How to Use Value-Added Analysis to Improve Student Learning

Kate Kennedy - Battelle for Kids
Mary Peters
Mike Thomas

Foreword by Douglas B. Reeves

Other Titles in:
Decision Making Tools | School Change, Reform, & Restructuring

January 2012 | 200 pages | Corwin

Value-added is the most robust, statistically significant method for connecting teachers to students. In other words, value-added analysis links teachers to students and, for the very first time, allows educators to see the amount of growth they are facilitating with students.áBuilt around the value-added analysis professional development work of Battelle for Kids, this book for district and school leaders prepares educators to understand and implement value-added analysis in order to ensure that all students are achieving and progressing. By providing a user-friendly, five-step implementation process along with success stories of schools, teachers, and students as well as strategies, samples, and tools, this book will equip educators to use value-added analysis to help accelerate student progress. It is written to inform readers about what value-added analysis is and to help them utilize value-added information in a classroom and/or school setting.

List of Figures

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

1. Step I: What Is Value-Added Analysis?

2. Step I: Jump into Value-Added Analysis

3. Step I: The Framework for Systemic Improvement

4. Step II: Assess District-Level Value-Added Reports to Determine Strengths and Challenges

5. Step II: Assess Building-Level Value-Added Reports to Determine Strengths and Challenges

6. Step II: Assess Teacher-Level Value-Added Reports to Determine Strengths and Challenges

7. Steps III and IV: Identify Root Causes and Produce an Improvement Plan

8. Step V: Take Action, Monitor, and Adjust

Afterword

Glossary

References

Index

“This book offers a practical, engaging introduction to value-added assessment — it should be read by educators at all levels. The authors demystify a complex topic, and give educators the tools they need to use value-added data to help students learn.”

Bob Taft, Former Governor of Ohio, Distinguished Research Associate

University of Dayton, OH

"Value-Added Assessment is an extraordinarily important breakthrough in education research that provides a direct empirical measure of instructional effectiveness at the classroom level. This book could not be more timely, given the sea change now underway in how teachers and administrators are being evaluated and compensated."

Theodore Hershberg, Professor, Public Policy & History

Center for Greater Philadelphia, PA

“A welcome, plain-spoken and eminently practical guide to making the most of value-added analysis to strengthen data-driven decision making and boost achievement in our schools.”

Chester E. Finn, Jr., President

Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Washington, DC

"As districts across the country rapidly ramp up for using value-added performance measures in teacher evaluations, this book will provide invaluable information on making that data positive and productive, rather than frightening and antagonizing.”

Daniel F. McCaffrey, Senior Statistician

The RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA