This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Gates Foundation Researchers Win "Bunkum Award"

The 'We’re Pretty Sure We Could Have

Done More with $45 Million' Award

To Gates Foundation for Two Culminating

Find out what's happening in Woodinvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Reports from the MET Project

http://nepc.colorado.edu/bunkum/2013/we%E2%80%99re-pretty-sure-we-could-have-done-more-45-million-award

The “We’re Pretty Sure We Could Have Done More with $45 Million  Award goes to the Gates Foundation and its Measures of Effective Teaching Project.

Find out what's happening in Woodinvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

We think it important to recognize whenever so little is produced at such great cost. The MET researchers gathered a huge data base reporting on thousands of teachers in six cities. Part of the study’s purpose was to address teacher evaluation methods using randomly assigned students. Unfortunately, the students did not remain randomly assigned and some teachers and students did not even participate. This had deleterious effects on the study-limitations that somehow got overlooked in the infinite retelling and exaggeration of the findings.

When the MET researchers studied the separate and combined effects of teacher observations, value-added test scores, and student surveys, they found correlations so weak that no common attribute or characteristic of teacher-quality could be found. Even with 45 million dollars and a crackerjack team of researchers, they could not define an  “effective teacher.”  In fact, none of the three types of performance measures captured much of the variation in teachers’ impacts on conceptually demanding tests. But that didn’t stop the Gates folks, in a reprise from their 2011 Bunkum-winning ways, from announcing that they’d found a way to measure effective teaching nor did it deter the federal government from strong-arming states into adoption of policies tying teacher evaluation to measures of students’ growth.

 

 

MY commentary: 1/18/13

The Gates Foundation recently issued the final report on its MET (Measuring Effective Teachers) research.  Reactions varied by 180 degrees, depending upon the commitment to using VAM (Value Added Method) of statistical analysis of student test scores.  Some saw the report as upholding what teachers and their unions have been saying for decades about the multiple influences upon student performance and reiterating the dangers of relying on VAM data.  Others heralded the report as a vindication of VAM data analysis and the use of student test scores to identify effective teachers.  Amazing how different people can see different meaning in the same data.

 

My concern about the MET report is the admission that the research relies upon the concept of random assignment of students to classrooms.   If random assignment is a prerequisite to using VAM, then VAM is useless.  Random assignment of students to classroom is a myth.  Dozens of factors influence the selection of where students will be placed and that means the underlying principle of random assignment in MET research and VAM application is false. 

 

I see a house of cards, built upon a false premise and supporting corporate reform measures that are both incompetent and destructive.

 

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Woodinville