Value-added modeling

Value-added modeling (also known as value-added measurement, value-added analysis and value-added assessment) is a method of teacher evaluation that measures the teacher's contribution in a given year by comparing the current test scores of their students to the scores of those same students in previous school years, as well as to the scores of other students in the same grade. In this manner, value-added modeling seeks to isolate the contribution, or value added, that each teacher provides in a given year, which can be compared to the performance measures of other teachers. VAMs are considered to be fairer than simply comparing student achievement scores or gain scores without considering potentially confounding context variables like past performance or income. It is also possible to use this approach to estimate the value added by the school principal or the school as a whole.

Critics say that the use of tests to evaluate individual teachers has not been scientifically validated, and much of the results are due to chance or conditions beyond the teacher's control, such as outside tutoring.[1] Research shows, however, that differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by value-added of teachers are associated with small economic effects on students.[2]

  1. ^ Dillon, Sam. "Method to Grade Teachers Provokes Battles" Archived 2017-05-18 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, August 31, 2010. Accessed September 1, 2010.
  2. ^ It is also complicated to calculate an accurate estimate if the students have many teachers in the course of a year. Eric Hanushek, "Valuing teachers: How much is a good teacher worth?" Archived 2017-07-23 at the Wayback Machine Education Next 11, no. 3 (Summer 2011).; Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff, "Measuring the impacts of teachers II Archived 2017-03-28 at the Wayback Machine: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood," American Economic Review, Volume 104, Number 9, September 2014, pp. 2633–2679.