There is a lot of talk about moving part or all of teacher evaluations towards a value added measurement system in the education world. These value added scores would be calculated using the state exams, which here in Virginia and in many other states are almost entirely multiple choice exams. I really hate that we evaluate the knowledge of students based on their ability to pick between the letters "A", "B", "C", "D".
My issue with evaluating teachers in this way is that it fails to take other factors into account.
Justin Baeder summed this idea up best today in his blog post called, Collecting the Wrong Data: Fundamental Attribution Error in Teaching Quality,
"We don't collect data on how many subjects someone teaches, how little prep time they have, how often we interrupt this prep time with meetings and bus duty, and the myriad other non-instructional responsibilities that characterize work in US schools. We analyze test scores and jump to conclusions in an effort to be data-driven, while ignoring perhaps the most important data of all: data on the contexts in which teaching and learning take place."
When the final determination is made on how to evaluate teachers, I hope they make sure to look at the whole package, test scores included.
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