Rensselaer, NY
I am currently working on a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I work in the field of computer vision and image processing. My research deals with 3D data analysis, particularly from LiDAR scanners. I have benefited tremendously from the practices of open source and strive to continue to do my part to continue the give-and-take cycle!
Authored Comments
They were very careful to make sure that the Value Added metric is "unbiased", which means they have accounted for the "totally different lives" problem you mentioned as well as possible.
"I agree with Corradi that using income as a measure of success is quite near-sighted." - they also use several other metrics - watch the presentation :). It actually doesn't go into too much detail about the other metrics, but I'm sure they are discussed in depth in the actual papers related to this work.
You said you are worried about "you are a good teacher if your students get good grades." I'd say one of the whole points of the Value Added metric is that we should not trust grades, but rather look at the long term "adult outcomes" caused by teacher variability.
I'm assuming you're talking to me since I used the phrase. I don't know what makes someone a "Linux guy" besides using it at home and at work? I think you're confusing a "Microsoft" mentality with a "likes things that work well and are easy to use" mentality. I don't care who makes it - I just want it to be usable and not have any of the glaring problems I mentioned in my original post. That is clearly a lot to ask, but I guess I overestimate the power of millions of programmers that could be working together on this.