Julie DelegalJournalists at the Florida Times Union have set the Internet ablaze by publishing a Florida Department of Education database of teacher-evaluations information.
The paper’s editors sued the state to force the release of the data and won their public records lawsuit that they filed in February of last year.
While the paper lost at the district court level, the First District Court of Appeal reversed the lower court’s decision in November, declaring the teacher data public record. The Florida DOE released the scores last week and the newspaper published the database online. They also published Duval County’s school-based data in print. Now newsroom personnel are answering phone calls and emails from teachers, who contend that the data “makes no sense.”
To make matters worse, as the Times Union reported Sunday, some of Northeast Florida’s top educators, recognized as Teachers of the Year, tallied negative scores on the state’s evaluations instrument, a complex formula known as the “value added model.”
The controversial VAM compares statistical projections of student performance to their actual performance in an effort to quantify the “value” that the teacher or school added to the student’s learning.
Some Florida teachers are suing the state in federal court over the use of VAM-based evaluations. The teachers, joined by the National Education Association and the FEA, allege 14th Amendment due process violations.
The litigants’ evaluations, and thus their paychecks, are based on FCAT tests for subjects they don’t teach. The lawsuit argues that evaluating teachers on factors out of their control is unfair. In her blog for the Washington Post, education journalist Valerie Strauss notes:
“Some 70 percent of the Florida teachers received VAM scores based on test results from students they didn’t teach and/or in subjects they don’t teach.”
Strauss also writes that education experts have urged policymakers to avoid relying on VAM for big decisions:
“Here’s the thing: These formulas can’t determine a teacher’s value with any constant validity or reliability, and testing experts have urged policy makers not to use it for any high-stakes decisions about students, teachers, principals or anybody else. Unfortunately, Florida and many other states, encouraged by the Obama administration, have ignored this advice and now use this ‘value-added method’ (VAM) of evaluation.”
At least one prominent education reform group joins teachers in opposing the release of the VAM scores. Vicki Phillips, spokesperson for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, wrote in her blog that test-based scores should be only one part of a “variety of sources” for evaluating teachers. She quoted her boss’ dismay, which he expressed in a New York Times op-ed following New York’s release of similar data. Bill Gates wrote:
“Developing a systematic way to help teachers get better is the most powerful idea in education today. The surest way to weaken it is to twist it into a capricious exercise in public shaming.”
Gates contends in the same op-ed that a test-based evaluations system is not “sensitive enough” to measure whether an educator’s teaching is effective.
VAM scores account for half of a teacher’s evaluation and, subsequently, her merit-pay eligibility in Florida. Principals’ evaluations of teachers make up the other half.
“We should hear something from the court by April,” says Florida Education Association President Andy Ford of the federal lawsuit.
Meanwhile, while some teachers were initially upset that their employment data was released publicly. But after they lost the other suit brought by the Times Union, they’re shifting the spotlight to the Florida DOE, who they say, has a lot of explaining to do.
Jacksonville educator Chris Guerrieri speculates in his blog about why the DOE fought disclosure of the data, too. “It is more likely they fought against the release because they realized the system they created was a disaster and were afraid the citizens of Florida would learn that they were too.”
Teacher groups are abuzz on social media, reporting what they perceive are outright errors in the database.
Meanwhile, Ravitch wrote that in publishing VAM scores, the T-U was releasing “junk science.”
The VAM dispute is the latest controversy for the state’s 15-year-old accountability paradigm, birthed by former Gov. Jeb Bush’s A+ accountability system. Bush’s A-through-F school grading system began in 2001, four years after the first round of FCAT testing, which began under his predecessor, Lawton Chiles.
The VAM debate is the latest controversy to plague the program. Critics are complaining about a battle over changes to the school grading formula and at least one lawmaker wants to hit the pause button on school grades until the new test is validated. Also, there’s much debate about a yet-to-be-named Common-Core-based standardized test, which students will take in 2015.
All of this adds up to indicate one thing about Florida’s teacher-and-school accountability system: uncertainty.
Julie Delegal is a Jacksonville-based writer who has covered education since 2009.
