Moneyball for Teachers

Carl Herrera · Mar 7, 2011

Interesting article on how a teacher ranked highly by both her principal and and students, and whose students has done well is ranked in the 7th percentile by a formula used by the accountability experts hired by the authorities. The formula is below.

The story reminds me of the debate over Daryl Morey and the use of objective data (moneyball! moneyball! moneyball!) in hoops and other sports.

I suspect teaching is more like basketball (where there is no "holy grail" stat, as Dean Oliver puts it) and objective measurements is a only a part of the story than baseball (where a man with a spreadsheet can figure out who is good and who isn't fairly easily).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07winerip.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

...
Her principal, Megan Adams, has given her terrific reviews during the two and a half years Ms. Isaacson has been a teacher. “I know that this year had its moments of challenge — you always handled it with grace and presence,” the principal wrote on May 4, 2009. “You are a wonderful teacher.”

On the first day of this school year, the principal wrote, “I look forward to being in your classroom and seeing all the great work you do with your students,” and signed it with a smiley face.

The Lab School has selective admissions, and Ms. Isaacson’s students have excelled. Her first year teaching, 65 of 66 scored proficient on the state language arts test, meaning they got 3’s or 4’s; only one scored below grade level with a 2. More than two dozen students from her first two years teaching have gone on to Stuyvesant High School or Bronx High School of Science, the city’s most competitive high schools.

“Definitely one of a kind,” said Isabelle St. Clair, now a sophomore at Bard, another selective high school. “I’ve had lots of good teachers, but she stood out — I learned so much from her.”

You would think the Department of Education would want to replicate Ms. Isaacson — who has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia — and sprinkle Ms. Isaacsons all over town. Instead, the department’s accountability experts have developed a complex formula to calculate how much academic progress a teacher’s students make in a year — the teacher’s value-added score — and that formula indicates that Ms. Isaacson is one of the city’s worst teachers.

According to the formula, Ms. Isaacson ranks in the 7th percentile among her teaching peers — meaning 93 per cent are better.

This may seem disconnected from reality, but it has real ramifications. Because of her 7th percentile, Ms. Isaacson was told in February that it was virtually certain that she would not be getting tenure this year. “My principal said that given the opportunity, she would advocate for me,” Ms. Isaacson said. “But she said don’t get your hopes up, with a 7th percentile, there wasn’t much she could do.”

That’s not the only problem Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile has caused. If the mayor and governor have their way, and layoffs are no longer based on seniority but instead are based on the city’s formulas that scientifically identify good teachers, Ms. Isaacson is pretty sure she’d be cooked.
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MoonDogg · Mar 7, 2011

iconoclastic · Mar 7, 2011

I wonder if they incorporate any diminishing returns into their formula, i.e. it's much harder for 90th %tile students to reach 95th than for 50th %tile students to reach 55th.

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