Should news organizations publish teachers’ value-added ratings?
The Cleveland Plain Dealer just published the “value-added” ratings of teachers that purport to show how effective a teacher is or isn’t. The Los Angeles Times did something similar in 2010 and 2011, and so did The New York Times in 2012. In every case the newspapers came under heavy criticism.Why?
Value-added ratings are derived by taking the standardized test scores of students and plugging them into a complicated formula that can supposedly determine how much “value” a teacher adds to a student’s achievement by taking into account a varying number of factors. How complicated? Here’s an example, taken from the website of the D.C. Public Schools:
First, we calculate how a teacher’s students are likely to perform, on average, on our standardized assessment (the DC CAS) given their previous year’s scores and other relevant information. We then compare that likely score with the students’ actualaverage score. Teachers with high IVA scores are those whose students’ actual performance exceeds their likely performance.
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