I’m NOT sorry to sound like a broken record on this issue. I see no evidence that anybody in a position to influence policy (AFT leadership and NEA leadership) is doing a damn thing except explaining why we must capitulate in order to keep our “seat at the table.”
I’m sorry but when you accept the Common Core you also accept the testing that comes with it. Therefore you cannot support the ending of high stakes punitive testing and extol virtues of the common core at the same time. It’s a 2 for 1 deal. Accept the Common Core and you get the high stakes testing for free.
We also need to remember that this testing (that comes with the Common Core) will be used to calculate teachers’ VAM scores (Another capitulation). Using VAMs to evaluate teachers requires all involved to commit evaluative atrocities!
As Stephen Krashen stated, “Teachers’ value-added ratings based on previous years are weak predictors of test scores at the end of a year with new students. A teacher who succeeds in boosting scores with one group will not necessarily succeed with others (Sass, T. 2008. The stability of value-added measures of teacher quality and implications for teacher compensation policy. Washington D.C.: CALDER. (National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research.) Kane, T. and Staiger, D. 2009. Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement: An Experimental Evaluation. NBER Working Paper No. 14607http://www.nber.org/papers/w14607).
Also, different tests result in different value-added scores for the same teacher (Papay, J. 2010. ‘Different tests, different answers: The stability of teacher value-added estimates across outcome measures.’ American Educational Research Journal 47,2.).”
As one commenter on this blog site put it, “We don’t need a seat at the table. We need to turn the f#*king table over!”
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“Seat at the table”- words of VAM sympathizers. Also, the words uttered that allowed student achievement to equal std. test score.