Session Information
23 SES 11 A, Global Perspectives on Market-Based Teacher Accountability Policies
Symposium
Contribution
Market-based education policies have proliferated in recent decades (Ball, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2009), coinciding with a rise of influence from economists on policy formation (Author(s), 2015). In the USA, economists have developed value-added models (VAMs), which are statistical tools designed to measure the amount of influence a teacher has on her students’ standardized achievement tests, over time. Despite growing concerns regarding the validity, reliability, bias, and fairness of VAMs (Amrein-Beardsley, 2014; Capitol Hill Briefing, 2011; Schochet & Chiang, 2013), policymakers in the USA have embraced the technology and have incentivized states via various federal grants programs to adopt some form of VAM for the purposes of teacher evaluation. Employing a discursive analytical approach grounded in Ball’s (2003) performativity and Rose’s (1991) governing by numbers, the author of this paper explores the practical and theoretical consequences of VAM-use, as experienced by a group of teachers and their evaluators at one urban middle school in the USA. This study draws on in-depth interview data, collected over a one-year period, within a school that had relied on VAM as a significant part of its teacher evaluation system for four years. The purpose of the study was to problematize the ways in which VAM had come to discursively define what it meant to be a high-quality teacher at this particular middle school. The paper presents three major findings. (1) Despite expressed concerns with the reliability and validity of VAM calculations and outputs, the teachers and evaluators had developed an acceptance of the system and had begun to define teacher quality in terms of VAM. This was consistent with a market-based discourse about the role of public school teachers as producers of products whose value needs to be numerically measured. (2) Also consistent with a market-based discourse, teachers were positioned as potentially risky subjects who, if left alone, could harm the school’s overall worth. The VAM was positioned as the objective knowledge that evaluators needed to identify any ‘phonies’. (3) As teacher quality was narrowly defined by VAM, market-based values (e.g., competition, individualism) were held as necessary principles for the overall success of the school. Ball (1993) reminds us that discourse is not something that we do, but rather something that we are and can be. If a teacher’s quality is defined by numerical data, then we must question what other possibilities of quality are ignored. This paper seeks to address this question.
References
Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2014). Rethinking value-added models in education: critical perspectives on tests and assessment-based accountability. New York & London: Routledge. Ball, S. J. (1993). What is policy? Texts, trajectories and toolboxes. The Australian Journal of Education Studies, 13(2), 10-17. Ball, S. (2003) Class strategies and the education market: The middle classes and social advantage (London: Routledge Farmer). Ball, S. J. (2012). Global education inc: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. Routledge. Capitol Hill Briefing. (2011). Getting teacher evaluation right: A challenge for policy makers. A briefing by E. Haertel, J. Rothstein, A. Amrein- Beardsley, and L. Darling-Hammond. Washington DC: Dirksen Senate Office Building (research in brief). Retrieved from http://www.aera.net/Default.aspx?id=12856 Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2009). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. Rose, N. (1991). Governing by numbers: Figuring out democracy.Accounting, organizations and society, 16(7), 673-692. Schochet, P. Z., & Chiang, H. S. (2013). What are error rates for classifying teacher and school performance using value-added models?. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 38(2), 142-171.
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