02 Jan 2006 - 21:15

value-added testing

The link my friend Jen sent me on NCLB and gifted programming also led to this link on value-added testing. Value-added testing tests with an eye toward ensuring that all students are making the progress they need to be making in their education, focusing not only on the low-performers but also on average and high-performing students.

As Catherine would say if she were here, "Read and Discuss!"

The value-added methodology, by contrast, doesn't create such incentives to focus on a handful of students. Under the system, every child's improvement counts the same towards the school's overall rating. And the methodology itself is widely seen by those who use it as fairer and more accurate. Value added should thus make it easier for teachers to accept the idea of higher pay for outstanding performance and for working in the toughest schools—changes many see as important next steps in reforming education. Indeed, Dallas is already doing this. Teachers at schools with high value-added scores get financial bonuses.

Many of the obstacles to the widespread use of value-added ratings have been overcome in recent years. Thanks in part to the passage of No Child Left Behind, schools all over the country are on their way to testing every year from 3rd to 8th grade—a prerequisite for the value-added methodology. States are also beefing up their computer and statistical resources. Researchers are still working to address some of the toughest technical issues raised by the value-added method, such as how to measure students who move from school to school and how to compare scores on a subject year-to-year when the curriculum changes. But enough progress has been made that more and more states are looking at the value-added idea.

afterthought

I can imagine that if you had a testing mechanism in place that really did measure the improvement each individual kid was making, and reward for it, you'd have a lot more teachers who'd be willing to take on the toughest schools, because the failingest kids have the biggest potential for improvement on the margin.

So this idea -- provided it really measures what it proposes to measure -- is growing on me.

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Comments

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I think that the big problem with getting lots of good teachers to voluntarily take on the tougher schools is that they have a lot less control over the results there.

As an example, my sister-in-law went to a tough school as a TFA teacher. One of the things she found frusterating was that the students could/would vanish for a few weeks at a time in the middle of the school year. To go see a distant relative who was having an 80th birthday. Or whatever. No notice, no warning.

These kids also tended to not do homework.

These kids don't do so good on standardized tests, partially because if you skip class at random intervals and don't do homework, you don't learn a lot.

The fact that a poorly performing school can be taken over (by the state?) and the teachers fired (even if they have tenure ... that's right, isn't it?) combined with the above won't help to encourage experienced teachers to choose the tough schools. It will take a lot of extra pay to make it worth while.

-- KtmGuest - 03 Jan 2006

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Denver has just put a new teacher pay system in place, wherein the kids are tested in some manner at the beginning and the end of the year, and teachers get some kind of bonus for improvement. I can't figure out from what I've read how this will all work, but it sounds good.

-- EmmaAnne - 03 Jan 2006

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There was an article in Education Next saying that you can't really do value-added testing....I'll find the link again.

I couldn't evaluate it at all.

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Jan 2006

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I have been contemplating starting to give Christopher the ITBS every fall and spring to see if he's learned 9 months worth of material in 9 months....

This is something I'd like to see parents able to do.

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Jan 2006

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I'm reading MAKING SCHOOLS WORK by Ouchi, who has a quote from a principal saying that although their scores were very good, they discovered that their kids weren't making one year's progress in one year. The kids came in so high that they were still ahead of the curve by the end of the year.

(Actually, the book may not be MAKING SCHOOLS WORK. I'll find out.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Jan 2006

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If you were to pay for value added, I can imagine two basic methods:

1) Pay relative to an absolute increase over baseline.

2) Pay relative to a proportional increase over baseline.

In the first case, the best method would be to teach the gifted. While this might result in the best societal utility, it would be hard to sell.

In the second case, the best way to make money would be to teach bright kids who have been badly served by earlier schooling. This seems worthwhile and uncontroversial. Other than that, it seems this would be pretty fair if the tests are adequately validated. (See Number 2 Pencil for much about test development and test validity*.)

A pretty basic tenet in economics is, "You get more of what you pay for." Let's pay for results.

-- DougSundseth - 03 Jan 2006

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The fact that a poorly performing school can be taken over (by the state?) and the teachers fired (even if they have tenure ... that's right, isn't it?) combined with the above won't help to encourage experienced teachers to choose the tough schools. It will take a lot of extra pay to make it worth while.

I just have no idea what to make of situations like these.....

I wonder if spiraling is related?

In other words, is one of the reasons our textbooks have a spiraling structure to try to 'catch' the kids who have huge absences on the next go-round?

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Jan 2006

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Emma Anne

I've always thought it sounded like a great idea to be focusing on 'value-added' assessments (how much progress a child makes in a certain period of time).....but I have no idea how possible it is to do it, statistically speaking.....

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Jan 2006

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Doug

I have to start reading Number 2 Pencil, especially the archives.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Jan 2006

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(I mean....I need to go through the archives and pull out what she's said about testing & validity specifically...)

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Jan 2006