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Value-Added Education

In education, value-added methodologies represent a collection of statistical models that endeavor to account for the contribution of schools and teachers to growth in student achievement. Interest in value-added measures is rooted in the standards and accountability movement that began in the 1980s. This entry begins with a description of value-added measures and contrasts them with static achievement indicators. Next, the history of value-added methodology is outlined. The entry ends with a discussion of the variety of valueadded methodologies.

Value-Added Measures

Educational policy circles borrowed the term value-added from the economics lexicon during the 1980s. In the field of economics, “value-added” refers to the additional value of a commodity beyond the value of the inputs required to create it, such as materials and energy. In education, valueadded methodologies attempt to ascertain the gains in student achievement that can be attributed to educators separate from other influences on achievement. These adjusted student achievement gains are the “value” a district, school, or teacher “adds” to student achievement over and above what students' families and neighborhoods contribute. Some students experience less academic growth than would otherwise be expected because they are assigned to a less-effective teacher and school while other students experience greater than expected growth, reflecting the effectiveness of their teacher and school.

Studies using value-added methodology have contributed to establishing the importance of teacher quality, contradicting the findings of the 1966 Coleman Report. For example, the Dallas Independent School District compared a group of elementary students with 3 consecutive years of highly effective reading teachers with a similar group with 3 consecutive years of very ineffective teachers. By the end of the third year, a substantial gap of 34 percentage points separated the groups' average reading achievement scores while their average mathematics achievement scores diverged by 50 percentage points. Using data from Tennessee, William Sanders and June Rivers discovered that the effects of teachers are long lived as well as cumulative. Even 2 years later, a significant gap remained between students with ineffective third-grade teachers and those with excellent third-grade teachers. While family income is strongly predictive of student achievement test scores, Sanders and his colleagues demonstrated that teacher quality is the single most important influence on student academic growth.

Comparison with Static Achievement Measures

Value-added measures represent a shift from the static achievement indicators that have dominated education accountability practices. Static achievement indicators offer a snapshot of average student achievement scores at a single point in time. Comparisons of static indicators are based on cross-sectional, not longitudinal student data. In other words, conclusions drawn from static achievement indicators are based on comparisons of different groups of students. For example, the achievement of economically disadvantaged students on an end-of-year test can be compared with that of noneconomically disadvantaged students. Static achievement indicators are also used to illustrate trends over time in average scores for students at a given grade level. For example, the current year's eighth graders can be compared with the previous year's eighth graders. Static achievement measures do not provide information about the same group of students' growth over time.

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