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Larry Lee reports on pending legislation intended to create a state framework for evaluating teachers.
He cites an analysis of Alabama’s proposed legislation by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley. She says that it is apparent that Alabama’s lawmakers did not inform themselves about research on teacher evaluation measures.
Amrein-Beardsley writes:
Nothing is written about the ongoing research and evaluation of the state system, that is absolutely necessary in order to ensure the system is working as intended, especially before any types of consequential decisions are to be made (e.g., school bonuses, teachers’ denial of tenure, teacher termination, teacher termination due to a reduction in force).
To measure growth the state is set to use student performance data on state tests, as well as data derived via the ACT Aspire examination, American College Test (ACT), and “any number of measures from the department developed list of preapproved options for governing boards to utilize to measure student achievement growth.” As mentioned in my prior post about Alabama, this is precisely what has gotten the whole state of New Mexico wrapped up in, and quasi-losing their ongoing lawsuit. While providing districts with menus of off-the-shelf and other assessment options might make sense to policymakers, any self respecting researcher should know why this is entirely inappropriate.
Clearly the state does not understand the current issues with value-added/growth levels of reliability, or consistency, or lack thereof, that are altogether preventing such consistent classifications of teachers over time. Inversely, what is consistently evident across all growth models is that estimates are very inconsistent from year to year, which will likely thwart what the bill has written into it here, as such a theoretically simple proposition.
Unless the state plans on “artificially conflating” scores, by manufacturing and forcing the oft-unreliable growth data to fit or correlate with teachers’ observational data (two observations per year are to be required), and/or survey data (student surveys are to be used for teachers of students in grades three and above), such consistency is thus far impossible unless deliberately manipulated.
In short, Alabama legislators are considering a measure that is very likely invalid and unreliable. They really should do some more homework and go back to the drawing board.