Gates' VAM/AGT killed at Microsoft, but LAUSD students and educators still victimized by 'value added' phrenology

#ALEC & @DiscoveryCSC supporter @BillGates forced VAM/AGP on #LAUSD, now the plutocrat's own firm dumps "value added" http://t.co/lLjboCWHcT

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) November 12, 2013

Gates' VAM/AGT killed at Microsoft, but LAUSD students and educators still victimized by 'value added' phrenology

Refocusing LAUSD on reading and learning instead of testing

First published on Robert D. Skeels for School Board on November 24, 2012.

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It's difficult to explain exactly what being poor is all about, or why access to books and ideas might be as important as a free breakfast. — Walter Dean Myers

Hope Is an Open Book, an op-ed piece by author Walter Dean Myers, was tweeted this morning by educator Susan Ohanian. While written in 2005, Myers' message about access to books is profound and even more urgent today with canned corporate education solutions that narrow curriculum dominating policy. Sadly, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is run by a Superintendent who neither values books, nor libraries. This has to change, and change quickly. We need to shutdown LAUSD's testing-industrial-complex and reopen both our school and classroom libraries. Reopening libraries also means rehiring credentialed librarian-educators. We can pay for that by ditching discredited and expensive attempts to tie teacher evaluations to test scores (VAM/AGT) and use the millions of squandered dollars associated with them. Read with your children, read in front of your children, and let them choose their own reading materials. It's a proven formula for fostering authentic life-long learning.

Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) is a well researched methodology in which students are allowed to choose their own reading materials. Professor Stephen Krashen and his colleagues have found that "[r]ecreational reading or reading for pleasure is the major source of our reading competence, our vocabulary, and our ability to handle complex grammatical constructions." The Power of Reading, Second Edition: Insights from the Research is an excellent text to familiarize oneself with the concepts and research behind FVR.

Refocusing LAUSD on reading and learning instead of testing

Schools Matter: How the VAM/AGT pseudoscience worm turns

First published on Schools Matter on October 29, 2012.

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While value-added models are intended estimate teacher effects on student achievement growth, they fail to do so in any accurate or precise way — Dr. Bruce D. Baker

Maybe it's karma, but Kyle Hunsberger of the Gates Foundation backed astroturf TeachPlus, and one of Los Angeles Unified School District's biggest cheerleaders of the highly discredited VAM/AGT pseudosciences, is now a victim of that selfsame modern phrenology.

This quote is pretty amazing coming from a bona fides member of the "no excuses" camp.

"I have to be reassured that I don't have to lobby for honors students," Hunsberger said. "I have to know that I have a shot at a good evaluation if I teach lower-performing kids."

Maybe he'll be a former member of that camp from here out, now that he's experienced the practical application of his faulty theoretical framework. That framework incorrectly posits that "effective" teaching "overcomes" any other factor including poverty, student motivation, or even English Language Learner status.

Call me cynical, but I doubt Michael Stryer and James Encinas, Hunsberger's TeachPlus coauthors of this fact-free Op-Ed shilling for value added measures will stand by him now that the worm has turned. Corporate reformers are just like that, they're snakes and most venomous to anyone who break ranks and start telling the truth.

Let's stop testing children and start teaching them. Standardized tests are a perversion. NCLB/RTTT/CCSS are the real "status quo" and an abject failure at that.

Schools Matter: How the VAM/AGT pseudoscience worm turns