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Sunday, April 29, 2012

An unintended consequence of value-added teacher evaluation - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

An unintended consequence of value-added teacher evaluation - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:


An unintended consequence of value-added teacher evaluation

A high school teacher in New York sent me the following e-mail, which discusses a most unfortunate unintended consequence of the state's new teacher and principal evaluation that depends largely on how well students do on standardized test scores.
The “value-added” method of evaluation — which uses complicated formulas to determine how much “value” an educator has added to a student’s achievement on a standardized test — is now the law in New York as well as a host of other states. New York’s system is known as the APPR,or Annual Professional Performance Review.
Many assessment experts have warned that such evaluations are