Should Value-Added Measures Be Used for Performance Pay?

Abstract

Value-added measures are becoming a critical piece of compensation reform, but buyers should be wary that any single number can express the effect teachers have on students.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Amrein-Beardsley

Audrey

. “Methodological Concerns About the Education Value-Added Assessment System.” Educational Researcher 37, no. 2 (2008): 65–75.

Ballou

Dale

. “Sizing Up Test Scores.” Education Next 2, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 10–15.

Eckert

Jonathan

. More Than Widgets: A Systematic Approach to Increased Teaching Effectiveness. Santa Monica, Calif.: National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, 2009. www.tapsystem.org/publications/ffo_rpts_eckert.pdf.

Farmer

Blake

. “VU Researcher Questions Direction of Race to the Top.” WPLN News, Dec. 31, 2009. http://wpln.org/?p=13606.

Goldhaber

Dan

. Teacher Pay Reforms: The Political Implications of Recent Research. Washington, D.C.: Center for American Progress, December 2006. www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/12/pdf/teacher_pay_report.pdf.

Koedel

Cory

, and Betts

Julian

. “Value-Added to What? How a Ceiling in the Testing Instrument Influences Value-Added Estimation.” NCPI Working Paper 2008-21. Nashville, Tenn.: National Center on Performance Incentives, June 2008. www.performanceincentives.org/data/files/news/PapersNews/KoedelBetts_200821_v2.pdf.

Lockwood

J.R.

McCaffrey

Daniel F.

, and Sass

Tim R.

. “The Intertemporal Stability of Teacher Effect Estimates.” Paper presented at the National Conference on Value-Added Modeling, Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), Madison, Wisc., 2008.

National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI). “Frequently Asked Questions: About Our Work in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.” 2009. www.performanceincentives.org/about_ncpi/faq_nash.asp.

Roza

Marguerite

, and Miller

Raegen

. Separation of Degrees: State-by-State Analysis of Teacher Compensation for Master's Degrees. Seattle, Wash.: Center on Reinventing Public Education, 2009. www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/view/csr_pubs/289.

10.

Rothstein

Jesse

. “Teacher Quality in Educational Production: Tracking, Decay, and Student Achievement.” NBER Working Paper no. 14442. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2008.

11.

Sanders

William L.

“Beyond No Child Left Behind.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, April 2003. www.sas.com/govedu/edu/no-child.pdf.

12.

Tennessee Department of Education. “Baseline Year Analyses: 2009 Value-Added Assessment Baseline 1998, Updated Baseline 2009.” Slide presentation. 2009. http://tennessee.gov/education/assessment/doc/TVAAS_new_baseline.pdf.

13.

Weisberg

Daniel

Sexton

Susan

Mulhern

Jennifer

, and Keeling

David

. The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness. Brooklyn, N.Y.: New Teacher Project, 2009. http://widgeteffect.org.