Including Summers “Adds Considerable Measurement Error” to Value-Added Estimates
A new article titled “The Effect of Summer on Value-added Assessments of Teacher and School Performance” was recently released in the peer-reviewed journal Education Policy Analysis Archives. The article is authored by Gregory Palardy and Luyao Peng from the University of California, Riverside.
Before we begin, though, here is some background so that you all understand the importance of the findings in this particular article.
In order to calculate teacher-level value added, all states are currently using (at minimum) the large-scale standardized tests mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002. These tests were mandated for use in the subject areas of mathematics and reading/language arts. However, because these tests are given only once per year, typically in the spring, to calculate value-added statisticians measure actual versus predicted “growth” (aka “value-added”) from spring-to-spring, over a 12-month span, which includes summers.
While many (including many policymakers) assume that value-added estimations are calculated from fall to spring during time intervals under which students are under the same teachers’ supervision and instruction, this is not true. The reality is that the pre- to post-test occasions actually span 12-month periods, including the summers that often cause the nettlesome summer effects often observed via VAM-based estimates. Different students learn different things over the summer, and this is strongly associated (and correlated) with student’s backgrounds, and this is strongly associated (and correlated) with students’ out-of-school opportunities (e.g., travel, summer camps, summer schools). Likewise, because summers are the time periods over which teachers and schools tend to have little control over what students do, this is also the time period during which research indicates that achievement gaps maintain or widen. More specifically, research indicates that indicates that students from relatively lower socio-economic backgrounds tend to suffer more from learning decay than their wealthier peers, although they learn at similar rates during the school year.
What these 12-month testing intervals also include are prior teachers’ residual effects, whereas students testing in the spring, for example, finish out every school year (e.g., two months or so) with their prior teachers before entering the classrooms of the teachers for whom value-added is to be calculated the following spring, although teachers’ residual effects were not of focus in this particular study.
Nonetheless, via the research, we have always known that these summer (and prior or Including Summers “Adds Considerable Measurement Error” to Value-Added Estimates | VAMboozled!: