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The Los Angeles Times editorial page gets it mostly right today on the value-added issue ( "Good teachers, good students," September 3, 2010). It says a number of smart things that I agree with, such as: "Test scores are indeed just one indicator of a teacher's performance." "But it's revealing, and disturbing, to read the comments of some teachers who don't seem to care whether their students' scores slide. They argue that they're focused on more important things than the tests measure. That's unpersuasive." "This page has never believed that test scores should count for all of a teacher's evaluation — or even be the most important factor. But they should be a part of it." "Right now, the "value-added" scores The Times has been reporting are more useful for evaluating schools than teachers. Many factors can throw off the data at the classroom level." "That's why we think the Obama...

Here is additional smart and pithy commentary on the current value-added conversation that I wasn't able to incorporate into yesterday's post or have only discovered since. Dr. Douglas Harris - "Not By Value Added Alone" (The Blog of Harvard Education Publishing) Dr. Aaron Pallas - "Value-added measures: The cardinal rule and the cardinal sin" (A Sociological Eye on Education) Stephen Sawchuk - "Some Scholars Slam Value-Added for Teacher Accountability" (Teacher Beat/ Education Week ) Jay Mathews - "America's Best Teacher and the L.A. Times" (Class Struggle/ Washington Post ) Dr. Daniel Willingham - "3 Key Factors in Teacher Evaluation" (The Answer Sheet/ Washington Post ) Sherman Dorn - "Please leave your magic numbers on the magic carpet with your magic wand" (Sherman Dorn) Bill Tucker - "My Value-Added Number" (Quick and the Ed) John Thompson - "High-Ranking Teachers Ignore Pacing Standard...

Seeing as I am not paid to blog as part of my daily job, it's basically impossible for me to be even close to first out of the box on the issues of the day. Add to that being a parent of two small children (my most important job – right up there with being a husband) and that only adds to my sometimes frustration of not being able to weigh in on some of these issues quickly. That said, here is my attempt to distill some key points and share my opinions -- add value, if you will -- to the debate that is raging as a result of the Los Angeles Times 's decision to publish the value-added scores of individual teachers in the L.A. Unified School District . First of all, let me address the issue at hand. I believe that the LA Times 's decision to publish the value-added scores was irresponsible. Given what we know about the unreliability and variability in such scores and the likelihood that consumers of said scores will use them at face value without fully understanding al...

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management -- an organization not widely known outside of academia and technical policy circles -- puts on truly meaty conferences. I've attended three APPAM conferences to date, including the Annual Fall Research Conference going on in Washington, DC this week. Education is merely one strand at APPAM, but the sessions feature some of the biggest names in educational research addressing some very policy relevant issues. The current conference features sessions on value-added modeling, school choice, teacher certification and teacher induction, teacher performance pay, financial aid, college persistence, and more. The session I attended yesterday on "Using Value Added To Assess Teacher Effectiveness" was excellent. It featured four papers each of which I will undoubtedly oversimplify in this brief blog post. (I encourage you to seek out the papers and read them closely -- below I've linked to those that are available.) ...