Teacher value-added: recommended further reading
By Patrick Coate, PhD
AIER Research Fellow
In the September AIER issue brief, “How Teachers are Graded,” I tried to give a fair overview of the state of research and policy debate related to teacher value-added, or using student test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness. For those interested in a more in-depth look at the controversial issue, here are links to resources cited in the brief or that I found most helpful.
Ways that value-added has been used around the country may be of the most interest. The National Council on Teacher Quality has an excellent 2015 report summarizing the laws and regulations used in each state. The full report is over 100 pages, but the key information is summarized with charts and tables in the six-page executive summary.
The emphasis on value-added (using the terminology, “student growth measures”) was clear from the start in the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top, as can be seen in the program’s executive summary in 2009. By 2015, some of the emphasis on testing had been rolled back, as shown in President Barack Obama’s open letter and accompanying DOE Fact Sheet. However, there remains a commitment to using testing and value-added measures in the classroom.
The battle also continues in the courtroom. The highest-profile case related to the use of value-added measures remains Vergara v. California. The passion on both sides of the argument can be seen in dueling organizations’ view of the case. The nonprofit Students Matter sees decision-making informed by value-added as a necessary way to ensure teacher quality; the California Teachers Association views the suit as misguided, meritless, and bad for schools. A 2016 Los Angeles Times column provides a nice overview of the history of the case, as well as recent legislative action to strengthen value-added’s role in teacher evaluation.
Also in California, the LA Times’s controversial publication of elementary school teachers’ value-added scores remains online. Internal links lead to an FAQ, methodology and web pages for individual teachers (often with teachers’ own comments appearing on their pages).
As the battle plays out in practice, technical and academic research continues. In the brief, I discussed a study by researchers Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff that linked wage returns in adulthood to having a high value-added teacher in school. The American Economic Review’s published version of their research is behind a paywall, but earlier, similar versions of the paper (along with an analysis published as a separate paper) are freely available. The research results from the Gates Foundation’s MET Project are available online as well.
While there is far more research than I can discuss even here, review papers synthesizing results of many research studies are a good start for readers interested in more technical detail. A 2010 Brookings Institution report cited in the brief provides a good overview of the case for using value-added based on the knowledge at the time. A working paper version of the cited 2015 Economics of Education Review paper including more recent studies is also available. For a more skeptical and conversationally written overview of recent work, I also recommend this blog post.