The Houston Independent School District is taking a critical step to ensure that all its students are taught by top-notch teachers. Superintendent Terry Grier — who has long been a true warrior in the national fight to close the achievement gap — is making an important move by recommending that the teacher evaluation process include an examination of student achievement data. The data will look at how much learning a student gains over one year. This type of data is called “value-added,” meaning that it analyzes only the change across one year relative to where a student begins, a leveling of the playing field that allows us to isolate teacher impact. Value-added data will be one element in a set of criteria that are used to gauge a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom.JAMES MCWILLIAMS
To be sure, value-added analysis is still a work in progress, and methodological challenges remain. Yet for all its imperfections, value-added analysis is a vast improvement on the existing system, which fails to address the one question that really matters: Compared to other educators with similar students and facing similar challenges, how well are a given teacher's students actually acquiring the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life? While experts debate the finer points of the value-added model, it is now clear that, at minimum, it is a fair way to identify those teachers who are truly failing our students. Value-added data should never be the only metric by which we assess teachers, but honestly, how can it not be in the mix?
This database (like so many others available at major universities and research institutions) makes doing historical research immeasurably easier. It’s no exaggeration to say that, in many cases, a scholar can accomplish in a half hour what might otherwise have taken, literally, an entire career…Kauffman Foundation v. AUTM on the Bayh-Dole Act.
it’s safe to say that—had this powerhouse of a search engine not done the digging for me—it would have taken decades for me to find these obscure references…
Which brings me to my question… Should publishing requirements for tenure go up for scholars in the humanities and social sciences?...
I’m entertaining this claim with many reservations—for example, upping tenure requirements will most likely lead to an increase in mediocre work…
Bob Blaisdell
We get older, but the students stay the same age…Which reminds me of this.
Fox 5 DC reports on the future of online education. See video below:
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