Up to 26% of teachers in the bottom value-added quintile under one specification are ranked higher under another specification¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr?·q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2018: tool and model accuracy changes quickly
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Up to 26% of bottom-quintile teachers under one VAM specification are ranked higher under another specification. → Matthew T. Johnson 2015
Evidence¶
Matthew T. Johnson 2015¶
Matthew T. Johnson, Stephen Lipscomb, Brian Gill. (2015). Sensitivity of Teacher Value-Added Estimates to Student and Peer Control Variables. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, vol. 8, issue 1. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/journal-article-sensitivity-of-teacher-valueadded-estimates-to-student-and-peer-control-variables
q2 · i? · associational · r?
Comparative analysis of teacher rankings across VAM specifications in a northern state dataset. The article reports that "up to 26% of teachers in the bottom quintile using one specification are ranked higher using another specification." No effect size is printed.
"However, up to 26% of teachers in the bottom quintile using one specification are ranked higher using another specification."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- The working paper examines the sensitivity and precision of teacher value-added estimates under specifications differing in student-level, peer-level, and double-lagged achievement controls — a broader claim this one bears on
- Teacher value-added estimates are highly correlated across model specifications that differ in student and peer control variables — a broader claim this one bears on
- The choice of which assessment to use as the outcome measure matters more for value-added estimates than any student or peer control-variable specification choice — related
- Mathematica developed and estimated VAMs for use in Phase 1 of the Pennsylvania evaluation pilot — related
- Teachers with the same observation scores can have very different value-added scores, with considerable overlap across observation-score quintiles — related
- Alternative value-added specifications produce substantially different teacher estimates but small changes in distribution tails — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
vam-bottom-quintile-reclassification-26-percent |
title |
Up to 26% of teachers in the bottom value-added quintile under one specification are ranked higher under another specification |
description |
Up to 26% of teachers in the bottom value-added quintile under one specification are ranked higher under another specification |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2015 |
source_checked |
2026-10-20 |
recheck_by |
2018 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-08 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — matthew-t-johnson-2015 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.