About a month ago, I wrote a long post on the topic of "value-added" measures of teacher effectiveness. With such measures getting a high-profile endorsement from the Aspen Commission on NCLB, I wrote, it was a safe bet that opponents of tying teacher evaluation to student tests scores would be mischaracterizing the conclusions of a book published by the RAND Corporation on the topic. Sure enough, in the paid "What Matters Most" column published in yesterday's New York Times, UFT President Randi Weingarten wrote:
"..most experts, including the well regarded RAND Corporation, recommend against using "value-added" analysis for evaluating teachers."
This is just wrong, an example of simplifying conclusions and recommendations in a way that distorts their meaning to the point of inversion. Taken at face value, Weingarten's characterization suggests that RAND has rejected value-added methodologies as a whole. This is absolutely not true, as the previous post explains.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment