Value-Added Models for Teacher Evaluation and Accountability: Commonsense Assumptions

Abstract

Despite the concerns regarding value-added models (VAMs), advocates hold strong to VAMs’ theoretical strengths and potentials, while adopting a set of agreed-upon albeit “heroic” set of assumptions, without research in support. These assumptions transcend promotional, policy, media, and research-based pieces, but they have never been made explicit as analyzed as a set or whole. The purpose of this study was to make unambiguous the assumptions that have been made within the VAM narrative that have often been accepted without challenge, and situate these assumptions within the research. Sources for analyses included 470 pieces, published within traditional and nontraditional outlets, from which we derived 27 prevailing assumptions.

Reforming governance through policy instruments: how and to what extent standards, tests and accountability in education spread worldwide

“…Since then a number of techniques that tie student performance to teacher evaluations, as incentivized by the Race to the Top Act of 2011, have also emerged. Among them, value-added models feature prominently given its widespread use by several states and urban districts (Amrein-Beardsley & Holloway, 2017;Baker, Oluwole, & Green, 2013).…”

School testing culture and teacher satisfaction

“…These models have been extensively covered in the literature, with a particular focus on the methodological and logistical issues related to VAM measurement and use, such as studies on the validity, reliability, bias, and fairness of VAM-based evaluation and policy (Ballou and Springer 2015;Koedel and Betts 2011;Moore Johnson 2015;Rothstein 2010). There have been several reviews of these issues, from varied disciplines, see Amrein-Beardsley and Holloway (2017) for a review from an educational research perspective, Koedel et al (2015) for an economic perspective, and Darling-Hammond (2015), Everson (2017), and the AERA official statement (AERA 2015) for general reviews of VAMs and VAM use. Together, these reviews demonstrate that VAMs are more sophisticated than previously-used status models-or models designed to measure student proficiency at a given time-as they measure growth in learning over time and are able to theoretically mitigate the effects of extraneous variables, such as socioeconomic status, English language status, and prior testing performance.…”

Evidence and its consequences in educational research

“…Recent research that has investigated the redefining of teacher professionalism highlights historically new trends such as: (a) the increasing control of teachers’ work by influential international bodies like the OECD and the World Bank (Robertson, ; Sørensen & Robertson, ; Robertson & Sørensen, ); (b) the ‘remaking of the professional teacher in the image of data’ (Lewis & Hardy, ; Lewis & Holloway, ); (c) the use of value‐added measures in making appraisals of teachers’ work (Berliner, ; Amrein‐Beardsley & Holloway, ; Greene, ).…”

“…Nevertheless, the use of VAMs among school districts in the USA spread widely and became a central plank of ‘evidence‐based’ policymaking and implementation (Greene, ). In a comprehensive study of VAMs in the USA, Amrein‐Beardsley and Holloway () point out that by 2016, ‘44 states and D.C. had adopted and had at least begun implementing VAMs to evaluate and, in many cases, make important decisions about teachers (e.g., teacher tenure, merit pay, teacher termination)’ (p. 2).…”