Re: Push for 'value added' - or valueless addition?

[aburke5054@aol.com]

We need people to develop statistical rituals appropriate for analzying educational data just as we need people to develop texbooks, curricula, and teaching methods. Better tests would be nice and so would better statistical procedures for analyzing test scores, but the ones we have now will do the job. And they don't have the magically destructive properties that whacky outfits like Fairtest claim they do.  Furthermore, the truth is that probably more good things are happening for more kids in more schools because of AYP pushed by this "color-blind" crowd than ever before and all the anti-NCLB propaganda in the world won't change that.  
 
Art 
-----Original Message-----
From: Horn, James <jhorn@monmouth.edu>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Wed, 3 May 2006 13:44:35 -0400
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Push for 'value added' - or valueless addition?


Bill Sanders, the silver-back of of this group of growth-modelers, has always said that it is not his business to say what should be tested or even to say if it is a good test or a bad one.  He is concerned only with applying his proprietary algorithm to any quantitative set of longitudinal data.  His being the top shelf approach, one can expect the zealots of efficiency to choose something much cheaper. Besides the concerns Monty expresses, I have always been concerned that "growth modeling" and looking at gain scores serve to make the effects of poverty even more invisible to this color-blind crowd than it is now--if that is possible.




From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org [mailto:arn-l-owner@interversity.org] On Behalf Of Monty Neill
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2006 10:25 AM
To: care@yahoogroups.com; RScriticalteach; ARN-state@yahoogroups.com; ARN-L; arn2-strategy
Subject: [arn-l] Push for 'value added' - or valueless addition?


The push for so-called 'value added' testing is, I think, growing. See this piece by Tom Toch of Education Sector at http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=336629
 
He notes that Sandy Kress who helped design NCLB is for it. 
 
Indeed, there is research suggesting that value added is likely to be more fair.
 
Toch is also correct that a major obstacle is the shared political illusion that all children will score proficient by 2014. He notes many of the harmful side effects of this approach.
 
Ironically, Toch also authored for Ed Sector a report showing how weak most state tests are, in substantial part because states won't pay for better tests. That argument is not in this piece. 
 
Aside from numerous technical problems and that it is nearly impossible to understand the technology without a substantial statistical background, the deep flaw in "value added" is the lack of value being added: the extant designs rest on current standardized, mostly multiple-choice tests. While some of value is measured, much of what is measured is included because it is easy to measure even if not very important; and great amounts of what is important is not measured. Worse, with such tests are used for high-stakes purposes, whether used as NCLB does or in a value-added scheme, the result is narrowing instruction to teach to the test. This phenomenon has been reported in numerous studies - the only questions are how severe it is and how intense its effects are by different sorts of schools - the evidence is that it is more common and more intense in schools that have lower scores (e.g., mostly serving low-income kids). For those willing to accept a dumbed-down education for poor kids, this is fine. For the rest of us, beware valueless addition. 
 
Monty 
 
Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810    fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
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