Method for isolating principals' persistent effects on student achievement growth from school value added¶

Element · All elements
Evidence · 8 claims (8 for) · 5 studies (4 associational, 1 review), q1–q2 · 0 of 5 report an effect size · 8 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article describes an analytic approach that isolates principals' effects on student achievement growth and examines how much of principals' persistently demonstrated effectiveness is captured by school value added. It is applied to "longitudinal data on the math and reading outcomes of fourth- through eighth-grade students in Pennsylvania," covering both math and reading as outcome domains. The approach's purpose is evaluative: to assess whether accountability systems based on school value added convey accurate information about principal quality.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Longitudinal student achievement data in the targeted subjects and grade range
• A method for separating principal effects from other school-specific influences on growth

Constraints¶

• Evidence reported here is for Pennsylvania students in grades 4-8 in math and reading; generalization to other states, grades, or subjects is not established in the provided text

Target Learners¶

• Students in grades 4-8

Target Learning Goals¶

• Mathematics achievement growth
• Reading achievement growth

Claims¶

• School value added can reflect school-specific influences on student achievement growth that are outside principals' control [+W]
• Averaging principal performance measures across multiple recent years does not improve their accuracy for predicting principals' contributions in the following year [+W]
• School median student growth percentiles were stable year to year even when the school changed principals [+W]
• The study used two sets of analyses—rating stability and the stable component's link to future contributions—to simulate each measure's predictive accuracy [+W]
• School value added provides very poor information for revealing principals' persistent levels of effectiveness [+W]
• School value-added and adjusted school value-added provide, at most, a small amount of information for predicting principals' contributions in the following year [+W]
• Average achievement and adjusted average achievement provide no information for predicting principals' contributions to student achievement in the following year [+W]
• Principals are essential to student achievement, with principals' effects almost as large as teachers' effects [+W]

Related Elements¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Hanley Chiang, Stephen Lipscomb, Brian Gill. (2016). Is School Value Added Indicative of Principal Quality? Education Finance and Policy, vol. 11, no. 3. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/is-school-value-added-indicative-of-principal-quality