Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers

From the Economic Policy Institute - Briefing Paper - August 29, 2010

Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers - Click Here

"Every classroom should have a well-educated, professional teacher, and school systems should recruit, prepare, and retain teachers who are qualified to do the job. Yet in practice, American public schools generally do a poor job of systematically developing and evaluating teachers.

Many policy makers have recently come to believe that this failure can be remedied by calculating the improvement in students’ scores on standardized tests in mathematics and reading, and then relying heavily on these calculations to evaluate, reward, and remove the teachers of these tested students.

While there are good reasons for concern about the current system of teacher evaluation, there are also good reasons to be concerned about claims that measuring teachers’ effectiveness largely by student test scores will lead to improved student achievement. If new laws or policies specifically require that teachers be fired if their students’ test scores do not rise by a certain amount, then more teachers might well be terminated than is now the case. But there is not strong evidence to indicate either that the departing teachers would actually be the weakest teachers, or that the departing teachers would be replaced by more effective ones. There is also little or no evidence for the claim that teachers will be more motivated to improve student learning if teachers are evaluated or monetarily rewarded for student test score gains."

MORE HERE

Value-added assessments are at best a crude indicator

"However, the promise that value-added systems can provide such a precise, meaningful, and comprehensive picture is not supported by the data. As the discussion in this report showed, value-added assessments – like those reported in the New York City Teacher Data Reports and used to pay out bonuses in Houston’s ASPIRE program – are at best a crude indicator of the contribution that teachers make to their students’ academic outcomes. Moreover, the set of skills that can be adequately assessed in a manner appropriate for value-added assessment represents a small fraction of the goals our nation has set for our students and schools."

...
But teachers, policymakers, and school leaders should not be seduced by the elegant simplicity of “value added.”

Annenberg Institute For School Reform at Brown University
************************************************************************************

Press Release

September 16, 2010

VALUE-ADDED TEACHER ASSESSMENTS EARN LOW GRADES FROM NYU ECONOMIST

Contact: Sean Patrick Corcoran New York University (212) 992-9468 sean.corcoran@nyu.edu

Warren Simmons Annenberg Institute for School Reform (410) 863-7675 warren_simmons@brown.edu

---

NEW YORK – Value-added assessments of teacher effectiveness are a “crude indicator” of the contribution that teachers make to their students’ academic outcomes, asserts Sean P. Corcoran, assistant professor of educational economics at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, and research fellow at the Institute for Education and Social Policy, in a paper issued today as part of the “Education Policy for Action” series of research and policy analyses by scholars convened by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

“The promise that value-added systems can provide a precise, meaningful and comprehensive picture is much overblown,” argues Corcoran whose research report is entitled Can Teachers be Evaluated by Their Students’ Test Scores? Should they Be? The Use of Value-Added Measures of Teacher Effectiveness in Policy and Practice. “Teachers, policy-makers and school leaders should not be seduced by the elegant simplicity of value-added measures. Policy-makers, in particular, should be fully aware of their limitations and consider whether their minimal benefits outweigh their cost.”