The Failure to Account for Structural Factors Within Educational Policy: Evaluating Teachers on the Basis of Value-Added Scores

• In Event: 25.034 - Issues With the Design and Implementation of Test-Based Accountability Policies

Abstract

Value-added methodologies ostensibly produce unbiased estimates of teacher quality on the basis of students’ achievement gains. Data on teachers, and their students and schools, in a large urban district from 2007 through 2013 shows teachers’ value-added scores shift over time as a function of school characteristics. Similarly, teachers’ value-added scores in a single year are better explained by their students’ characteristics than by their own characteristics. Educational policy that emphasizes teachers over the structural forces that produce student and school disparities not only ineffectively evaluates teachers but also impedes the recruitment and retention of teachers in the highest need schools.

Author

• Dara Renee Shifrer, Portland State University