Did anyone ever hear of this?

levirm
Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:49:09 +0000

intparent, see the powerpoint that Billymc posted to see a formula for VAM. Basically, the idea is that the difference between the expected gain in test score and the actual gain the following year is the “value added” by that teacher. A teacher whose students make a year and a half worth of progress in one year has positive VAM, and a teacher whose students only make a half year worth of progress has negative VAM. This is all the rage in measuring teacher effectiveness. It has been controversial in LAUSD where the VAM of teachers was actually published by a newspaper! It is actually easier to measure it in elementary schools where students have one teacher all day, or have one teacher for reading and another for math. The question becomes how to measure it in high school, when of course all kids are “contaminated” by other teachers but also the kids don’t even get state tests every year. Some districts are considering pay for performance models where VAM would be one measure used for this; other districts are considering layoffs based on merit rather than seniority, so a model would be needed for this. Many districts have just a basic “satisfactory-unsatisfactory” evaluation scale for teachers and parents are demanding that this be improved so that meaningful teacher evaluation can take place.