Value-Added Measures
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Education Funding
Opinion
The State of Teacher Evaluation: Part 1
Evaluation is by far the hottest topic in education at the moment. Every (and I mean every) conversation I have about schools with a person outside of the education community eventually circles around to how best to gauge the performance of teachers and principals. Likewise, every district talent manager or other education leader I run into wants to discuss the state educator evaluations.
Teaching Profession
How Much Should Teachers Make?
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof points to a new Harvard study finding that good teachers—as defined by value-added test score analysis—have a profound long-term effect on students. According to the study, he notes, an average-size 4th grade class with a strong teacher will go on to earn $700,000 more in their life times (in total) than a class with a poor teacher. Gleaning the potential policy implications, Kristof says the study demonstrates 1) that we need to provide higher pay to good teachers and 2) that value-added ratings do in fact "reveal a great deal about whether a teacher is working out."
Professional Development
Opinion
Teacher Evaluations & MET Project Findings
Today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released, "Gathering Feedback for Teaching: Combining High-Quality Observations with Student Survey and Achievement Gains," which summarizes the most recent findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project. MET, funded by Gates Foundation, is a partnership of more than 3,000 public school teachers and independent research partners working to investigate "better ways to identify and develop effective teaching" to help improve educator evaluation, feedback, and professional development.
School & District Management
Opinion
Getting Moneyball Right
Saw Brad Pitt's new flick Moneyball the other week. Good, not great; thought the book was better. A lot of the interesting stuff gets lost in translation. I've noted the same thing when K-12 thinkers latch onto the "moneyball" analogy. K-12 enthusiasts point out that Billy Beane used sophisticated statistical analysis to build winning teams, and sensibly presume that the same kinds of tools can help drive school improvement. (Back in 2003, when the book was published, the edu-analogies consisted mostly of paeans to data dashboards; today, it's all about "value-added" metrics.)
School & District Management
Opinion
Appellate Court Gets It Wrong on NYC Teacher Data
Here's something you won't read too often in RHSU: "UFT president Michael Mulgrew is right." But he is. Just today, a New York state appellate court ruled that New York City must release reports that show value-added data on a teacher-by-teacher basis, with teachers' names attached. I agree with Mulgrew that this is an unfortunate decision.
School & District Management
Opinion
HISD Races Forward on Teacher Eval, While Union Kvetches
Houston superintendent Terry Grier has been making some impressive, controversial moves--albeit mostly out of the spotlight. It's a peculiar truism that giant districts like Houston or Clark County, Nevada, attract far less notice than much smaller districts like Washington, DC, Boston, and Newark. Anyway, last Friday, the Houston Independent School Board endorsed, 7-2, Grier's ambitious new teacher evaluation system for the nation's seventh-largest district. (For a terrific news account, check out Ericka Mellon's Houston Chronicle story here.)
School & District Management
Opinion
Value-Added: Two Things Are True
I got a number of notes regarding yesterday's post, mostly either dinging me for my concerns about value-added systems or asking how I can raise such concerns and still write, "Value-added does tell us something useful and I'm in favor of integrating it into evaluation and pay decisions, accordingly." Let me clarify. I think that two things are both true:
School & District Management
Opinion
Value-Added Evaluation & Those Pesky Collateralized Debt Obligations
Last week, while I was away, Brookings released another of its occasional "consensus" documents; this one's titled, "Passing Muster: Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems." The effort was once again led by Brookings' savvy Russ Whitehurst. The aim, more or less, is to tell state and federal officials how to "achieve a uniform standard for dispensing funds to school districts for the recognition of exceptional teachers without imposing a uniform evaluation system."
School & District Management
Opinion
My Take on the L.A. Times Reanalysis
Last summer, the Los Angeles Times created a furor with its hotly debated decision to post the value-added scores for thousands of Los Angeles teachers and to identify individual teachers, by name, as more or less effective. This week, the situation roared back to life when University of Colorado professor Derek Briggs, and coauthor Ben Domingue, issued a report titled "Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers" which charged that the L.A. Times analysis was "based on unreliable and invalid research" and that the use of an alternative value-added model might have changed how half of 3,300 fifth-grade teachers were rated when it came to reading. Even the Huffington Post has got into the action, running a solid post by Chuck Kerchner.
School & District Management
Opinion
Jay Mathews' Lazy Swipe at Michelle Rhee
Regular readers know that I'm no great fan of simple-minded value-added systems. As we've seen just this week with the L.A. Times value-added brouhaha (which I hope to address in the next couple days), it's easy for would-be reformers to overreach or oversell (see "Pyrrhic Victories?" for a more extended take).
School & District Management
Opinion
Beyond Value-Added Models...Getting the Mechanics of High-Stakes Teacher Effectiveness Policies Right
Note: Dan Goldhaber, an economist and professor at the University of Washington, is guest-posting this week.
School & District Management
Opinion
LAT on Teacher Value-Added: A Disheartening Replay
On Sunday, the L.A. Times ran its controversial analysis of teacher value-added scores in L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD). The paper used seven years of reading and math scores to calculate performance for individual teachers who've taught grades three through five, and plans to publish the effectiveness ratings with the teacher's names. The actual analysis was handled for the paper by RAND analyst Richard Buddin. If you want to get quickly up to speed on this, check out Joanne Jacobs' stellar summary here and Stephen Sawchuck's take here. The story has triggered an avalanche of comment, including cheers from our earnest Secretary of Education and scathing responses from the likes of Diane Ravitch and Alexander Russo.
School & District Management
Opinion
Two Cheers for Professor Pallas
This morning, Columbia University professor Aaron Pallas sounded a responsible (if hasty) retreat from last week's attack on DCPS. After writing last week that DCPS had seemingly used "preposterous" assumptions to adopt an "idiotic" teacher evaluation policy, Pallas wrote this morning in the Washington Post's "Answer Sheet" blog that, "I'm happy to hear that DCPS seems not to have botched the calculation of the value-added scores [by doing simple-minded subtraction]...even if this is what DCPS is telling teachers it's doing." Pallas also did a little legwork, reaching out to DCPS technical advisor Rick Hanushek and talking to DCPS data honcho Erin McGoldrick. He reports Hanushek's description of the DCPS IMPACT system "reassuring." Not the most graceful apologia, perhaps, but not bad in the world of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann.
School & District Management
Opinion
Value-Added: The Devil's in the Details
In response to the mail I've received since Monday's column critiquing Aaron Pallas's attack on the DCPS teacher firings, I think it's useful for me to weigh in on the live-wire question of value-added systems. Monday's column was not meant to be a simple-minded defense of value-added systems, but rather an attempt to defend a smart, careful effort against an unfair attack. The truth is that value-added systems (including DCPS's IMPACT) are more an art than a science, and the slew of decisions involved in designing them can be reasonably questioned and ought to be subject to responsible public scrutiny.