Value-added teacher assessment hit by Council for Exceptional Children
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The Council for Exceptional Children has issued a new position paper that rejects the use of “value-added” systems that link evaluations of teachers — especially those in the field of special education — to student standardized test scores and says they are cause “for concern.”
Here’s part of the position paper:
The most commonly discussed method used to incorporate student growth into teacher evaluations is a statistical model known as “value added.” In its simplest form, a value-added model aggregates student test scores, generally from state-mandated assessments, with a few other factors such as school and student demographics and produces a score for the teacher which purports to describe the teacher’s impact on student growth (Lipscomb, Teh, Gill, Chiang, & Owens, 2010). The research that exists about these
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