Scope Brown Bag Seminar: Using student test scores to compare teachers
Value-added scores for teachers are derived from their students’ end-of-year test scores, using complex statistical models to adjust for their prior test scores and other factors. Like all measurements, these scores are imperfect. They are appropriate and useful for some purposes, but not for others. This talk addresses the reliability and validity of teacher value-added scores, asking the same kinds of questions as are routinely asked about other, simpler kinds of test scores. Viewed from a measurement perspective, value-added scores have limitations that make them unsuitable for high-stakes personnel decisions.
Edward Haertel (Ph.D., 1980, University of Chicago) is Jacks Family Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University, where he served on the faculty from 1980 to 2012.
Haertel is an expert in educational testing and assessment. His research centers on policy uses of achievement test data; the measurement of school learning; statistical issues in testing and accountability systems; and the impact of testing on curriculum and instruction. He has been closely involved in the creation and maintenance of California's school accountability system, and has served on advisory committees for other states and for testing companies. In addition to technical issues in designing accountability systems and quantifying their precision, Haertel is concerned with validity arguments for high-stakes testing, the logic and implementation of standard-setting methods, and comparisons of trends on different tests and in different reporting metrics.
Haertel has served as president of the National Council on Measurement in Education (1998-1999), as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board (1997-2003), and as a member of the joint committee for the 1999 edition of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (1994-1999). He was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1994-1995) and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and currently vice president of the National Academy of Education.
