Value-Added Measures and the Future of Educational Accountability
Abstract
Quantitative social scientists seek to develop ever-better tools for measuring and improving school teacher performance. One approach uses data on individual students' past test scores to predict subsequent scores and then subtracts the (counterfactual) prediction from the actual scores to estimate teachers' “value added.” But there is considerable debate about what educational benefits these measures might yield. I discuss scholarly agreements and disagreements about statistical properties of teacher value-added measures and argue that most key research questions cannot be answered by the types of studies that now dominate the literature (1).
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References and Notes
1
Harris D. N., Value-Added Measures in Education: What Every Educator Needs to Know (Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011).
2
Fryer R. G., Levitt S. D., Rev. Econ. Stat. 86, 447 (2004).
3
Lee V., Burkam D., Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School (Economic Policy Institute, Washington, DC, 2002).
4
Harris D. N., Sass T. R., J. Public Econ. 95, 798 (2011).
5
Kennedy M. M., in Handbook of Teacher Assessment and Teacher Quality, , Kennedy M., Ed. (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010), pp. 225–250.
6
Weiss M., paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, Washington, DC, 3 March 2008; www.meetinglink.org/educationaleffectiveness/2008/conference/submission/abstracts/notmikeweiss20071025161237/Final-SREEAbstractTemplate.doc.
7
Kane T., Staiger D., “Estimating teacher impacts on student achievement: An experimental evaluation” (Working Paper 14607, National Bureau of Economic Research, Boston, MA, 2008).
8
Guarino C. M., Reckase M. D., Wooldridge J. M., paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education Finance and Policy, Seattle, WA, 24 to 26 March 2011; www.aefpweb.org/sites/default/files/webform/20110319_GRW_Can%20Value-Added%20Measures%20of%20Teacher%20Performance%20be%20Trusted.pdf.
9
Harris D. N., Sass T. R., “What makes for a good teacher and who can tell?” [Working Paper no. 30, National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), Urban Institute, Washington, DC, 2009].
10
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11
It may seem that correlations are held to different standards here; 0.47, 0.27, and 0.2 to 0.6 are interpreted as small, whereas 0.18 to 0.32 is interpreted as large. The reason is that the former figures are based on almost exactly the same underlying data while the latter, between principal evaluations and value-added, may not even reflect the same general notion of student performance, e.g., school principals may not put much weight on student test scores when judging teachers.
12
Harris D. N., Sass T. R., Semykina A., paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education Finance and Policy, Seattle, WA, 24 to 26 March, 2011; www.aefpweb.org/sites/default/files/webform/Harris_Sass_Semykina_Value-added_18.pdf
13
Rothstein J., Educ. Finance Policy 4, 537 (2009).
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McCaffrey D. F., Sass T. R., Lockwood J. R., Mihaly K., Educ. Finance Policy 4, 572 (2009).
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Glazerman S., et al., Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value-Added (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2010).
17
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18
Harris D. N., J. Policy Anal. Manage. 28, 693 (2009).
19
Adams S., Heywood J. S., Rothstein R., Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability: What Education Should Learn from Other Sectors (Economic Policy Institute, Washington, DC, 2009).
20
Ballou D., Podgursky M., in Teacher Pay and Teacher Quality (Upjohn Institute, Kalamazoo, MI, 1997), pp. 129–162.
21
Fryer R., “Teacher incentives and student achievement: Evidence from New York City public schools” (Working Paper 16850, National Bureau for Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2011).
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Springer M. G., et al., Teacher Pay for Performance: Experimental Evidence from the Project on Incentives in Teaching (National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 2010).
23
Gordon R., Kane T., Staiger D., “Identifying effective teachers using performance on the job” (Discussion Paper 1, Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2006).
24
Hanushek E. A., “The economic value of higher teacher quality” (Working Paper 16606, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2010).
25
Campbell D. T., “Assessing the impact of planned social change” (Occasional Paper 8, The Public Affairs Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 1976).
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Volume 333 | Issue 6044
12 August 2011
12 August 2011
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Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Published in print: 12 August 2011
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