New analysis challenges Gates study on value-added measures

[proud2BlibKansan]

By Valerie Strauss
Last month, a Gates Foundation study was released and said to be evidence of the validity of “value-added” measures to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers by using students’ standardized test scores. But a new analysis of that report concludes that the substance of the report doesn’t support its conclusions.

The report released last month was called “Learning About Teaching: Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project,” by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation officials Thomas J. Kane and Steven Cantrell.

They used data from six major urban school districts to examine correlations between student survey responses and value-added scores computed both from state tests and from higher-order tests of conceptual understanding. Kane and Cantrell concluded that the evidence suggests that value-added measures can be constructed to be valid; others described the report as strong evidence of support for this approach.

But Economics Professor Jesse Rothstein at the University of California at Berkeley reviewed the Kane-Cantrell report and said that the analyses in it served to “undermine rather than validate” value-added-based measures of teacher evaluation.

more . . . http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/research/new-analysis-challenges-gates-.html

[Starry Messenger]

1. k&r

[Reader Rabbit]

2. But Bill Gates is a bazillionaire! How can he be wrong?

Why is it the only media voices calling the deformers on their crap are blogs? Will we ever see a similar calling-out in the mainstream media?

[FBaggins]

3. It's far harder to criticize people who are spending their own money.

Particularly when the system they claim to be fixing appears (to many) to be broken and the "fix" hasn't failed yet.

This is nothing new. When the union calls a strike for better working conditions for teachers, part of the argument is that they're fighting for the students. The claim is almost certainly true in most cases... but it's also far too easy to see why a less sophisticated observer would just see teachers using kids as leverage to bilk the taxpayers of more money for themselves.