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Monday, October 25, 2010

Schools Matter: Please Add Your Name to the EPI Statement on the Use of Value-Added Models

Schools Matter: Please Add Your Name to the EPI Statement on the Use of Value-Added Models

Please Add Your Name to the EPI Statement on the Use of Value-Added Models

From EPI:
We invite you to add your name to the below statement, initiated by ten prominent education scholars, that urges policymakers to not pursue heavy reliance on test scores for evaluating, rewarding and removing teachers. Links to relevant research on this issue are listed below. Please sign up and tell your friends and colleagues to do so as well. Thank you for your interest.
Lawrence Mishel | President, Economic Policy Institute

The heavy use of VAM in a teacher evaluation system will misidentify large numbers of both effective and ineffective teachers. Leading authorities (such as the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and researchers from RAND and the Educational Testing Service and a recent Economic Policy Institute paper by a group of prominent scholars, Problems With the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers) concur that VAM is too inaccurate to be used as