As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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For the Record: Special education teacher evaluation
By: Rebecca Harris / May 07, 2012
When CPS unveiled its new teacher evaluation system, one question was still unanswered: How would the new evaluations—which by law must take student test scores into account—affect special education students and their teachers?
Now, CPS’ plans are taking shape:
- Students with disabilities who take the Illinois Alternate Assessment, an alternative test, will not be required to take the tests given to other students (the elementary NWEA test and the high school EPAS) that will be used to calculate teachers’ value-added scores. These students will continue to take the IAA and their teachers will be assigned a school-wide value-added score. The district is also assigning school-wide scores to teachers of non-tested subjects, such as art.
- Special education teachers whose students do not take the IAA will be evaluated based on regular value-added test scores. “We anticipate that the value-added model will take into account the number of students and students’ various disabilities,” spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler says. “CPS will continue to work with our value-added vendor to determine the best and most fair way to control for students’ disabilities.”
- Special education teachers will administer the new “performance tasks” the district is developing, which are supposed to offer a more holistic picture of learning than test scores. In cases where a disability may prevent a student from completing a task, the district will provide guidelines for administering a task that is at the student’s level.
- During performance tasks, as well as NWEA and EPAS testing, students with disabilities will be eligible for accommodations.
The Chicago Teachers Union, which opposes the use of value-added scores, says the plan for special education teachers is flawed.
“In many cases, NWEA or EPAS may be appropriate. However, it may be inappropriate for more than just the 1 percent of students who take the Illinois Alternate Assessment,” Quest Center Coordinator Carol Caref says. “It remains to be seen how the adaptations work in actual school settings.”
Severe & Profound
Where does this leave teachers with severe & profound or self contained austistic classes?
Value-Added Vendor
Who is CPS's "value added vendor"? How much is that contract worth? What metrics are in place to measure the value they are adding to the district?
Severe & profound and self
Severe & profound and self contained autistic students take the IAA. Not sure if the IAA is only for grades 3 and above.
CPS' "value added vendor" is Battelle, a company from Columbus, Ohio.
Sped teacher evaluations
Where does this leave teachers of LD students who do not qualify for the IAA, but are reading and performing math tasks 2-5 years below grade level?
These tests certainly do not measure students progress. They can't read the tests that will be used to evaluate their teachers! Value added or not - what's the difference in these cases?
Cheating will result from this all around bad plan!
Connecting teacher performance ratings to student progress, either special or general education, will open the flood gates for teachers, as test proctors, to be very creative with feeding answers to kids or plain old tampering with answer documents. That's the outcome I predict.
EXACTLY!
If teachers will be evaluated by using student test scores then the tool used to do that and the vendor supplying it must receive the same level of scrutiny as teachers and be held fully accountable. Will the vendor guarantee the accuracy and consistency of the tool? If, as was recently seen in NYC, the tool produces no useful data, will the vendor be held accountable by being contractually required to give a full refund for the tax dollars spent on this and the time spent administering the tests and processing the forms? Will those in CPS who chose the vendor beheld accountable? Since CPS wants teachers to have no due process vis a vis evaluations, I think we know the answer to that. Accountability goes both ways. No one is exempt.
the "ruler" we use
Do they not consider all the growth that can take place with a student that is NOT measured on a silly "test"- independent functioning or social emotional gains? Ridiculous!!
NWEA and Severe and Profound
I was told that the age cycle 5 students in my Instructional preschool class must take NWEA. They are both functioning at the 4-6 MONTH age level. How does that work?
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