Student Data Collection: Purpose, Costs, Risks?

Grumpy Note:  Never Before in the history of the United States has the Federal Government felt it was entited to collect the kind of person information the Dept of Education says it must have to educate America's children.  The DoED seees no reason it shouldn't be allowed to share the information with other Governments Agencies..  You are not supposed to worry because department assures us the information will never be used improperly (Hitler & Stalin said that too) or compromised by unathorized personal.. (this from the folks that gave us Wiki Leaks)

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Sandra in Brevard





Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something different. The current policies are different, but are they better, more effective, and more efficient?

According to the President's Blueprint, the state longitudinal data base initiative will provide the targeted accountability to raise achievement by ensuring students are making progress and by linking student achievement to teacher performance. The recent proposed FERPA regulations requires additional safeguards for the collection, release, an safeguarding of student data. The fiscal impact on State and local-levels is not mentioned.



Four reasons the public should have deep concerns about the development and proposed regulations and the collection of data from birth to college on every student in the nation:

April 20, 2011, SONY CEO apologizes for major security breach.
Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer apologized for "inconvenience and concern" caused by the security breach that compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming accounts.

May 17, 2011, Data Breech Infects Massachusetts Unemployment Office.
An estimated 225,000 Massachusetts residents could become fraud victims as a result of a computer data breach in the state unemployment system.

May 27, 2011, Data Breech at Security Firm Linked to Attack on Lockheed.
Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest military contractor, has battled disruptions in its computer networks this week that might be tied to a hacking attack on a vendor that supplies coded security tokens to millions of users, security officials said on Friday.

June 2, 2011, Google Mail Attack Blamed on China.
Suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including those of senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists, the Internet company said.

June 3, 2011, Hackers Attack another Sony network.
Hackers broke into Sony Corp’s computer networks and accessed the information of more than 1 million customers to show the vulnerability of the electronic giant’s systems, the latest of several security breaches undermining confidence in the company.

SB736/HB7019: The trouble with value-added measurement

The trouble with value-added measurement is

It's not on the test



SB736/HB7019 intends to apply value-added measurement (VAM) to connect student achievement on a test as a performance indicator of the teacher, or a poor student score = poor teaching. VAM uses statistical tools to calculate the contributions a teacher makes to student achievement gains. The formula for the calculation includes factors the developer chooses to include. What do experts have to say about the value of value-added measurement?


1) Jim Angermeyr, Director of Research, Evaluation & Testing for Bloomington Public Schools and "one of the designers of a widely respected value-added test lots of Minnesota schoolchildren take two or three times a year" was interviewed by Beth Hawkins. In the article, "Do 'value-added' teacher data really add value?", Angermeyr is described as "something of a standardized testing skeptic. He believes that economists tend to believe in using value-added data in evaluation. Educators and psychometricians, not so much."

“It’s not necessarily that the methodologies are wrong,” he said. “It’s that the inferences we’re drawing can be wrong.”

"The kids are the greatest of the variables, of course. The tests may tell you a student is reading better or sliding in math, but they don’t tell you whether she spent the summer with a tutor or he is so young the test isn’t as accurate as it would be in an older child.

Nor is the same test used from year to year. A particular student or teacher may fare better on a test closely normed with curriculum vs. one aligned with a set of knowledge-based standards."
“

You leave out a lot of the potential variables,” Angermeyr said.  “They’re just not at the point where we should use them to make decisions about jobs.”

2) The National Research Council and the National Academy of Education gathered experts in the this field and held a workshop titled "Getting Value Out of Value Added." There was general agreement by participants that there is no single statistical model and still a work in progress for applicability when measuring teacher quality.

Discussion resulted in these additional conclusions:

Results generated by existing models have a high degree of instability.

Good results require good tests and good test results.

Experts find it useful for low stakes use to identify areas that need improvement.

Experts recommend against using it for high stakes such as, teacher pay.

According to Henry Braun, the group determined the following:"

To nobody’s surprise, there is not one dominant VAM. Each major class of models has shortcomings, there is no consensus on the best approaches, and little work has been done on synthesizing the best aspects of each approach. There are questions about the accuracy and stability of value-added estimates of schools, teachers, or program effects. More needs to be learned about how these properties differ, using different value-added techniques and under different conditions. Most of the workshop participants argued that steps need to be taken to improve accuracy if the estimates are to be used as a primary indicator for high-stakes decisions; rather, value-added estimates should best be used in combination with other indicators. But most thought that the degree of precision and stability does seem sufficient to justify low-stakes uses of value-added results for research, evaluation, or improvement when there are no serious consequences for individual teachers, administrators, or students." (p.54)

While Florida plunges into creating dozens of new tests, North Carolina's legislature in bipartisan agreement is sending a bill to the Governor to end some end-of-course tests, maintaining those to meet federal requirements and to measure student achievement. Two years ago, they voted to end a few others. This legislature wishes to stop paying for so many tests that are both expensive and failing to yield the returns once thought beneficial.

Concerns over the costs for implementing SB736/HB7019 by Florida Senators and by school boards are being reported. In the end, this is an unfunded mandate using an experimental statistical model, and an expensive test development and implementation scheme that extends far beyond the reach of RT3 dollars. Legislators remain silent on the issue of costs and cost benefits. The public has a right to know.

To read the report, access the widget on Grumpy Educators located on the right size of the page. Select the open book with the word Read underneath, then select Open Book on the small screen. The document  will open in an easy to read size

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The experts in the National Research Council and the National Academy of Education in this conference included: