Value-added modeling

Research Method · All research methods
Evidence · 39 claims (29 for, 9 mixed, 1 against) · 23 studies (19 associational, 2 review, 2 design), q1–q3 · 0 of 23 report an effect size · 38 claims rest on one study

Description

Value-added measures quantify a teacher's contribution to students' learning gains. The brief defines the approach: "'Value added' is a teacher's contribution to students' learning gains." It reports that newly emerging research uses these measures to shed light on disadvantaged students' access to effective teaching, and that variation in how researchers present such evidence complicates practitioner use.

Accounts

• Value-added measures of teacher effectiveness: Value-added measures quantify a teacher's contribution to students' learning gains. The brief defines the approach: "'Value added' is a teacher's contribution to students' learning gains." It reports that newly emerging research uses these measures to shed light on disadvantaged students' access to effective teaching, and that variation in how researchers present such evidence complicates practitioner use. (Jeffrey Max (2014))
• Value-added methods as the measure of teacher quality for studying mobility: The article measures teacher quality using value-added methods, defined in its framing as quality "measured using value-added methods," and focuses on "the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution." This makes the effectiveness distribution — the spread of teachers' value-added effects — the organizing axis for its mobility analysis, allowing comparison of mobility behavior for teachers at different points in the quality distribution. (Dan Goldhaber et al. (2011))
• Value-added methods as a framework for estimating educator effectiveness, presented in technical and nontechnical terms: The report treats value-added methods as an organizing framework for measuring educator effectiveness, presenting "an overview of value-added methods in technical and nontechnical terms". The framework underlies the model used in Oklahoma's pilot evaluation system to estimate teacher and school effectiveness from instruction during the 2012-2013 school year. The page provides only a summary-level description of this framework. (Elias Walsh et al. (2014))
• Value-added modeling as a framework for measuring educator effectiveness: Value-added modeling is a statistical framework for estimating the contribution that schools and teachers make to student achievement growth, operationalized here for use in a district educator evaluation system. The report frames its purpose as describing "the value-added models that are used as part of the BRIDGE teacher and principal evaluations," applying the framework at both school and teacher levels within one district's evaluation program. (Alexandra Resch (2015))
• Value-added models as a method for separating teachers' contributions to student achievement from other factors: Value-added models are statistical models used in Oklahoma's evaluation system to compute educator results. As the brief explains, "The results are calculated using value-added models, which separate teachers' contributions to student achievement from other factors." The approach underlies the results distributed to teachers and administrators in spring 2016, and the brief describes updates to these models for that release. (Albert Y. Liu et al. (2016))
• Value-added models (VAM) as a framework for teacher and principal evaluation: The report treats teacher and principal value-added models (VAM) as an organizing framework for educator evaluation, summarizing "research findings and implementation practices for teacher and principal value-added models (VAM)". VAM is presented as a measurement approach whose development requires decisions about data, modeling, and implementation. The report organizes the literature and practice examples around this framework for a state pilot project. (Lipscomb et al. (2010))
• Value added as a measure of teacher effectiveness: The brief defines value added as a way of quantifying teaching quality: "'Value added' is a teacher's contribution to students' learning gains." It frames emerging research on disadvantaged students' access to effective teaching as based on these value-added measures, while noting that researchers have presented such evidence in varied ways, making it hard for practitioners to interpret. (Jeffrey Max (2014))
• Value-added measurement of teacher performance as the basis for defining highest-performing teachers: The brief defines value-added in ideal terms as "the contribution of the teacher to student achievement growth, holding constant the factors outside the teacher's control." It estimates value-added as average test-score growth for each teacher relative to the district average, with statistical controls for student background and entering achievement, using up to three years of data per teacher for precision. The top 20 percent of teachers within each district, subject, and grade span are labeled highest performing. The authors note active debate about high-stakes use but observe these measures resemble indicators districts use in Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, DC's IMPACT syste (Steven Glazerman et al. (2011))
• Value-added model for identifying effective schools in Memphis City school district: Mathematica developed a value-added model to identify effective schools in the Memphis City school district during the first year of a New Leaders for New Schools initiative. The model "estimates each school's effect on student performance across all tested grades and subjects, accounting for student mobility, observable differences in student demographics, and measurement error in test scores." It served as the identification tool for a principal-training nonprofit's educator award program. (Kevin Booker (2008))

Claims

• Disparities in access to effective teaching between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students varied widely across the 29 districts studied [+W]
• Disadvantaged students in grades 4-8 receive less-effective teaching on average than other students in the same grades [+M]
• The teaching-effectiveness disparity represents a small share of the overall achievement gap for disadvantaged students [+W]
• Teacher mobility behavior is heterogeneous across the teacher performance distribution [+W]
• On average, more effective early-career teachers remain in the teaching profession and stay in their initial schools [+W]
• Student demographics and achievement levels affect early-career teacher mobility [+W]
• Oklahoma's Pilot Teacher and Leader Evaluation System used a value-added model to estimate teacher and school effectiveness for 2012-2013 instruction [+W]
• The report explicitly discusses limitations of the Oklahoma value-added model [~W]
• The report documents a value-added method combining nontechnical description of main features with data sources and technical statistical detail [+W]
• Mathematica designed a method to identify effective schools for a consortium of 99 charter schools in 18 states and the District of Columbia in the project's first year. [+W]
• Pittsburgh Public Schools used value-added models to assess educational quality as of the 2014-15 school year [+W]
• The Teacher Team Method and Full Roster Method produce similar estimates of teacher value added [+W]
• The Full Roster Method effectively counts co-taught students more than once in value-added calculations [+W]
• Principals with higher FFL scores make larger estimated contributions to student achievement growth (concurrent validity) [+W]
• FFL scores were not associated with school leaders' estimated contributions to student achievement growth [-W]
• FFL scores correlate more strongly with contributions to math achievement than to achievement in other subjects [+W]
• Oklahoma educators received value-added results in spring 2016 based on instruction provided in the 2014–2015 school year [+W]
• Spring 2016 was the third year Oklahoma's TLE provided value-added results to educators [+W]
• The value-added models used for Oklahoma's spring 2016 results were updated relative to prior years [+W]
• The report synthesizes 21 empirical studies on value-added model key issues and findings [+W]
• Phase 1 of the Pennsylvania pilot examined whether teachers with higher classroom observation scores on specific professional practices tended to have greater value-added impacts on student achievement [+W]
• There is little prior evidence on the validity of principal evaluation measures, and this is the first study linking practice ratings to credible value-added measures [+W]
• Teachers in districts with large fractions of disadvantaged students receive lower value-added ratings when student background characteristics are omitted [+W]
• Disadvantaged students in 29 study districts receive poorer-quality instruction, on average, compared with other students [+W]
• Highest-performing teachers moved students up 4 to 14 percentile points per school year relative to the average district teacher [+M]
• The most extreme district disparity: District A's high-poverty middle schools had about 1 in 20 highest-performing math teachers versus about 12 in 20 in the lowest-poverty quintile [+W]
• District G shows the opposite pattern: highest-poverty elementary schools were most likely to have highest-performing teachers [+W]
• Across ten districts combined, elementary schools show no statistically significant difference from an equitable distribution of highest-performing teachers [+W]
• Elementary under-representation of highest-performing teachers appears in 4 of 8 districts despite the aggregate null [+W]
• Across ten districts combined, high-poverty middle schools have significantly fewer highest-performing teachers than low-poverty middle schools [+W]
• Teachers of students with hard-to-predict achievement levels tend to have less precise value-added estimates than teachers of other students [~W]
• Some educators are concerned that students scoring at the bottom or top of a test's score distribution will negatively affect the value-added estimates of those students' teachers [~W]
• Teachers with the same observation scores can have very different value-added scores, with considerable overlap across observation-score quintiles [~W]
• The lower a test's score ceiling, the more teacher value-added estimates shrink toward the average teacher, because ceiling scores contain imprecise information about achievement [~W]
• Schools' K-3 growth estimates are likely less valid than grade 3-4 growth estimates but have similar precision [~W]
• Observation scores have a stronger relationship with school characteristics such as poverty than value-added scores [~W]
• Minority teachers' lower observation scores are largely attributable to school characteristics, and no race/ethnicity differences appear on value-added scores [~W]
• Observation scores are modestly positively associated with individual value-added (adjusted correlation 0.349) but only weakly associated with performance tasks (0.108) and school-wide literacy value-added (0.119) [~W]
• The Memphis value-added model estimates school effects on student performance while adjusting for mobility, demographics, and measurement error [+W]

Related Research Methods

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Key Sources

• Jeffrey Max, Steven Glazerman. (2014). Do Disadvantaged Students Get Less Effective Teaching? Key Findings from Recent Institute of Education Sciences Studies (Technical Appendix). Washington, DC: Institute of Education Sciences. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/tech-appen-do-disadvantaged-students-get-less-effective-teaching-key-findings-from-recent
• Dan Goldhaber, Betheny Gross, Daniel Player. (2011). Teacher Career Paths, Teacher Quality, and Persistence in the Classroom: Are Public Schools Keeping Their Best? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, vol. 30, issue 1. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/teacher-career-paths-teacher-quality-and-persistence-in-the-classroom-are-public-schools-keeping-their-best
• Elias Walsh, Albert Y. Liu, Dallas Dotter. (2014). Measuring Teacher and School Value Added in Oklahoma, 2012-2013 School Year. Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/measuring-teacher-and-school-value-added-in-oklahoma-20122013-school-year
• Alexandra Resch, Jonah Deutsch. (2015). Measuring School and Teacher Value Added in Charleston County School District, 2014-2015 School Year. Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/measuring-school-and-teacher-value-added-in-charleston-county-school-district-20142015-school-year
• Albert Y. Liu, Elias Walsh, Dallas Dotter. (2016). Measuring Teacher and School Value Added in Oklahoma, Spring 2016. Oakland, CA: Mathematica Policy Research. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/measuring-teacher-and-school-value-added-in-oklahoma-spring-2016
• Lipscomb, Stephen; Teh, Bing-ru; Gill, Brian; Chiang, Hanley; Owens, Antoniya. (2010). Teacher and Principal Value-Added: Research Findings and Implementation Practices. Cambridge, MA: Mathematica Policy Research. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/teacher-and-principal-valueadded-research-findings-and-implementation-practices
• Jeffrey Max, Steven Glazerman. (2014). Do Disadvantaged Students Get Less Effective Teaching? Key Findings from Recent Institute of Education Sciences Studies (Evaluation Brief). Washington, DC: Institute of Education Sciences. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/
• Steven Glazerman and Jeffrey Max. (2011). Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers? NCEE Evaluation Brief, NCEE 2011-4016. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20114016/pdf/20114016_app.pdf
• Kevin Booker, Eric Isenberg. (2008). Measuring School Effectiveness in Memphis. Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/measuring-school-effectiveness-in-memphis

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	research-method
id	value-added-modeling
aliases	school-value-added-modeling
title	Value-added modeling
description	Value-added measures quantify a teacher's contribution to students' learning gains.
status	review
moved_from	element/value-added-teacher-effectiveness-measures, theory/value-added-measures-of-teacher-quality-mobility, theory/value-added-methods-framework-oklahoma-report, theory/value-added-modeling-educator-effectiveness-framework, theory/value-added-models-separate-teacher-contributions, theory/value-added-models-teacher-principal-evaluation, theory/value-added-teacher-effectiveness-measure, theory/value-added-teacher-performance-measurement-nccee-brief
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	8 — jeffrey-max-2014, dan-goldhaber-2011, elias-walsh-2014, alexandra-resch-2015, albert-y-liu-2016, lipscomb-2010, steven-glazerman-and-jeffrey-max-2011, kevin-booker-2008

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