In Education, does “Value-Added” Add Value?
May 10, 2011
Education reform has been prominent in the media over the last year. Though the topic has taken many angles—Wisconsin’s battle over teacher unions, the public vs. charter school debate, Cathie Black’s abrupt tenure as Chancellor of New York City schools—the centerpiece of all these stories have a singular theme: are America’s children receiving the education they deserve?
In the drive to improve education, the focus has been placed heavily on the effectiveness of teachers. Fostered in part by media attention and in part by federal initiatives, schools have rushed to develop teacher evaluation systems, and one in particular seems to be gaining traction: Value-added teacher ratings.
What is a value-added assessment?
& lt;br>In the business world, “value added” is a term referring to enhancements to a product before the product is offered to customers. The enhancements add value to the product in the eyes of the customer that gives the company a competitive edge. “Value added” is also a concept in economics that refers to the difference between the final cost of a product and the cost to the company to produce the product. Both concepts provide interesting lenses through which to view value-added teacher assessments.
In education, value-added simply refers to gains in student achievement from year to year. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Value-added analysis involves looking at each student’s past test scores to predict future scores. The difference between the prediction and students’ actual scores each year is the estimated ‘value’ that the teacher added or subtracted.”
In one view a student scoring in the 75th percentile is average, and we can expect that each year that student should be scoring at or near the 75th percentile. However, another view is that effective teachers will add value to that student by helping him or her grow in achievement—under this view, one would expect to see that student’s scores rise to the 80th percentile or beyond as he or she progresses to higher grade levels.
As a metaphor the business view of “value added” can be useful in that teachers should be enhancing their students in ways that make them more attractive to prospective employers. Ideally, teachers should be adding to their students’ abilities to be productive in society upon leaving school. The economic concept also can be useful, because the students should be able to contribute to society and the economy at a level that is greater than the cost to educate them.
The centerpiece of a value-added teacher assessment is hard data: the rate of growth of student achievement as measured by standardized tests. For some, this kind of formula offe rs a concrete measure to hold teachers accountable. Others aren’t so quick to agree.
What do critics say about value-added assessments?
One concern with value-added assessments is that student test scores fail to measure the true qualities that make great teachers. In a September 2010 article, prominent education expert Alfie Kohn wrote, “Test scores are accepted on faith as a proxy for quality [with] ‘value’ meaning nothing more than higher scores.” Kohn notes that some of the best teachers in the field show few achievement gains on test scores because “they’re too busy helping the kids to become enthusiastic and proficient thinkers, which is not what the tests measure.”
A second concern with value-added teacher assessment is that part of the value-added formula is based on a projection of how a student should perform on a particular standardized test. Grover Whitehurst, director of the Brookings Institute’s Brown Center on Education Policy says that any system for evaluating complex human behavior (an apt description of the student-teacher interaction) will be inadequate, but adds that it doesn’t mean these systems shouldn’t be used. However, he suggests that value-added components of evaluations are flawed because they are based on” a number people are plucking out of midair.”
Yet another concern about the value-added method is that any formula used for evaluating teachers is too complex and cannot effectively isolate a teacher’s influence from other factors outside a teacher’s control, such as poverty.
How prevalent are value-added assessments?
In January 2011, a judge ruled in favor of 12 media outlets that had been sued by the United Federation of Teachers to prevent the release of value-added ratings for the city’s teachers. Former schools chancellor Joel Klein had supported the newspapers, calling the ratings the “fairest system-wide way we have to assess the real impact of teachers on student learning.”
Ohio plans to roll out teacher evaluations for the 2011-12 school year using value-added assessment, and Georgia and Florida are expected to use federal Race to the Top funds to offer lucrative contracts for developing teacher evaluation systems. Washington D.C. schools gained national attention for former chancellor Michelle Rhee’s use of value-added assessments to close failing schools and award large teacher bonuses.
The focus on student achievement fostered by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has led in no small part to this national call for teacher accountability. And to be sure, education advocates on all sides agree that teachers should be held accountable for something—no one wants ineffective teachers in the classroom. But good teaching is complex, sometimes more of an art than a science. Perhaps the best method of evaluating teachers would be a hybrid approach that does not box them in based on a single number. Whatever method states settle on for evaluating teachers, policy makers should recall President Obama’s words from his state of the union address: “When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance.”