Is the Value-Added Modeling a Solution to Education Reform?

The New York Times picked the issue on a national view of the standards to judge what teacher is better than another. As hard as this question seems to be answered, the value-added modeling calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grades.

 But as the NYT points out, no every teacher agrees on this topic and most are opposed to taking tests as a parameter to determine effectiveness. Teacher accountability continues to be iceberg point to Secretary Duncan and President Obama on education reform. While people outside the faculty groups claims for evaluation of teachers, they do their homework and explain why setting up a method to measure teacher accountability is not something easy to be done. 

 Edward Haertel, a Stanford professor co-author of Problems With the Use of Students Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers says that in the value-added modeling, "People are going to treat these scores as if they were reflections on the effectiveness of the teachers without any appreciation of how unstable they are."

 On the other hand, William L. Sanders, a senior research manager for SAS, a company that does value-added estimates for districts in North Carolina, Tennessee and other states, added: "if you use rigorous, robust methods and surround them with safeguards, you can reliably distinguish highly effective teachers from average teachers and from ineffective teachers." 

 Whatever the method is, one thing is for sure, America needs better education and a new curricular design so the community can catch up with speedy changes that are happening thanks to technology.