Value Added Teacher Evaluation

latimes.com

Superintendent spreads the gospel of 'value-added' teacher evaluations

In Tenn. and N.C., Terry Grier adopted and expanded a statistical method of

tracking student progress. Union resistance scuttled more modest efforts in San

Diego, mirroring a brewing national debate.

By Jason Felch and Jason Song

October 18, 2009

When Terry Grier was hired to run the San Diego Unified School District in January

2008, he hoped to bring with him a revolutionary tool that had never been tried in a large

California school system.

Its name -- "value-added" -- sounded innocuous enough. But this novel numbercrunching

approach threatened to upend many traditional notions of what worked and

what didn't in the nation's classrooms.

Rather than using tests to take a snapshot of overall student achievement, it used scores to

track each pupil's academic progress from year to year. What made it incendiary,

however, was its potential to single out the best and the worst teachers in a nation that

currently gives virtually all of them a passing grade.

In previous jobs in the South, Grier had used the method as a basis for removing

underperforming principals, denying ineffective teachers tenure and rewarding the best

educators with additional pay.

In California, where powerful teachers unions have been especially protective of tenure

and resistant to merit pay, Grier had a more modest goal: to find out if students in the

district's poorest schools had equal access to effective instructors.

Still, it proved radioactive to San Diego's teachers union. Like many unions across the

country, it saw the approach as a flawed instrument, a Trojan horse for introducing merit

pay and a threat to hard-won employment protections.

After nearly two years of grinding battles with the union and school board on this and

other issues, Grier recently left for Houston, where the district uses value-added results as

a basis for teacher bonuses.

Los Angeles and New York City are moving ahead with different versions of Value Added Teacher Evaluation, as is Houston. These are the beginning of what may be a common approach nationally.