Value-added assessment (AYP) gives educators a powerful diagnostic tool for measuring the effect of pedagogy, curricula and professional development on academic achievement, and provides all K-12 stakeholders a fair and accurate foundation on which to build a new system of accountability. AYP is a measurement defined by the United States federal No Child Left Behind Act that allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized tests.
What is Value-Added Assessment?
Value-added assessment is a way of analyzing test data that can measure teaching and learning. Based on a review of students' test score gains from previous grades, researchers can predict the amount of growth those students are likely to make in a given year. Thus, value-added assessment can show whether particular students have made the expected amount of progress, have made less progress than expected, or have been stretched beyond what they could reasonably be expected to achieve. Using the same methods, one can look back over several years to measure the long-term impact that a particular teacher or school had on student achievement.
How is value-added assessment different from traditional measures of student performance?
Student performance on assessments can be measured in two very different ways, both of which are important. Achievement describes the absolute levels attained by students in their end-of-year tests. Growth, in contrast, describes the progress in test scores made over the school year.
In the past, students and schools have been ranked solely according to achievement. The problem with this method is that achievement is highly linked to the socioeconomic status of a student's family. For example, according to Educational Testing Service, SAT scores rise with every $10,000 of family income. This should not be surprising since all the variables that contribute to high-test scores correlate strongly with family income: good jobs, years of schooling, positive attitudes about education, the capacity to expose one's children to books and travel, and the development of considerable social and intellectual capital that wealthy students bring with them when they enter school.
In contrast, value-added assessment measures growth and answers the question: how much value did the school staff add to the students who live in its community? How, in effect, did they do with the hand society dealt them? If schools are to be judged fairly, it is important to understand this significant difference.
How does value-added assessment sort out the teachers' contributions from the students' contributions?
Because individual students rather than cohorts are traced over time, each student serves as his or her own "baseline" or control, which removes virtually all of the influence of the unvarying characteristics of the student, such as race or socioeconomic factors.
Test scores are projected for students and then compared to the scores they actually achieve at the end of the school year. Classroom scores that equal or exceed projected values suggest that instruction was highly effective. Conversely, scores that are mostly below projections suggest that the instruction was ineffective.
At the same time, this approach does recognize student-related factors and other extenuating circumstances. For instance, imagine that a student's performance falls far below projected scores, while other students in the same class, with comparable academic records, do make the progress they were expected to make. This would be taken as evidence of an external effect, related to the student's home environment or some other variable lying outside the range of a teacher's influence.
Does value-added assessment raise student achievement?
Not by itself. Value-added assessment is just a tool with which to measure progress. However, that tool can certainly be useful to people working to raise student achievement. Likewise, value-added assessment provides school leaders with rich diagnostic information, which they can use in many ways such as assigning personnel, allocating resources and identifying mentor teachers and coaches. Further, this tool can help states and school districts to design comprehensive accountability systems that can assess the impact that particular kinds of teaching, curriculum, and professional development have on academic achievement.
What diagnostic information can value-added provide educators?
With a value-added analysis, educators now have a tool that provides them with the ability to determine their instructional results, the focus of their instruction (identifying which students have benefited most) and their instructional impact (how effective it has been in providing students with a year's worth of growth from where they began the year). Student achievement by classroom, grade, subject, school or district can be displayed showing distinct patterns of growth for students of different achievement levels.
Summary
- Basic Premise: Each child should make a year's growth for a year's worth of instruction.
- Value-added compares the gains each student makes from year to year
- Academic Growth is measured by:
Growth = present performance - prior performance - Growth is not related to student stable characteristics (Supplemental Educational Services(SES), race, ability, etc.)
- Each student is measured against his/her own starting level instead of a fixed minimum score.
- Value-added accounts for extraneous factors such as SES and tax-base that dismiss upscale suburban student performance and excuse low income urban performance.
- Value-added truly leaves no child behind. The growth of all children are examined, not just the levels of students jumping over a hurdle.
- Teacher is the most important factor in student success
- Poor/minority students can make as much progress as other students with the same teachers
- School in poor/minority areas can be as effective as other schools
- The most capable students may show the least amount of annual achievement growth.
- Students with limited opportunities for advanced coursework in high school perform much lower on the ACT
For additional information on Value-Added Assessment, please contact Jeff Jaroscak - Director of Teaching and Learning.