The intrepid EdWeek bloggers Alyson Klein and Stephen Sawchuk caught a passage in President Obama’s latest budget proposal that would require states to, “develop a definition of ‘effective teacher’ that is based in significant part on student learning, and to put in place a system that links the academic achievement and growth of students to [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Value-Added'
The Gladwell/ Kane Theory of Teacher Recruitment
Overheard: a business CEO will hire any Harvard MBA before they even begin the program. It isn’t the education itself that makes them valuable employees, in this estimation, it’s the screen that let them in that proves their quality. In education, it turns out all of our traditional screens, and even some untraditional ones, don’t [...]
Are Value-Added Effectiveness Measures Good Enough to Use for Compensation Decisions?
There’s a great deal of attention being given to using test scores to measure teacher performance these days, recent announcements from the Gates foundation ensure this will be high on the national agenda in coming years. But recent studies show that the value-added measures contain significant amount of error. Which raises questions: how can imperfect [...]
Candor
In a discussion about the use of standardized college admissions test, William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard university, says:
“At Harvard we get terrific students, and we turn out terrific students later on. Is that due to Harvard or is that due to the students to begin with? Who knows?”
I appreciate honesty and candor [...]
"Technical" Objections
Over at the UFT, Leo Casey accuses us of various rhetorical sins involves caricatures, straw men, etc, in recent comments about the NYC value-added project. Their grievances lie with the methodology, says Leo, and it’s wrong to say otherwise. Okay, very well. Two questions:
1) What are the basic elements of a UFT-approved methodologically appropriate method [...]
Value-Added Comes of Age
About four and a half years ago, I was working on a policy paper focused on a developing and controversial method of measuring teacher effectiveness called “value-added.” Created by Dr. Bill Sanders in Tennessee in the mid-1990s, the essence of value-added is pretty simple: Using annual standardized test scores, look at the prior achievement history [...]
Gadgetry
Fellow blogger Erin Dillon and I are at SAS headquarters in North Carolina today, visiting with value-added guru Bill Sanders. Why is this worth noting? Because it’s an excuse to blog from my new Blackberry. As someone who preceded the cell-phones-and-flip-flops generation, I find this to be inordinately cool.
Distorting RAND
About a month ago, I wrote a long post on the topic of “value-added” measures of teacher effectiveness. With such measures getting a high-profile endorsement from the Aspen Commission on NCLB, I wrote, it was a safe bet that opponents of tying teacher evaluation to student tests scores would be mischaracterizing the conclusions of a [...]
NCLB Ratings Week
Jennifer Booher-Jennings’ op-ed in today’s Washington Post on the unfortunate incentives NCLB gives educators to focus on average students at the expense of the above-average and those who are really struggling may sound familiar to Education Sector and Washington Monthly readers, who were able to read an extended discussion of the problem here a year [...]
Teacher Policy: Backwards, Forwards, Upside-Down
A few years ago there was a great magazine advertisement that showed a picture of a napkin. On the napkin was written:
1. Build Computer.
2. Sell Computer.
Except someone had crossed out the “1″ and written in “2,” and then crossed out the “2″ and written in “1.” In other words, the business plan for Dell Computer [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.