Due Diligence
Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue at the University of Colorado at Boulder released a review of the research used in the LA Times value-added project today. It's definitely worth reading and sharing with others.
The review disputes the finding that teacher qualifications have no association with student outcomes, looks at the issue of non-random assignment & how the biases the model, and discusses the (im)precision of the model used.
The authors smartly conclude:
Causal inference may well be the holygrail of quantitative research in the social sciences, but it should not be proclaimed lightly.When the causal