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Now, in studies that threaten to shake the foundation of high-stakes test-based accountability, Mr. Stroup and two other researchers said they believe they have found the reason: a glitch embedded in the DNA of the state exams that, as a result of a statistical method used to assemble them, suggests they are virtually useless at measuring the effects of classroom instruction. Pearson, which has a five-year, $468 million contract to create the state's tests through 2015, uses "item response theory" to devise standardized exams, as other testing companies do. Using I.R.T., developers select questions based on a model that correlates students' ability with the probability that they will get a question right. That produces a test that Mr. Stroup said is more sensitive to how it ranks students than to measuring what they have learned.

An important new study  by Professors Adam Maltese of Indiana University and Craig Hochbein of the University of Louisville sheds new light on the validity of state scores. This study found that rising scores on the state tests did not correlate with improved performance on the ACT. In fact, students at "declining" schools did just as well and sometimes better than students where the scores were going up. The study was published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Its title is ""The Consequences of 'School Improvement': Examining the Association Between Two Standardized Assessments Measuring School Improvement and Student Science Achievement."

Today, the day of the release of the New York City data, I received an email that I did not expect to come for at least a year.  In D.C. the evaluation process is called IMPACT.  About 500 teachers in D.C. belong to something called 'group one' which means that they teach something that can be measured with their value-added formula.  50% of their evaluation is based on their IVA (individual value-added), 35% is on their principal evaluation called their TLF (teaching and learning framework).  5% is on their SVA (school value added) and the remaining 10% on their CSC (commitment to school and community).  I wanted to test my theory that the value-added scores would not correlate with the principal evaluations so I had applied under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) to D.C. schools requesting the principal evaluation scores and the value-added scores for all group one teachers (without their names.)  I fully expected to wait about a year or two and then be denied.  To my surprise, it only took a few months and they did provide a 500 row spreadsheet.

The biggest problem in Connecticut is the achievement gap between wealthy and poor students, which largely correlates with the gap between white and minority students. The fact of the matter is that the gap has everything to do with poverty and not a whole lot of anything to do with tenure.

In part 1 I demonstrated there was little correlation between how a teacher was rated in 2009 to how that same teacher was rated in 2010.  So what can be more crazy than a teacher being rated highly effective one year and then highly ineffective the next?  How about a teacher being rated highly effective and highly ineffective IN THE SAME YEAR. I will show in this post how exactly that happened for hundreds of teachers in 2010.  By looking at the data I noticed that of the 18,000 entries in 2010, about 6,000 were repeated names.  This is because there are two ways that one teacher can get multiple value-added ratings for the same year.

"This bizarre video got me thinking about a series of previous posts where I've looked across numerous indicators to try to tease out the relationships among them, across states.  I've selectively scoured scatterplots of relationships between various state level indicators and outcome measures, but have not for a while now, simply stepped back and evaluated the correlations across all of them, and then tried to tease out what states, if any really do stand out."

Regardless of political partisanship, the ruling and corporate elite share a notebook of narratives that simultaneously recognizes poverty by ignoring it. In the contorted logic of political and corporate discourse, poverty is both a primary correlation with social and educational problems needing reform and a fact of existence those in privilege are not allowing those living in poverty to use as an excuse.

This report provides a first-of-its-kind descriptive summary of private school expenditures. It includes comparisons of expenditures among different types and affiliations of private schools, and it also compares those expenditures with public school expenditures for districts in the same state and labor market. Results indicate that (1) the less-regulated private school sector is more varied in many key features (teacher attributes, pay and school expenditures) than the more highly regulated public schooling sector; (2) these private school variations align and are largely explained by affiliation -- primarily religious affiliation -- alone; and (3) a ranking of school sectors by average spending correlates well with a ranking of those sectors by average standardized test scores.

First, we have an argument known as "reductio ad absurdum." He takes the fact that indeed socioeconomic status and family support have been found over and over again to be by far the biggest determinants of educational success, and exaggerates it so he can dismiss it. Arne Duncan is fond of a similar trope, accusing those who speak of the significance of socioeconomic status of saying that "poverty is destiny." In fact, nobody actually says that there is a 1:1 correlation between income and outcomes. Merrow and Duncan would have us choose between two extremes. Either we must believe poverty is destiny and schools make no difference, or schools are capable of overcoming all obstacles (if only they are willing to get tough on those who fail to copy KIPP).

Both a value-added method and principal observations tied to a teaching framework identified the same teachers as particularly high or low-performing under Chicago's teacher-evaluation pilot, a new study concludes. But principals struggled to provide high-quality "coaching" and support to teachers based on the results, the report says-a finding indicates just how difficult it will be to use the systems to improve teaching and learning.

This paper contributes importantly to the growing literature on the training of special education teachers and how it translates into classroom practice and student achievement. The authors examine the impact of pre-service preparation and in-service formal and informal training on the ability of teachers to promote academic achievement among students with disabilities. Using student-level longitudinal data from Florida over a five-year span the authors estimate value-added models of student achievement. There is little support for the efficacy of in-service professional development courses focusing on special education. However, teachers with advanced degrees are more effective in boosting the math achievement of students with disabilities than are those with only a baccalaureate degree. Also pre-service preparation in special education has statistically significant and quantitatively substantial effects on the ability of teachers of special education courses to promote gains in achievement for students with disabilities, especially in reading. Certification in special education, an undergraduate major in special education, and the amount of special education coursework in college are all positively correlated with the performance of teachers in special education reading courses.