By Valerie Strauss. Washington Post | http://wapo.st/twfkoP
11/3/2011| updated 11/9/2011 - Scores of public school principals in New York are fighting the state’s new educator evaluation system, which ties the evaluations and pay of teachers and principals to how well students do on standardized tests.
New York has a new law requiring that 20 percent to 40 percent of the evaluations be linked to test scores, despite warnings by assessment experts (in this letter sent to the state Board of Regents in May) that there are too many problems with “value-added” methods of determining a teacher’s quality.
The state is one of more than 25 that are now either using or developing value-added models for assessment, encouraged by the Obama administration. Critics say that aside from the many issues with the actual formulas used — which can produce unreliable results — standardized test scores should never be a basis for high-stakes decisions.
Now more than half of the public school principals in Long Island have come together to oppose the evaluation system. Here’s the text of the letter that they signed, (minus the footnotes):
update 11/9: HERE IS THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT WITH THE FOOTNOTES AND THE SIGNATURES | FOLLOW THE LINKS TO SIGN YOURSELF!
APPR Position Paper 6Nov11a
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