teacher and is based solely on one set of student test scores — tests that were never designed to measure teacher effectiveness or even student growth. The California Standards Tests are designed to measure grade-level standards, not student growth from the beginning of the school year to the end of the year. So trying to use that single test to create a value-added model in Los Angeles is impossible. In addition, all education research has concluded that using value-added mod- els as a primary measure for evaluating teachers is not appropriate, as the mea- sures are too unstable and too vulner- able. It is impossible to fully separate out the influences of students’ other teachers, as well as school conditions, classroom assignments, and student attendance. The following letter is from CTA member Larry Wiener in response to the Los Angeles Times’ misuse of test score data. I am a teacher for the Alhambra School District. Terry Skotnes, our executive director, suggested that I send this story to you in re- sponse to the testing frenzy we are all facing. Last year, part of my assignment was to work as an intervention specialist with at-risk students at a K-8 school. I worked in col- laboration with a counselor whose title was intervention adviser. In January, an eighth-grader came to our school with great needs. He had failed most of his classes in his other schools and was doing community service for driving with- out a license. At one parent conference he even said that he would drop out of school if he could. My partner and I both gave him a great deal of time because he was so at risk, but we saw potential, and he seemed to respect us. We had family conferences and enlisted the family, who made some major changes in the LETTERS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Dear Editor: I was extremely happy to read about other one-room schools in California in the June 2010 issue of California Educator (“Last of the one-room school- houses”). I am starting my tenth year at Bear Valley School. We are a one-room schoolhouse in the Sierra Nevadas. I spent my last nine years as the English/ history teacher for the Bear Valley High School, which operated in Bear 6 California Educator | SEPTEMBER 2010 California Teachers Association June 2010 Volume 14 Issue 9 “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche LAST OF THE page 16 schoolhouses page 8 Resiliency One-room Valley School. Now we are only an elementary school with the closure of Bear Valley High School. These schools o° er a special education which o° ers one-on-one education to all students. It’s sad to hear of schools like ours being closed. Schools really exist as a com- munity center, and when that is gone, well, it is sad. Stephanie Bowen Alpine County School Employees Association Dear Editor: With regard to the article “Meet Genera- tion Z” in the February 2010 issue of Califor- nia Educator, yes, there are ups and downs to this form of communication [texting] — but if you are the parent or teachers of this gen- eration of kids, you better start thumbing! Elizabeth Sassman Auburn Union Teachers Association way they handled him. He improved greatly. I just talked with the mom last night. I heard that he went to summer school and took algebra and passed with a C. He even got an A in the fi rst part of the class. He has had no trouble with the law according to the mom. I consider this a major turnaround, but had we been totally obsessed with test scores, there would be no reason to put the eff ort into this boy that we did. Because he came in January his test scores would not count even if he did get to profi cient, which would be quite unlikely in the three months between his entry and the testing time. We feel we made a defi nite diff erence in a needy boy’s life, but this accomplishment was not refl ected in the test scores. I’m sure all over the state there are educators doing important work that doesn’t show up in test scores. I felt CTA needed to know about this to use as an example. Larry Wiener Alhambra Teachers Association Are you a fan? Members are weighing in on Facebook. Give us your thoughts at: www.facebook.com/ californiateachersassociation