I’ve been on book tour for nearly a month now, and I’ve come across a bunch of arguments pushing against my book’s theses. I welcome them, because I want to be informed. So far, though, I haven’t been convinced I made any egregious errors.

Here’s an example of an argument I’ve seen consistently when it comes to the defense of the teacher value-added model (VAM) scores, and sometimes the recidivism risk scores as well. Namely, that the teacher’s VAM scores were “one of many considerations” taken to establish an overall teacher’s score. The use of something that is unfair is less unfair, in other words, if you also use other things which balance it out and are fair.

If you don’t know what a VAM is, or what my critique about it is, take a look at this post, or read my book. The very short version is that it’s…