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"School closings, the threat of which hang over Chicago public schools, and which have been a central feature of Bloomberg educational policies in New York, are perhaps the most controversial features of the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" initiative. The idea of closing low-performing schools, designated as such entirely on the basis of student test scores, removing half of their teaching staff and all of their administrators, and replacing them with a new (typically charter) school in the same building, is one which has tremendous appeal among business leaders and almost none among educators. Advocates see this policy as a way of removing ineffective teachers, adding competition to what had been a stagnant sphere of public service, and putting pressure on teachers in high-poverty areas to demand and get high performance from their students, once again based on performance on standardized tests. For a "data driven" initiative, school closings have produced surprisingly little data to support their implementation."

Interest in Student Growth Modeling (SGM) and Value Added Modeling (VAM) arises from educators concerned with measuring the effectiveness of teaching and other school activities through changes in student performance as a companion and perhaps even an alternative to status. Several formal statistical models have been proposed for year-to-year growth and these fall into at least three clusters: simple change (e.g., differences on a vertical scale), residualized change (e.g., simple linear or quantile regression techniques), and value tables  (varying salience of different achievement level outcomes across two years). Several of these methods have been implemented by states and districts.  This paper reviews relevant literature and reports results of a data-based comparison of six basic SGM models that may permit aggregating across teachers or schools to provide evaluative information.  Our investigation raises some issues that may compromise current efforts to implement VAM in teacher and school evaluations and makes suggestions for both practice and research based on the results.

"Michelle Rhee continues her descent into parody. You might have thought that teaching students to read would be a good way to evaluate educational performance, but no. Rhee's StudentsFirst organization has released a report card grading states-on their education policies, not their educational results. In fact, not one of the states StudentsFirst ranks in the top five is in the top half of states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "the nation's report card," when it comes to eighth grade reading scores, and only one is in the top half when it comes to eighth grade math."

"But to apply a letter grade or a numerical ranking to a professional is to radically misunderstand the complex set of qualities that make someone good at what they do. It is an effort by economists and statisticians to quantify activities that are at heart matters of judgment, not productivity. Professionals must be judged by other professionals, by their peers. Nowhere is this more true than among educators, whose success at teaching character, wisdom, and judgment cannot be measured by standardized tests. "

"I'm a big fan of surveys of teachers' opinions of education policy, not only because of educators' valuable policy-relevant knowledge, but also because their views are sometimes misrepresented or disregarded in our public discourse. For instance, the diverse set of ideas that might be loosely characterized as "market-based reform" faces a bit of tension when it comes to teacher support. Without question, some teachers support the more controversial market-based policy ideas, such as pay and evaluations based substantially on test scores, but most do not. The relatively low levels of teacher endorsement don't necessarily mean these ideas are "bad," and much of the disagreement is less about the desirability of general policies (e.g., new teacher evaluations) than the specifics (e.g., the measures that comprise those evaluations). In any case, it's a somewhat awkward juxtaposition: A focus on "respecting and elevating the teaching profession" by means of policies that most teachers do not like."

"Perhaps the most important change on the horizon for schools is the design of a new system for evaluating teachers. I hope that those who are involved will focus on how to improve teaching and learning rather than on things that are politically expedient or that play well in the newspapers."

NCLB's fixation on testing has sabotaged the law's noble intention. Schools have become focused on compliance rather than on innovation and achievement. We've become obsessed with hitting test-score targets and sanctioning schools and educators; instead, we should be focused on improving teaching and learning. We've narrowed the curriculum; instead we should be paving a path to critical thinking and problem solving -- the very kinds of knowledge and skills our children need to be well-educated and to compete in today's global economy.

Value-added, along with other growth measures, are powerful because they level the playing field and measure the right thing -- student academic progress. Students come to teachers each year with vastly different levels of achievement, and the teacher's goal is to "add value" or growth. If we only measured achievement, why would any educator ever want to teach in a place with a disproportionate number of low-performing students? Value-added information should not be used to name, blame, and shame; it should be a catalyst to uncover, discover, and recover.

Those who think that there is too much pressure to "teach to the test" find this time of year to be infuriating. Schools typically cease to focus on their regular curriculum and begin to prepare their students for these venerated exams. Laura Klein Some schools stop all social studies and science classes, as well as gym, art and enrichment activities, so they can spend all day on test prep in Math and English. This overhaul of the curriculum is extreme, but not unique. Unfortunately, for the students, it sends a larger signal that learning for the year is just about done.

Teachers often say they don't do their jobs for the money, but surely financial incentives are a factor in just about any career decision. Would you work harder at your job if there was a cash bonus on the line? More importantly, would the extra money alone somehow make you a more effective employee? Under a new law being implemented over the next several years in Indiana, student test scores will now be used as a factor in whether a teacher receives a pay increase. The Indianapolis Star, in partnership with The Hechinger Report, is closely monitoring the state's reform measures aimed at boosting teacher effectiveness. The state's teachers are questioning whether the law can be fairly applied, and whether merit raises will ultimately result in students learning more, according to the recent entry in the newspaper's series. There are also fears among educators that the unpredictability of the pay scale will discourage people from considering teaching as a career.

For-profit colleges and universities have a well-deserved reputation for deceptive recruiting, low-quality programs, and sky-high prices. Now you can add union suppression to that reputation. A branch of the for-profit college mega-provider Kaplan University has noticed that some of its teaching staff are considering a union, and the management is not pleased. Recently, administrative staff at a branch of Kaplan International Centers (KIC) in New York City issued a memo to teachers to explain "the risk" of showing an interest in "union organizing." And the contents of the memo are revealing of the smears and innuendo that for-profit education institutions and other employers use to squelch union organizing activities and to make employees uneasy of asserting their rights to collective action.

In his New York Times op-ed "Testing the Teachers" (April 19), David Brooks warns that "an atmosphere of grand fragility" hangs over America's colleges. The grandeur, he says, comes from the colleges' increased application rates, new facilities, and international reputation; the fragility, from increased tuition combined with uncertain results. What must we do? Hold colleges accountable for results-through value-added testing. That'll show who's teaching and who isn't!   Brooks is wrong. Accountability systems would drag down our colleges. The best would be made mediocre, and the worst would rise to mediocrity at most.

Over more than 20 years in the field of education-including two with Teach For America-I have helped promote state standards, the Common Core, the hiring of teachers with strong content knowledge, longer class periods for math and reading, and extra support for struggling students, to name a few. I have recently discovered, however, that what I believe as an education policy wonk is not always what I believe as a father. I am incredibly fortunate that my two young daughters are ready learners who attend a high-functioning school. That said, I make the following confessions

What effective CMOs do rely on heavily is trust, relationships, and clear communication. In well-run charters, there is a common belief about teaching and learning, and teachers are hired and retained based on whether they share that belief. Teachers know they are getting ongoing feedback and no surprises. They know that the principal doing their observations and evaluations is a master teacher operating on the same definition of good instruction as they are. They know that every other teacher in the building is a potential collaborator. In other words, they trust their coworkers and operate in a culture of common understanding and mutual respect. Evaluation is understood to be more about organizational improvement than about passing judgment on an individual. In fact, some CMOs have tried and dumped merit pay because they felt it disrupted this collaborative culture.

There's been some good blogging lately on how to interpret the studies on Teach For America (TFA) teacher effectiveness - see Matthew Di Carlo and Adam Ozimek. But neither addresses the research from a Relinquisher standpoint.

The Philadelphia school district could close as many as 64 schools and eliminate hundreds of central office jobs in the next few years. A sweeping reorganization proposal made public Tuesday includes more than half a billion dollars in budget cuts by 2017. It's called "A Blueprint for Transforming Philadelphia's Public Schools" and it includes a proposal to divvy up the remaining schools among "achievement networks" led by teams of educators or nonprofit institutions. The achievement networks would have 20 to 30 schools each and be connected by either geography or a common, creative approach to teaching and learning. The leaders of the network, which could include successful principals, would have contracts based on performance and be required to serve students of all abilities and situations equitably, reports thenotebook.org.

At its annual meeting held in Saratoga Springs the weekend of March 23-25, the New York State Council for the Social Studies passed five resolutions condemning the national and state common core standards for marginalizing social studies. The resolutions charged that attention to math and reading left little time or money in K-12 classrooms for effective instruction in social studies, citizenship, and history. The Council demanded that the state develop a new set of core standards that emphasize the teaching of social studies, citizenship, and history. This action by the NYSCSS is one of a number of reasons to question whether the much ballyhooed national common core standards will deliver promised improvements in education.

The SAS Educational Value-Added Assessment System (SAS® EVAAS®) is the most widely used value-added system in the country. It is also self-proclaimed as "the most robust and reliable" system available, with its greatest benefit to help educators improve their teaching practices. This study critically examined the effects of SAS® EVAAS® as experienced by teachers, in one of the largest, high-needs urban school districts in the nation - the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Using a multiple methods approach, this study critically analyzed retrospective quantitative and qualitative data to better comprehend and understand the evidence collected from four teachers whose contracts were not renewed in the summer of 2011, in part given their low SAS® EVAAS® scores. This study also suggests some intended and unintended effects that seem to be occurring as a result of SAS® EVAAS® implementation in HISD. In addition to issues with reliability, bias, teacher attribution, and validity, high-stakes use of SAS® EVAAS® in this district seems to be exacerbating unintended effects.

Over the last decade, research in public education has led us to three conclusions about the teaching profession: teachers are the most important in-school factor in determining student achievement; there is wide variation in teacher effectiveness; and those differences really matter for kids. These findings should have profound implications for policymakers and practitioners. Now that we have evidence attesting to the enormous contributions of the most effective educators, if we are truly serious about improving student learning and closing the achievement gap, we must think anew about teacher recruitment, placement, evaluation, professional development, retention, and separation.

Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff have carried out a remarkable study, but I suspect it will be misinterpreted. The main contribution of their research is quantifying the importance of teaching.