{"id":22644,"date":"2014-08-25T02:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T06:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=22644"},"modified":"2014-08-25T10:13:48","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T14:13:48","slug":"essay-what-a-teacher-score-doesnt-tell-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2014\/08\/25\/essay-what-a-teacher-score-doesnt-tell-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Essay: What A Teacher Score Doesn&#8217;t Tell Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_22645\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 600px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Teachers get a number score with the state's value-added model.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/08\/vd1966_flickr_numbers.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-22645\" alt=\"Teachers get a number score with the state's value-added model.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/08\/vd1966_flickr_numbers.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"467\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/08\/vd1966_flickr_numbers.jpg 600w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2014\/08\/vd1966_flickr_numbers-300x233.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">vd1966 \/ Flickr<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Teachers get a number score with the state&#39;s value-added model.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I finally know my worth as a teacher\u2014and now that the \u201cvalue-added model\u201d scores mandated by our state legislature are public, everyone else knows, too.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a 37.5.<\/p>\n<p>But, I have no idea what that number means.<\/p>\n<p>Along with my 37.5, I was told I\u2019m \u201chighly effective\u201d and given a $230 bonus. In case you\u2019re wondering, that\u2019s about half what the average teacher spends of his or her own money on school supplies per year.<\/p>\n<p>Even though I don\u2019t understand my 37.5, I do know a lot more about than I did last year about value-added formulas. I left the classroom and I\u2019m currently in a doctoral program in education.<\/p>\n<p>I have access to many of the statisticians who create these kinds of models for their research. The funny thing is, many of these experts say that the formulas shouldn\u2019t be used to make decisions about teacher performance\u2014<em>the very thing we\u2019re using them for<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n<p>That\u2019s right:\u00a0Many researchers think value-added models can\u2019t accurately measure a teacher\u2019s performance in one year.\u00a0And studies have shown that the same teacher may get a high score one year and a low score the next, and that neither number may actually tell us much about their teaching.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"related-content alignleft\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/09\/10\/classroom-contemplations-why-one-teacher-left-the-classroom-to-work-with-death-row-inmates\/\">Classroom Contemplations: Why One Teacher Left The Classroom To Work With Death Row Inmates<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/08\/13\/classroom-contemplations-how-teachers-find-success-from-failure\/\">Classroom Contemplations: How Teachers Find Success From Failure<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/07\/24\/classroom-contemplations-helping-students-find-their-voice\/\">Classroom Contemplations: Helping Students Find Their Voice<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/07\/18\/classroom-contemplations-a-student-on-the-value-a-teacher-added\/\">Classroom Contemplations: A Student, On The Value A Teacher Added<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/07\/12\/classroom-comtemplations-lessons-after-the-school-day-ends\/\">Classroom Comtemplations: Lessons After The School Day Ends<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/06\/jeremy-2011-117.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/topic\/classroom-contemplations\/\">Classroom Contemplations: Education Policies From A Teacher&#8217;s Perspective<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Experts be damned, the legislature has gone forward anyway.<\/p>\n<p>I understand their motivation because ultimately I believe we want the same thing: good teachers for all of our children.<\/p>\n<p>But we need to recognize that achieving this requires both rewarding effective teachers to keep them in the profession and helping struggling teachers improve.\u00a0A single number score accomplishes neither of these goals.<\/p>\n<p>My 37.5 doesn\u2019t tell me how I can continue to grow professionally, nor does it tell me how I could help a \u201cless effective\u201d teacher improve. It\u2019s simply a recipe for anxiety, anger, and shame.<\/p>\n<p>There are effective ways to monitor teachers. One of my former principals at Miami Northwestern Senior High, Dr. Steve Gallon, peeked into our classrooms almost every day to see what was going on.\u00a0He could see the ups and downs every teacher has, and he was able to praise us on our good days and help us on our bad ones.\u00a0That was much more useful to me than my 37.5.<\/p>\n<p>But we\u2019re not focusing on what\u2019s actually happening in classrooms.\u00a0Instead, our legislature has decided to use value-added models as a way to hold teachers accountable for what we perceive to be the underperformance of our children.<\/p>\n<p>If we really want to talk about accountability and who\u2019s responsible for how our children are doing, we may want to look at ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re drastically reducing funding for libraries, slashing parks and after-school programs, and cutting the arts in our schools.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of providing the kinds of resources that have been shown time and time again to be beneficial for children, we\u2019ve decided to focus negative attention on teachers\u2014the very people who have actually dedicated their lives to working with kids.<\/p>\n<p>Is this how we repay them for showing the commitment to children that we, as a community, don\u2019t seem to have?<\/p>\n<p>Shame on us.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Jeremy Glazer is a former Miami-Dade school teacher. He\u2019s working on a doctorate in education at Stanford University.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally know my worth as a teacher\u2014and now that the \u201cvalue-added model\u201d scores mandated by our state legislature are public, everyone else knows, too. I\u2019m a 37.5. But, I have no idea what that number means. Along with my 37.5, I was told I\u2019m \u201chighly effective\u201d and given a $230 bonus. In case you\u2019re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":22645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[841,1119],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22647,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644\/revisions\/22647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}