My principal gave me an envelope today which contained my Tennessee Value Added Assessment Score. It tells me whether I'm a good teacher or not (an opinion that shifts from week to week, I assure you, as far as I'm concerned).
Of course America is addicted to tests. George W. Bush, in his quest for easy answers, blamed "failing schools" on teachers and their powerful unions, so now teachers are held accountable--even if students, parents, and politicians are not.
Anyway, my 9th-grade and 10th-grade students take tests at the end of each year they spend in my class. These scores are compared with scores from tests they've taken in previous years, and these scores demonstrate whether or not I've taught the kids enough. They call it the TVAAS Teacher Effect.
Here it is:
English 1 (2005)
TVAAS Teacher Effect = -4.69
TVAAS Percentile: 23%
Teacher versus State Average: Not detectably different
English 1 (2006)
TVAAS Teacher Effect = -0.77
TVAAS Percentile: 46%
Teacher versus State Average: Not detectably different
English 2 (2006)
TVAAS Teacher Effect = +2.33
TVAAS Percentile: 76%
Teacher versus State Average: Not detectably different
What does this mean? Considering that I was teaching Advanced Honors English 1 each year, it isn't a big deal. I didn't teach grammar to those kids, I taught The Odyssey and historical fiction and didn't give a patootie about tests. All the same, I consider myself a below-average English 1 teacher.
In English 2, I did a better job: a whopping above average, 76th percentile!
I guess you could say that I'm a below-average to above-average teacher for my students. Faint praise, I guess. Numbers don't lie, right?
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