Using Value Added to Assess Teacher Effectiveness

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management -- an organization not widely known outside of academia and technical policy circles -- puts on truly meaty conferences. I've attended three APPAM conferences to date, including the Annual Fall Research Conference going on in Washington, DC this week.

Education is merely one strand at APPAM, but the sessions feature some of the biggest names in educational research addressing some very policy relevant issues. The current conference features sessions on value-added modeling, school choice, teacher certification and teacher induction, teacher performance pay, financial aid, college persistence, and more.

The session I attended yesterday on "Using Value Added To Assess Teacher Effectiveness" was excellent. It featured four papers each of which I will undoubtedly oversimplify in this brief blog post. (I encourage you to seek out the papers and read them closely -- below I've linked to those that are available.) One by Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen (University of Washington) suggests that year-to-year correlations in value-added teacher effects are modest, but that pre-tenure estimates of teacher job performance do predict estimated post-tenure performance in both math and reading. A second by Julian Betts (UCSD) and Cory Koedel (University of Missouri-Columbia) suggests that bias does exist in value-added models due to student sorting, but that it can be overcome through the use of multiple years of value-added data; further, the study suggests that data from the first year or two of classroom teaching may be insufficient to make reliable judgments about teacher quality. A third by Michael Weiss of MDRC suggests that that teacher variability carries implications for measuring program effects within randomized controlled trials when those teachers are not randomly assigned. And a fourth by John Tyler (Brown University) and Tom Kane (Harvard University) found that teacher assessments made using classroom observation rubrics (such as Charlotte Danielson's) are closely aligned with value-added ratings of teachers.

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A Little Obama Effect

This is awkward. My 2 1/2 year old son is paying attention to politics and presidents, and as his parents we couldn't be more proud. Except for one problem. He's begun to call every non-white male he sees, "Obama!" As in (pointing) "Look Mama, there's Obama!"

Awkward. Sometimes the man is African-American, or in some cases Indian, or even Latino. In not a single instance has he actually been Barack Obama. (Yes, Obama comes to Madison tomorrow-- but Conor will be on his way to Washington so the two will miss each other.) But that doesn't stop Conor from being ever-so-proud to identify his neighbor, fellow airplane passenger, or even my co-worker as our current president.

Now what? (Seriously, now what?)

There's been plenty of talk about a positive "Obama effect" on America's children, the effect of a highly accomplished role model from a non-majority group. The President himself aspired to this when he decided to run for the country's highest office, telling his advisory team that this is what distinguished him from other candidates:

"When I take that oath of office, there will be kids all over this country who don't really think that all paths are open to them, who will believe they can be anything they want to be...and I think the world will look at America a little differently."

Well, as a white child of privilege (including two parents with graduate degrees and full employment) I have no doubt my son would've come up believing he could be or do anything-- regardless of who was president. But, living where we do-- in near lily-white Stoughton, Wisconsin-- I do worry about his lack of non-white role models. Sure, he'll be indoctrinated as a card-carrying liberal (after all my husband's a former executive director of Vermont's Democratic Party), but so what? Even the most hopeful and tolerant adults tend to have stereotypes formed by an absence of figures, as well as the presence of others.

Raised on the East Coast in a community full of Vietnamese and Latino families, it's often occured to me that my decision to work in Madison and live in Stoughton affects the quality of our life. In so many ways, it's completely a joy-- this place is affordable, quiet, and pretty. But when Conor shouts "Obama" I have to wonder...now what?

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The Prison-Education Connection

An article in today's Chronicle Review covers a surge of scholarly interest in "prison studies." The author does a nice job of capturing key areas of research on this topic, though coverage of work by Bruce Western, Chris Wildeman, Alice Goffman, Nikki Jones, and Devah Pager would have deepened the portrait. For example, a discussion of Goffman's recent ethnography of men in Philadelphia could have illustrated how prison life (and the threat of life in prison) is intimately connected with how daily life--outside prison--is experienced by many of today's young urban men.

I just hope educators are paying attention. It's far too easy (and common) for scholars to focus on a single societal institution (like schools) to the exclusion of all others. But anyone committed to democratizing education must connect to the conversation on prison reform.

For example, here are two reasons why higher education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers should follow the debates over prisons:

(1) We want to find ways to broaden access to new populations and spread opportunities. Just 2% of those in state prisons and 8% of those in federal prisons have attained any form of college degree.

At least one study has found that after prison, African-American men are more likely to attend college, perhaps because they hope it will protect them from future participation in undesirable activities.

(2) College attendance during prison is associated with lower rates of recidivism (though evidence has not yet established the relationship as a causal one).

It is thus highly disconcerting that several recent education policies have made it more-- not less-- difficult to use prison time to enroll in postsecondary education and to access college after leaving prison. Consider the following

--Since the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 2000, the "aid elimination penalty" has blocked access to aid for adults with drug convictions. By one estimate, this rule has made over 200,000 students ineligible for federal grants, loans, and work study. While the penalty has since been reformed (currently, only students who receive drug convictions during college enrollment and do not pass two unannounced drug tests are ineligible for aid), some suggest that even in its current form it discourages college enrollment (because the financial aid application includes a question about drugs) and perpetuates dropout among vulnerable populations. Wheelock and Uggen write that "relative to whites, racial and ethnic minorities are significantly more likely to be convicted of disqualifying drug offenses and significantly more likely to require a Pell Grant to attend college...It is therefore plausible that tens of thousands have been denied college funding solely on the basis of their conviction status."

--Since 1994, Pell Grants may not be used to support college course-taking that occurs while in prison, a change that has made college much less affordable for that population. Yet at the same time, the number of state prison systems offering postsecondary education is rising (from 30 in 2002 to 43 in 2003-2004)--in Texas and North Carolina more than 10 percent of all inmates participate in some form of college coursework, typically offered by community colleges.

It's time for educators to start thinking hard about who isn't enrolled in their schools, and why. Looking to the ever-growing prison state in this country is a good place to start.

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