The recent election has brought a shift in political power to Washington. Assuming a simplistic vote along party lines both houses are not controlled by republicans and the President is a democrat. One wonders whether the contentious politics of the past two years will continue. Democrats in the Senate could now play the Republican game of the past two years and prevent passage of pretty much anything. Will the “party of NO” wear a different color jersey?
Leaders, Mitch McConnell and President Obama, have been remarkably pleasant and promise greater efforts to work together on areas of agreement. While it may have seemed that no such areas exist, to avoid the “party of no” strategy, Republicans are now likely to identify some such areas (in addition to pushing through legislation that the President will obviously veto).
One such area may concern teacher preparation and teacher evaluation. Republicans and Obama’s Department of Education have been supporters of the “value added” mentality. I single out Republicans only because it seems this concept is somewhat more accepted by Republicans. This is a simplification.
The idea of value added proposes that the contribution of teachers can be estimated statistically by using student gain scores after attempting to control for some confounds. It follows that if the value added of a teacher can be determined than the average value added of the institution preparing these teachers can also be estimated. It kind of makes sense on the surface, but the practical significance of value added in contrast to variables other than the teacher and issues of what the dependent variable used in statistical should be make this very controversial. By dependent variable (a stats/research kind term), I mean what will be used to evaluate “gain”. This probably translates as some type of standardized achievement test. Even standardizing on a standardized test will be a struggle that will probably not be resolved. You will then have a mess with different standards in different states and teachers trained in one state teaching in other states making the use of gain scores to evaluate teacher training an apple and oranges mess.
So, without weighing in on whether this will be a good thing for learners and educators, I am just predicting that politicians will see this as an area to address. Teachers are an easy target and politicians will want to point to something, anything, they have accomplished.
(pre-election article on the possible regulation of teacher preparation from the Washington Post)
