Misattribution of Teacher Value Added

Teacher heterogeneity , value added and education policy ∗

This study examines the theoretical and practical implications of ranking teachers with a one-dimensional metric when teacher effectiveness varies across subjects or student types. We document the empirical failure of standard value-added assumptions of teacher input homogeneity, but demonstrate that previously suggested teacher firing policies still improve student welfare, although they resul...

Evaluating Value-Added Models for Teacher Accountability

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Value-Added Models and the Measurement of Teacher Productivity

Research on teacher productivity, and recently developed accountability systems for teachers, rely on value-added models to estimate the impact of teachers on student performance. The authors test many of the central assumptions required to derive value-added models from an underlying structural cumulative achievement model and reject nearly all of them. Moreover, they find that teacher value a...

Can Value-Added Measures of Teacher Performance Be Trusted?

This design experiment addresses the question: How can second-grade students from low-SES schools attain the same levels of achievement as students from high-SES schools on standards-based social studies and content area literacy assessments? Students from two high-SES school districts were assessed in order to establish target levels of achievement. Two project-based units focused on state sta...

Impediments to the estimation of teacher value added Steven