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WCER Today

April 2008

IN THIS ISSUE

Feature Story: Value-Added and Other Measures of Teacher Quality

Research Notes:

• Teaching and Learning Mathematical Proofs
• Language Proficience Standards Available
• Recent ITP Dissertations
• WIDA Welcomes South Dakota

Feature Story

Value-Added and Other Measures of Teacher Quality: Policy Uses and Policy Validity

School districts, individual schools, and education policies all contribute to student achievement. But it can be argued that the most important contributing factor is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. Evaluating teacher quality is complicated, yet it has become even more important with the testing and assessment focus of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Teacher quality traditionally has been measured by considering ‘teacher characteristics,’ for example, the teacher’s academic degrees, personality, and professional development activities. Recently, though, researchers and policy makers have begin to embrace a ‘value-added’ approach to measurement. This set of statistical methods offers a more objective and more precise way to measure the value that teachers, schools, and districts add to students’ educational experiences.

But UW-Madison education professor Douglas Harris cautions that measuring teacher quality cannot result from choosing between the traditional ‘teacher characteristics’ measure nor a simple value-added measure.

Instead, it’s necessary to use multiple measures, including formative and summative assessments. Evaluating and improving teacher quality requires a comprehensive strategy that few current or proposed policies provide, Harris says. Evidence suggests that teachers should be rewarded not for their graduate degrees, but for a combination of experience, certain types of professional development, teacher value-added and school value-added.

Current proposals shift away from the traditional ‘teacher credentials’ strategy in favor of a value-added accountability strategy. That is warranted, Harris says, but it’s possible to go too far. New policies will fail if they only reinforce the limitations of the status quo, rather than facilitate innovation and success. Harris advocates an evaluation framework he refers to as “policy validity” which involves multiple measures.

Read the full article here.

Research Notes

Teaching and Learning Mathematical Proofs

Eric Knuth and colleagues are editing a book on teaching and learning mathematical proofs at different grade levels. Its connected K-16 “proof story” includes understanding how the forms of proof evolve chronologically and cognitively, and how curriculum and instruction can support the development of students’ understandings of proof. The book aims also to advance the design of further empirical and theoretical work. More information is available here.

Language Proficiency Standards Available

Print copies of the WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards and Resource Guide, 2007 Edition, are now available. This new edition offers additional supports for implementing the standards and includes a Pre-K-K grade level cluster. A new section called Standards-Based Resources provides student writing samples as models of interpreting the WIDA performance definitions, shows formative uses for the WIDA Speaking and Writing Rubrics, and offers guidance on the use of the CAN DO Descriptors. You can preview the contents of the standards and Resource Guide on the WIDA web site.

Recent ITP Disseratations

In recent dissertations from WCER’s Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences, C.S. Hulleman evaluates whether helping students see the value in their coursework contributes to interest. Specifically, perceptions of utility value predicted topic interest, behavioral inclination, and performance.

James (Dimitri) William Topitzes examines the effects of child maltreatment on adult crime. The main effect results illuminate enduring effects of maltreatment and recommend prevention and early intervention treatment strategies.

Arnold Shober argues that government agencies in general are able to shape the policy preferences of their political principals even in unfavorable political environments.

WCER’s Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences is helping to train a new generation of researchers who are attuned to the need for concrete knowledge about “what works” in education, and who can bring the most rigorous tools of quantitative social science to bear on the practical problems of education. More information is available here.

WIDA Welcomes South Dakota

The WIDA project welcomes South Dakota as the 17th state to adopt ACCESS for ELLs, a test that assesses English language learners in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. ACCESS was created by WIDA, which also developed the English-language-development standards aligned with the test. ACCESS is used by more states than any other English-language-proficiency test to comply with the federal NCLB Act’s requirement that schools test ELLs every year in their progress in English.

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Part of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the 40-year-old Wisconsin Center for Education Research receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and private foundations.