More Value-Add!

2 Replies to “More Value-Add!”

1. So.
   This paper claims by using the authors value-add procedure that administrators will learn that teachers will improve quickly from the first year of teaching to the third year of teaching. Teachers with 20+ years of experience are better at their jobs than teachers with 1 year of experience. The rate of improvement remains stable from year 3 to year 20+.
   Did I get that right?

2. Hi Northbrooklyn –

   You got most of it right. There is good evidence that teachers improve significantly in their first 3-5 years in the classroom, but the improvement levels off after that, and we found that to be true in our study as well. Thus, in a nutshell, 20 year plus teachers are generally more effective than novice teachers, but don’t tend to look more effective (in value-added terms) than teachers with about 5 years of experience.

   We don’t make any claims about what administrators will do, but the contribution of the paper (we think) is that early career value-add measures of teacher effectiveness do a pretty good job of predicting how effective teachers will be in their mid-career (5+ years in the classroom). Value-add measures are hardly perfect predictors, but they turn out to be significantly better than the readily observable factors (degree, experience level, certification status, etc.) that policymakers now utilize to determine employment eligibility and compensation.