Experts on Value-Added Models and a Prevalent Methodological Divide

• In Event: 33.043 - The Science of Teacher Evaluation: Implications for Practice

Abstract

Researchers surveyed the 38 authors of the 17 articles thus far published about value-added models (VAMs) in all American Educational Research Association (AERA) journals. Researchers solicited these authors for their research-based opinions about VAMs and VAM use, as well as their opinions about the methodological issues increasingly prevalent, on which economists/econometricians and statisticians/educational researchers take markedly different stances. For example, the latter set of respondents disproportionately feel that attaching high-stakes decisions to VAM output is problematic, while the former continuously express markedly fewer concerns. While these and other discrepancies typically fall along participants’ discipline lines, researchers also solicited respondents’ related opinions to help explain these divides, as well as why they believed such divides are increasingly prevalent surrounding VAMs.

Authors

• Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Arizona State University

• Angela Hobson, Arizona State University - Tempe

• Margarita Pivovarova, Arizona State University - Tempe