> The lawsuit shows that Lederman’s students traditionally perform much higher on math and English Language Arts standardized tests than average fourth-grade classes in the state. In 2012-13, 68.75 percent of her students met or exceeded state standards in both English and math.

Wow. WaPo is critical of VAMs and then they use a state-to-classroom comparison to show that she is effective? Doing better or worse than the state average is just about the worst measure of teachers performance. Entire school districts tend to perform well mainly as a measure of how well-to-do that school district is.

This is excaltly the comparisoin VAMs are trying to prevent. Measuring value added as opposed to the value that was already there. To think that WaPo thinks you can measure teacher performance in such a naive state vs classroom way really detracts from the article.