‘Creative…Motivating’ and fired. – B. Turque

Turque, Bill.  “Creative…motivating and fired”.  Washington Post.  March 6, 2012.  Retrieved from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/creative–motivating-and-fired/2012/02/04/gIQAwzZpvR_story.html

A teacher in Washington D.C. who has been commended for her classroom accomplishments is fired because of her students Value-Added scores.

“It is a pleasure to visit a classroom in which the elements of sound teaching, motivated students and a positive learning environment are so effectively combined,” Assistant Principal Kennard Branch wrote in her May 2011 evaluation.

Yet even researchers and educators who support value-added caution that it can, in essence, be overvalued. Test results are too vulnerable to conditions outside a teacher’s control, some experts say, to count so heavily in a high-stakes evaluation. Poverty, learning disabilities and random testing day incidents such as illness, crime or a family emergency can skew scores.