Do we need value added?

What do you know about “value added” as it relates to teacher evaluation? It is not something on our immediate radar in Washington, but in other parts of the country it has been front page news. I have posted about contracts in Washington D.C., New York and other places that have negotiated agreements using value added modeling as part of their evaluation systems.


In case you have not followed it and are not aware of what it is, below is a Wikipedia definition.

Value-added modeling (also known as value-added analysis and value-added assessment) is a method of teacher evaluation that measures the teacher's contribution in a given year by comparing current school year test scores of their students to the scores of those same students in the previous school year, as well as to the scores of other students in the same grade. In this manner, value-added modeling seeks to isolate the contribution that each teacher makes in a given year, which can be compared to the performance measures of other teachers.[1]

What is beginning to emerge in the field is an understanding of the complexity of teacher evaluation and the need to include multiple criteria before making judgments about teacher effectiveness. This removes the primary focus on using standardized test scores that many policy makers desire, but it does not remove the need to consider these scores in a comprehensive assessment system.

I believe that this will become more of an issue in our state as the evaluation systems that are being piloted begin to form the future parameters for state-mandated evaluation of teachers. In a blog about this pilot they reference a recent report from the National Education Policy Center that cautions against an over reliance on using test scores.

The brief, Getting Teacher Assessment Right: What Policymakers Can Learn from Research notes that most current discussions about improving teacher quality tend to be imbalanced, focusing disproportionately on student test scores. “While there are important questions about what exactly achievement scores can—and cannot—indicate about individual teachers, there is no question that placing extreme emphasis on test scores alone can have unintended and undesirable consequences that undermine the goal of developing an excellent teaching force,” says Hinchey.

The debate is on and you can find reports and individuals that support either position related to the use of test scores. In this New York Times article you can read how eight people feel, four for use and four against use of test scores. I think they capture the essence of how most of us feel.

What are your thoughts about the role of value added in teacher evaluations? Should student achievement growth from year-to-year be used to measure the effectiveness of a teacher? How should measures of teacher effectiveness be used?

By the way . . .

In case you are not aware, I thought I'd share with you what happened last Wednesday with the Cedar River power problem.  As I shared in Tuesday's post, we rented a generator that did the job for us on Tuesday.  In that post I made the following statement.

Thankfully, we only have one more day before break so there should be no additional disruption for students and staff.


As I reread the post I decided to substitute the word "should" for the original word "won't" that I had used.  Good thing I did this because the generator quit early Wednesday morning.  Three technicians couldn't get it running by 6:00 a.m. so I once again cancelled school.  Not a half hour later a fourth technician showed up and was able to get the generator going, but it did not last.  It turned out to be the right call, but it was once again difficult.  Had we not been on a half day, it would have been easier, but this year I don't think easy is going to be a word we will use to describe weather related decisions.

A little late . . .

I took a few days off from online to focus on family and the holiday, but thought I should get back to it this evening.  It was good to take some time though I can't say it was stress free.  I am a last minute shopper so I am used to being out when it is crowded, but this year I found myself a little forgetful and had to go back out two times to pick things up for Christmas dinner.  Safeway was a zoo, crowded and long check out lines.

Even with the stress it was a great holiday.  The decorations were beautiful, dinner was great, and with grand kids how can it be anything but an enjoyable and rewarding experience.

The one thing I didn't do before shutting down was to wish for you a happy holiday - I hope it was a joyful time with family and friends. 

Generating power . . .

We still do not have power through the PSE grid at Cedar River Middle School, but we were able to open school today by renting a very large generator. Thanks to J.R. Electric, a local electrical contractor and our Maintenance Supervisor Yaha Abduraheem, the generator was located and wired early last evening giving time to test it and get the building heated.

As you can see it is very large, but surprisingly very quiet. It will take a few more days to get the necessary parts to fix the transformer and then a couple more to repair the system. Thankfully, we only have one more day before break so there should be no additional disruption for students and staff.

In case you are wondering what happens when the district is open, but one or more schools are closed, there is an emergency appeal made to OSPI. In these cases a district is asking the state to excuse operations for the day due to unforeseen circumstances. This can be done for no more than two days per occurrence and no more than three total days in a school year for an individual school. Going beyond these limits would require making up the days. That is one more reason why I am so thankful for the temporary fix to this problem.

As I get ready to call it a day, the winds are once again picking up here in the Cascade foothills.  I hope they don't mean another early phone call.

Another closure . . .

We start another week with at least one school closed.  Cedar River will be closed tomorrow with no power.  The wind storm resulted in the loss of a transformer on our end.  We are hoping that it will be fixed sometime tomorrow.

This makes two schools closed because of wind in less than one week.  This follows the loss of a day due to wind earlier this month, or at least I think it was this month.  At home, we were without power for 24+ hours this time, enough to get the generator going as it was pretty cold in Ravensdale.  We actually had about a quarter inch of snow last night that froze resulting in icy conditions this morning.

The snow I understand at this time of year, though I can do without it at least until a break.  The wind, however, is not something I ever get used to.  The wind storm that started late Friday seemed to go on much longer than what I recall as normal for us.  Strong gusts through the night and into the early morning hours was causing me anxiety and raw nerves.  Thank goodness it was a weekend and I didn't need to consider whether we would have school the next day.  Had it been a weekday, we would have lost another one to the weather.

Could just be me, but I think something is not normal with the weather this winter.  Though it is nerve wracking, we have it easy compared to other parts of the country experiencing extreme cold, ice, and snow.  Just seems different.

State budget struggles . . .

With the words, “I hate my budget,” Governor Gregoire paints the gloomy picture of the state budget for the next biennium. She is honoring what she sees as the voter mandate by cutting instead of raising revenue to maintain programs.


Public schools will not be immune from these cuts. Already in this year’s budget, we are looking at cuts to levy equalization and K-4 supplemental funding. For K-4 staffing this means a reduction in staffing support from a level of 53.2 per 1000 in grades K-3 and 47.43 per 1000 in grade 4 to 49 per 1000 in grades K-3 and 46 per thousand in grade 4. Using the November enrollment count, for us it is the equivalent of about 8.5 teaching positions. In addition to these cuts effective February 1, 2011, the federal stimulus dollars allocated for each district in the Education Jobs Federal Grant, will be deducted from the district’s apportionment payments. Fortunately, we had made the decision to not include this as revenue in our budget as we anticipated that this would happen.

In the Governor’s proposed budget for the next biennium these same cuts would be carried over for the next two years as well as continued suspension of I-732, the cost of living adjustment. In addition to these changes she has also proposed many other cuts to education and other services that can be found in this Seattle Times article. One of particular interest to us and to teachers is the proposal to save money by freezing steps on the K–12 salary schedule at levels provided for in the 2010–11 school year. In calculating certificated instructional staff salaries for the 2011–12 and 2012–13 school years, educational service districts will exclude any educational credits or years of service earned after August 31, 2010 thus freezing salary schedule placement for the next two years. In this proposal as in many others, there is still much to be decided and negotiations to be done as the house and senate craft their budget proposals.

We are closely monitoring the budget discussions and decisions and will be sharing our findings with the school board next week. Once the session begins in January, we should begin to better understand how the cuts will be implemented and the impact of each on our district, information necessary to develop the 2011-12 budget

Disagreements with study interpretatation . . .

Well, there has certainly been follow-up in the blog world over the release of the Gate’s funded study onto value added and student survey responses that I blogged about on Sunday. In this Education Next post by Jay P. Greene, he refutes the claim made in the New York Times article about the correlation between teachers who drill for standardized tests and their value added scores.


One notable early finding, Ms. Phillips said, is that teachers who incessantly drill their students to prepare for standardized tests tend to have lower value-added learning gains than those who simply work their way methodically through the key concepts of literacy and mathematics. (emphasis added)


I looked through the report for evidence that supported this claim and could not find it. Instead, the report actually shows a positive correlation between student reports of “test prep” and value added on standardized tests, not a negative correlation as the statement above suggests. (See for example Appendix 1 on p. 34.)


The statement “We spend a lot of time in this class practicing for [the state test]” has a correlation of 0.195 with the value added math results. That is about the same relationship as “My teacher asks questions to be sure we are following along when s/he is teaching,” which is 0.198. And both are positive.


It’s true that the correlation for “Getting ready for [the state test] takes a lot of time in our class” is weaker (0.103) than other items, but it is still positive. That just means that test prep may contribute less to value added than other practices, but it does not support the claim that ”teachers who incessantly drill their students to prepare for standardized tests tend to have lower value-added learning gains…”

I won’t copy the whole article, but I wanted you to see what he found in his analysis. Silly me, I took what the paper reported as factual though I was more interested in how the students answered the survey questions than in how drilling influenced the value added scores. He also claims that the same information is misinterpreted in the LA Times article that came out over the weekend.

Andy Russo in This Week in Education post also takes exception with the report in the LA Times, but does agree with the New York focus on the influence of student answers on learning gains. If you have the time and are interested, you can read the initial findings of the report here.

What did I learn? To be more skeptical about how reporters are interpreting the findings of education studies. To wonder what the communication was between the Gate’s people and the newspaper people that lead to the conclusions that may not be supported by the study’s findings. To wait for the reaction to the study by those that actually read it before sharing in a post, or at least acknowledge that there will be one. It will be interesting to see how the reporters and Foundation staff respond to these critiques of the articles or if they even do.

There are too many people looking for easy answers to what is wrong in our profession. The issue is complex and the answers will not all be found in our classrooms. Yes, we can and must do better at ensuring that all students experience success. And yes, there will be information from this study that we can learn from. We can do this, however, without the misinterpretation and finger pointing that normally accompanies a $45 million study.