School value-added models are widely applied to study, monitor, and hold schools to account for school differences in student learning. The traditional model is a mixed-effects linear regression of student current achievement on student prior achievement, background characteristics, and a school random intercept effect. The latter is referred to…

School accountability systems increasingly hold schools to account for their performances using value-added models purporting to measure the effects of schools on student learning. The most common approach is to fit a linear regression of student current achievement on student prior achievement, where the school effects are the school means of the…

Recent lawsuits reveal common mistakes plaguing current teacher evaluation systems. Drawing on arguments in court documents for prominent cases, the authors find that evaluation systems using value-added measures (VAM) suffer from a) inconsistent and unreliable teacher ratings, b) bias toward and against teachers of certain types of students, c)…

Nations, states, and districts must choose among an array of different approaches to measuring school effectiveness in implementing their accountability policies, and the choice can be difficult because different approaches yield different results. This study compares two approaches to computing school effectiveness: a "beating the odds"…

In "Houston Federation of Teachers (Plaintiff) v. Houston Independent School District (Defendant)," plaintiffs contested how teachers were being evaluated using a value-added model (VAM) as part of the districts' teacher accountability system. The VAM at issue was the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), with potential…

Districts nationwide have increased the frequency of teacher evaluations. Yet, we know little about the role of evaluator feedback for teacher improvement. Using unique classroom observation-level data, we use evaluator ratings and teacher self-assessments of teacher performance to rigorously examine (positive and negative) feedback valence from…

In recent decades, school performance ranking (or 'league table') have become a common feature of many education systems in the world. The ranking is usually published by government and news agencies in an attempt to measure and compare the relative performance of individual schools against a number of criteria, including academic performance.…

States are incorporating evaluation ratings into new, multioutcome teacher preparation program (TPP) evaluation systems, yet little is known about the relationships between TPPs and the evaluation ratings of program graduates. To address this gap, we use teachers' ratings on the North Carolina Educator Evaluation System to determine whether TPPs…

This study addressed the impact of VAM, concerns with VAM data, uses and interventions educational leaders provided teachers, and components perceived as necessary for VAM effectiveness as an evaluation tool. The demographics used for this study were position, school size, and experience. Due to the documented need for educational accountability…

Teacher preparation programs (TPPs) are where prospective teachers gain a foundation of knowledge about pedagogy and subject matter, as well as early exposure to practical classroom experience. Although competence in teaching, as in all professions, is shaped significantly by on-the-job experiences and continuous learning, the programs that…