I’m in my room in D.C. just hanging out and excited about being here for the SOS conference. Relaxing ya know. I decided to do a little Twitter surfing and ended up reading about the 98 D.C. teachers fired for poor performance based on their IMPACT scores.
IMPACT is the system of evaluation (based on the junk science of Value Added Measures) that was put in place by the former D.C. Chancellor that supposedly used tape in the past to “quiet” students down and doesn’t like “crappie” teachers. Yes the “Radical” Michelle Rhee still haunts the D.C. public schools. And as much as there is to say about the disaster she created what struck me from the article was this,
“The union has made a concerted effort to help teachers navigate the system, coaching about 800 members in IMPACT courses over the past two years.”
Really? The Union representing teachers in D.C. is teaching D.C. teachers how to literally teach to the test—IMPACT.
Can anyone say Campbell’s Law?
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Once again, another WTF? moment brought to you by your friends at The Chalk Face.
Follow Timothy D. Slekar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/slekar
CREATE Chicago education researchers, have collaborated to produce the following brief.
Hopefully, other educational researchers will collaborate to produce new reports. One of the challenges is communicating this knowledge to the populace in an comprehensible way.
Misconceptions and Realities about Teacher and Principal Evaluation
As university professors and researchers who specialize in educational research, we recognize that change is an essential component of school improvement. We are very concerned, however, at a continuing pattern of changes imposed rapidly without high-quality evidentiary support.
The new evaluation system for teachers and principals centers on misconceptions about student growth, with potentially negative impact on the education of Chicago’s children. We believe it is our ethical obligation to raise awareness about how the proposed changes not only lack a sound research basis, but in some instances, have already proven to be harmful.
http://createchicago.blogspot.com/2012/03/misconceptions-and-realities-about.html