Thus we have good reason to suspect that
school effectiveness biases comparisons of the value - added scores of teachers working in different schools.
Not exact matches
Research led at the Yale
School of Public Health have found that the majority of published papers analyzing the cost -
effectiveness of a widely used test for breast cancer used a study design that can increase
bias.
To try to correct this by statistically controlling for
school context variables will produce
bias so long as the
effectiveness of the teacher is associated with attributes associated with the
effectiveness of the
school.
While no assessment system is without limitations, Tennessee's value - added assessment model stands head and shoulders above others with regard to its focus on the
effectiveness of
schools, its ability to remove the
biasing effects of social and economic influences, and its usefulness in answering critical questions about student progress and educational quality.
More specifically, the district and its teachers are not coming to an agreement about how they should be evaluated, rightfully because teachers understand better than most (even some VAM researchers) that these models are grossly imperfect, largely
biased by the types of students non-randomly assigned to their classrooms and
schools, highly unstable (i.e., grossly fluctuating from one year to the next when they should remain more or less consistent over time, if reliable), invalid (i.e., they do not have face validity in that they often contradict other valid measures of teacher
effectiveness), and the like.
Kane's research was, of course, used to support the claim that bad teachers are causing the disparities that he cited, regardless of the fact the inverse could be also, equally, or even more true — that the value - added measures used to measure teacher
effectiveness in these
schools are
biased by the very nature of the students in these
schools that are contributing their low test scores to such estimates.
Limitations include small sample size, possible teacher
bias, and parental involvement may have contributed to
effectiveness of the intervention and generalizability to other
school settings.