Teacher Evaluation: Research-based not Sound-bite driven
At the forefront of education reform is how we can do a better job identifying and developing excellent teachers. This is of course rooted in the notion that since teacher quality is the greatest in-school determinant of student academic achievement, then in order to improve student learning we need to look at teacher practices within the classroom.
The stakes are high and we cannot be lured into settling on simplistic solutions to solve complex educational issues. Test scores using "value-added measures" (VAM) attempt to measure teacher quality with test scores by employing complex assumptions and statistical modeling to account for nonschool factors affecting student achievement.
While some research has been done using VAM to evaluate teacher effectiveness, there is significant disagreement over which statistical approach is best and to what extent any given one will produce accurate and unbiased measures of a teacher's impact on student achievement.
Many researchers have voiced doubts about the efficacy of using test scores to evaluate teachers given the
