Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #3 of 9): Exploring VAMs’ Potentials
Recall that the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher (ER) – recently published a “Special Issue” including nine articles examining value-added measures (VAMs). I have reviewed the next of nine articles (#3 of 9) here, titled “Exploring the Potential of Value-Added Performance Measures to Affect the Quality of the Teacher Workforce” as authored by Dan Goldhaber – Professor at the University of Washington Bothell, Director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), and a Vice-President at the American Institutes of Research (AIR). AIR is one of our largest VAM consulting/contract firms, and Goldabher is, accordingly, perhaps one of the field’s most vocal proponents of VAMs, also self-described as an “advocate of using value-added measurements carefully to inform some high-stakes decisions” (see original reference here). Hence, it makes sense he writes about VAMs’ potentials herein.
Here’s what he has to add to the conversation, specifically about “the various mechanisms through which the use of value added might affect teacher quality and…what we know empirically about the potential of each mechanism” (p. 87).
Most importantly in this piece, and in my opinion, Goldhaber discusses the “[s]everal [which turns out to be two] studies that simulate the effects of using value-added estimates for high-stakes purposes [and] suggest there may be significant student Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #3 of 9): Exploring VAMs’ Potentials | VAMboozled!:
