Since you included VAM, or value-added measures which are used to convert student test scores into teacher evaluation rankings, readers should know a few facts about how VAM has impacted New York, which includes NYC.

VAM began in 2013 in NY, under the name APPR or Annual Professional Performance Review, as part of NY’s Race to the Top application for hundreds of millions in competitive federal education grants.

The proprietary algorithms and formulas however, were (and still are) hidden from the public which violates New York State education law. This came out in a lawsuit brought by Long Island teacher Sheri Lederman who received an ineffective rating despite her students having some of the highest test scores in the state.

In discovery, the state refused to show the algorithms and the judge ruled the contested APPR rating invalid.

At issue here, among other questions, is how the testing formulas compensate for high need student characteristics, such as language status, poverty, or disability. Are they counted as half a student, 5/8ths? Is there a sliding scale? No one knows.

And there are many other factors not counted, such as chronic absence, homelessness or transience, just to name a few. A recent TED talk on “blind faith” in such algorithms pointed out how truly subjective they are when set, making results unpredictable, arbitrary, or worst of all, biased.

Because of the controversy, NY state declared a moratorium on use of APPR in high stakes decisions for teachers and students, but still pays millions annually to generate “advisory” scores — and the temporary moratorium is set to soon expire, after four years, with nothing there to take its place.

When NYC’s new task force tackles teacher evaluations, it will be taking on powerful political forces, such as the ed reform movement, and their wealthy PACs, lobbying groups and “think tanks” who used ALEC’s model legislation in Albany to link test scores to teacher rankings through this flawed “junk science”.

So much of this has to do with transparency. But if we can’t see the algorithms (which we paid for) in a lawsuit challenging them as invalid, we obviously do not have the necessary political power to stop these big government takeovers of our civic institutions.