Until recently, legal challenges to using value-added models (VAMs) throughout the United States (US) for high-stakes teacher evaluative decisions (e.g., merit pay, tenure, and termination) were unsuccessful, especially in the state of Florida. Hence, prior and still, multiple teachers throughout Florida have been terminated or involuntarily…

Local education agencies (LEAs) continue to use value-added models (VAMs) for teacher evaluation policies and purposes, often with consequences attached. Although the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides more flexibility to LEAs, few have discontinued VAM use, suggesting they interpret VAMs as a valid measure of teacher effectiveness. In…

Ongoing or recently completed across the United States are a series of lawsuits via which teacher plaintiffs are contesting how they are being evaluated using value-added models (VAMs) as part of states'/districts' teacher accountability systems. To investigate the empirical and pragmatic matters addressed in court, researchers conducted a case…

In the context of Bayesian factor analysis, it is possible to compute plausible values, which might be used as covariates or predictors or to provide individual scores for the Bayesian latent variables. Previous simulation studies ascertained the validity of mean plausible values by the mean squared difference of the mean plausible values and the…

School districts increasingly gauge school quality with surveys that ask about school climate and student engagement. We use data from New York City's middle and high schools to compare the long-run predictive validity of surveys with that of conventional test score value-added models (VAMs). Our analysis leverages the New York school match, which…

Contemporary teacher evaluation policies are built upon multiple-measure systems including, primarily, teacher-level value-added and observational estimates. However, researchers have not yet investigated how using these indicators to evaluate teachers might distort validity, especially when one indicator seemingly trumps, or is trusted over the…

Background/Context: The Race to the Top federal initiatives and requirements surrounding waivers of No Child Left Behind promoted expanded use of value-added models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers. Even after passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) relaxed these requirements, allowing more flexibility and local control, many states and…

This dissertation consists of three essays that use and develop econometric methods to causally investigate topics in education and development economics. In the first chapter, I develop an econometric framework to correctly and efficiently draw inference in models where estimated value-added (VA) is an explanatory variable (and models where it…

In this study, researchers compared the concordance of teacher-level effectiveness ratings derived via six common generalized value-added model (VAM) approaches including a (1) student growth percentile (SGP) model, (2) value-added linear regression model (VALRM), (3) value-added hierarchical linear model (VAHLM), (4) simple difference (gain)…

The goal of this article is to clarify and unravel the complexity and challenges of improving teaching quality, based on measuring teaching quality and feeding back the results to teachers. We analyze different conceptualizations of teaching quality, and synthesize a framework for conceptualizing teaching quality in educational practice. We…

This study introduces the signal weighted teacher value-added model (SW VAM), a value-added model that weights student-level observations based on each student's capacity to signal their assigned teacher's quality. Specifically, the model leverages the repeated appearance of a given student to estimate student reliability and sensitivity…

In this study, researchers compared the concordance of teacher-level effectiveness ratings derived via six common generalized value-added model (VAM) approaches including a (1) student growth percentile (SGP) model, (2) value-added linear regression model (VALRM), (3) value-added hierarchical linear model (VAHLM), (4) simple difference (gain)…

Contemporary teacher evaluation systems are built upon multiple measures including, primarily, teacher-level value-added and observational estimates. While researchers have conducted examinations of these systems and indicators, researchers have not investigated how using these systems might distort the validity of the inferences being drawn,…

Estimates of teacher "value-added" suggest teachers vary substantially in their ability to promote student learning. Prompted by this finding, many states and school districts have adopted value-added measures as indicators of teacher job performance. In this paper, we conduct a new test of the validity of value-added models. Using…

Researchers and policymakers in the US and beyond increasingly seek to identify teaching qualities that are associated with academic achievement gains for K-12 students through effectiveness studies. Yet teaching quality varies with academic content and social contexts, involves multiple participants, and requires a range of skills, knowledge, and…