Value-Added Measures in Education

State and federal policies, such as the Race to the Top program, have redefined accountability to require states to develop and use performance-based teacher evaluation systems to inform decisions on professional development, employment, and compensation. To assess teacher effectiveness, many states and districts are using growth and value-added measurements as one component of a comprehensive evaluation system. The following three papers, written by AIR researchers, relate to value-added measurement:

Combining Multiple Performance Measures: Do Common Approaches Undermine Districts’ Personnel Evaluation Systems? (PDF)

Teacher and principal evaluation systems emerging in response to federal, state, or local policy initiatives typically require that student performance be considered along with other performance measures. This paper examines three common approaches to combining performance measures to determine whether these approaches reliably identify high- and low-performing teachers.

Estimating Teacher Contributions to Student Learning: The Role of the School Component (PDF)

Teachers’ individual contributions to student learning and schools’ contributions are typically intertwined. This paper explores the key issues related to strategies for identifying a value-added model to account for school and teacher contributions that create appropriate incentives for teachers.

Determining Attribution: Holding Teachers Accountable for Student Growth (PDF)

This paper summarizes key issues that states and districts implementing growth and value-added models for teacher evaluation may wish to consider with respect to determining how students count in teacher growth or value-added scores, along with practical examples of options for implementation.