Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Interesting Study on Assessment and Teachers

NY Times Article on Study


Read the article and post one concept or vocabulary word with definition that is used in this article. Read through others comments and try not to duplicate.

30 comments:

  1. The article mentions that they controlled numerous "factors", which are the explanatory variables that are manipulated in an experiment

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  2. I thought it was really interesting how they mentioned the concept that a student having an excellent teacher between fourth and eighth grade would gain $4,600 in lifetime income compared to a student who has an average teacher. The student with the better teacher also is .5 percent more likely to attend college.

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  3. The article talks about the "study" performed to come to the conclusions about assessment and teachers. A study is an observation that does not impose a treatment.

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  4. The article includes control variables, which are variables that are kept constant or the same through out a test or experiment. In this scenario the article says they controlled students backgrounds

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  5. The article related to the idea of removing those that underperform an expected amount, and this is somewhat like removing outliers or the idea of data that is somewhat "not normal" and doesn't follow a normal distribution. This article was really interesting to read!

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  6. This article discussed "margin of error" in relation to using value-added ratings to evaluate a teacher's capability or success as an instructor. A margin of error is defined as the range of values above and below a sample statistic. The article overall was interesting, but I would want to understand further how they eliminated/accounted for the numerous potential lurking variables present for this observational study.

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  7. The article talked about control variables. Control variables remain unchanged throughout the course of an experiment in order to eliminate certain variables and only test those being examined.

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  8. This articles discusses briefly about lurking variables. Some class, for example AP and honors courses, generally have harder working students and higher test scores. Hiring and firing teacher solely based on test scores could lead to big mistakes. Lurking variables must also be carefully considered.

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  9. In this article it mentions that some critics look at the high margin of error with the value-added scores. This is basically saying that these scores have high residual values. The researchers did compensate for this by looking at data in 3-4 year intervals however.

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  10. Using this system to fire teachers would be based upon the students and would cause a lot of cheating, maybe requesting certain students in their class or cheating on testing. Through this certain teachers could get fired from these scores that do not deserve to get fired."The new study found no evidence for one piece of conventional wisdom: that having a good teacher in an early grade has a bigger effect than having a good teacher in later grades." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/education/big-study-links-good-teachers-to-lasting-gain.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&emc=eta1

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  11. in this article they briefly highlight over the concept of lurking variables. they even stated that mistakes are going to be made and teachers who shouldn't get fired will; and the lurking variables, like the work ethic of their students and the students want to learn, are going to effect if their test scores. the best teacher in the school could have the worst class and get fired solely on the fact that the kids he was teaching simply did not want to be there

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  12. It shows how much of an impact a high school teacher can have on students futures. I couldn't believe that if a school had one bad teacher for ten years than that class could have hypothetically lost 2.5 million in career income.

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  13. They mentioned in the article about the idea of an excellent, average, and poor teacher. But the formula one would have to create and how many factors would need to be included is astounding. The vocabulary word I am referring to is average (the middle(ish))

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  14. did cam cite his source? I don't think that is necessary

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  15. The article talks about using quantitative data in a setting which normally relies entirely on qualitative data. By using value-added metrics to evaluate the quality of teachers, they are applying statistics and math in an area that has formerly used only peer and administrator reviews for evaluation. This application of statistical science shows the ever-increasing importance of this subject in the real world.

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  16. The article discusses value-added ratings which are a measurement of teacher impact on student test scores.

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  17. The term average was used quite often in this article. This reminded me of our summer reading assignment and how the "average" is not always something that is easily defined and can be differently interpreted. I am not sure how teachers are rated as poor, average, or above average, but it should be carefully monitored to make sure teachers are not being fired for no reason.

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  18. The article mentioned that the researchers used different control factors for the students such as their background. This was used in determining the teacher's value-added metric.

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  19. The term value-added refers to the estimated increase in a student's test scores at each stage of their education.

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  20. The term factor was used a couple times in the article. This is how many parts are considered and effect the total outcome.

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  21. this article discusses lurking variables. these are very important to consider because hiring and firing teachers based only on test scores and performance could lead to many excellent teachers being fired.

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  22. this article talked about controlling variables while trying to create the experiment. Things such as the students background were controlled variables, or things that did not change from first gaining the information to then preforming an experiment.

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  23. I was going to post exactly what Erin wrote. So to try and change it a bit, the article never defined average in reference to the test scores. Average could be the mean, the median, or some number tweaked to support their hypothesis.

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  24. The most striking thing about this article was, in my opinion, the number and importance of the lurking variables from this study. Personally, I am skeptical about these conclusions. Though teachers are without a doubt a significant influence on their students, I doubt that an especially poor or excellent teacher can have such dramatic effects. The monetary and other measures of success stem from a variety of sources, not simply having good or bad teachers.

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  25. This article seems to present a crazy idea that having a bad teacher once in your life could dramatically decrease the amount of money that one would make. I think that by looking at teachers and trying to fire the ones who have students who have low test scores is not far at all. By creating a potential plan like this, teachers would not want students with learning disabilities in their classes because that would bring their classes' test average way down and therefore put their jobs in jeopardy. I am not doubting that having a bad teacher effects someone's life, but I do not think it would effect an individual's life as dramatically as it has been stated in this article.

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  26. The whole study seems to be a bit ridiculous, as it uses standardized test scores, which only measure one's ability to take the specific standardized test. Also, the idea that only one teacher who did not teach well can affect your life more than two or three decades later is a little overstated. Certainly, it will affect your life for the next few years if you do not learn essential materials, but that will vanish. I also feel that judging a teacher by their students is a poor decision, as with our class, because if the class does not cooperate and actually try to learn, the teacher cannot do much to increase their scores.

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  27. In this article, the term "value-added ratings" was used a few times. These are the measurement of teacher impact on student test scores.

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  28. the teachers cant control the scores because people can be at taking tests or just not understand certain material but if all students didnt understand what was on the test then it could maybe point to the teacher but usually its the students fault for not doing well because teachers can only do so much for students

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  29. I completely agree with Cam in this, as well. Students cheat enough already, and this system would just encourage teachers to aid students directly during such standardized tests, or just teach to the tests.

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  30. The term "average" was used quite often. As Erin said, it reminded me of how we studied averages at the beginning of the year and about how it isn't one value. Most commonly the average would have referred to the mean of a set of numbers, but average can also refer to the median and mode. Therefore, average can not be easily interpreted if you do not know what value you are looking for you. This makes it hard to judge teachers as "above/below average" and they should be careful of firing teachers.

    (I posted on this much earlier, or at least I tried to. I didn't see my other post so i'm posting it again now)

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