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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Two More Studies Show The Flaws Behind Using “Value-Added Measures” To Assess Teachers — Is Gates Foundation Listening? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Two More Studies Show The Flaws Behind Using “Value-Added Measures” To Assess Teachers — Is Gates Foundation Listening? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…:


Two More Studies Show The Flaws Behind Using “Value-Added Measures” To Assess Teachers — Is Gates Foundation Listening?

Education Week reports on two new studies done by very well respected researchers, including Douglas Harris(who literally wrote the book on value-added measures), finding that VAM does not accurately measure teacher performance in middle and high school. They point to tracking as one of the reasons.
The find what many previous studies have found:
The scholars’ analysis also showed that teachers who taught more remedial classes tended to have lower value-added scores, on average, than those teachers who taught mainly higher-level classes.
That phenomenon was not due to the best teachers’ disproportionately teaching the more-rigorous classes, as is