Education Researchers Say Value-Added Models Should Be Used Cautiously

Education Week (10/26, Sparks) reports that a group of "top researchers" say that value-added student achievement models "should be used in staff-evaluation systems with more caution than they have been so far. That area of agreement emerged in an Aug. 9 meeting that drew together a who's who of a dozen of the nation's top education researchers on value-added methods-in areas from education to economics-to build, if not consensus, at least familiarity within a disparate research community for value-added systems. The US Department of Education's research agency, which organized the forum, today released the proceedings of the meeting, as well as individual briefs from each of the experts." The piece quotes Institute of Education Sciences Director John Q. Easton saying, "There's been a huge amount of research in this field in recent years, but it tends to be really siloed. People don't seem to read each other's work, and it's published in totally different journals. It was so typical to read somebody's study who was not citing all the others."