Making Decisions With Imprecise Performance Measures: The Relationship Between Annual Student Achievement Gains and a Teacher’s Career Value-Added

• In Event: Designing Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems: New Guidance for Educators and Policy Makers Emerging From the Measures of Effective Teaching Study

Abstract

Critics often point to low year-to-year correlations in teacher value-added measures as prima facie evidence against their use. We argue that decision makers should focus instead on the correlation between a single year’s performance and a teacher’s career performance. Using data from several urban school districts, we construct annual and career performance measures for teachers with at least 6 years of value added data. Year-to-career performance correlations range from 0.5 to 0.8 – substantially stronger than year-to-year performance correlations. Three quarters of the teachers ranked at the 25th percentile on annual value added had career performance below average. Finally, cumulative estimates of teacher value added (based on performance to date) are better predictors of career performance and very stable over time.

Authors

• Douglas Staiger, Dartmouth College

• Thomas Kane, Harvard University