Let’s look at DC’s own superstar teacher, Jason Kamras. Or, former teacher. (He’s an administrator now.)

Mr. Kamras apparently worked such miracles at Sousa JHS/MS that he was named United States Teacher of the Year (USTOTY) in 2005. After that he was given a year off with pay to tour the country and disseminate his wisdom. After that, he went into the DC public school system’s central office for instructional support, and is now special assistant to Chancellor Michelle Rhee. There he has been trying to enact and implement IMPACT, the policy of micro-managing all of us other lazy, ignorant teachers who didn’t go to Princeton, Harvard, or Cornell and don’t know how to teach.

So what impact did Mr. Kamras have at Sousa MS? His USTOTY bio claims that all of *his* students always met AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). I looked up got the AYP data for his school, Sousa, from the website http://www.nclb.osse.dc.gov. Since Kamras won this award showing that he is a super-star teacher, one would think that:

(1) His contributions to teaching math (or other subjects) would already be legendary among other teachers in DCPS, and

(2) His influence at Sousa would be so profound that in 2005 – his last year – the AYP scores at Sousa should have peaked, especially since only 142 students were tested at the entire school that year, which probably meant that he taught math to a very large fraction of them. (In earlier years there were over 380 students tested, and afterwards, the numbers were between 210 and 320 students.)

What are the facts, as measured by the (unreliable) SAT-9 and DC-CAS? (Sorry, but it’s all the data I have.)

Here is the test data:
http://gfbrandenburg.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/effect-superstar-sousa-table.jpg

or, if you prefer a graph,

http://gfbrandenburg.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/effect-of-a-superstar-teacher2.jpg

The vertical line after the mark for 2005 is to show when Kamras stopped being a classroom teacher and essentially went into administration.