On Top of the News
Virginia Pushed Into Debate Of Teacher Privacy vs. Transparency For Parents
3/16/15 | Washington Post

Behind the Headline
The Value of Releasing Value-Added Ratings of Teachers
2/5/12 | Education Next blog

A parent in Virginia has sued state officials to try to force the release of value-added evaluation data for thousands of teachers across Virginia. The Washington Post ran on its front page a long article by Emma Brown about the issues raised by the lawsuit.  The parent, Brian Davison, argues that parents have a right to know if their child is assigned a teacher judged to be ineffective.  He also notes that Virginia promised to use the data on teacher effectiveness as part of teacher evaluations, but that this has not happened yet. One judge has already ruled in his favor.

Eric Hanushek argued for the benefits of releasing value-added teacher evaluation data when the same debate erupted in New York three years ago.

Rick Hess argued against the release of value-added scores for teachers when the issue came up in Los Angeles.

A study by Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman and Jonah E. Rockoff that was published by Education Next found that teacher ratings based on value-added analysis of student test score gains are accurate measures of how much teachers contribute to student learning, and also that students who are assigned to teachers with high value-added ratings “benefit not just by scoring higher on math and reading tests at the end of the school year, but also through improved outcomes later in life.”

A blog entry by Tom Kane discusses the latest research on the strengths and weaknesses of using value added analysis to evaluate teachers.

-Education Next