Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Educational Psychology

Advisor

David Rindskopf

Committee Members

David Rindskopf

Sophia Catsambis

Howard Everson

Subject Categories

Educational Psychology

Abstract

There is a strong movement to evaluate teachers on the basis of students’ performance. To compare teachers fairly, as each may have a mixture of students with different abilities in a given subject area, one should account for variables reflective of students’ subject knowledge and background when entering a course. Most methods of control consist of highly sophisticated statistical models mostly difficult to explain to educators who are being evaluated using such methods. This research presents two value-added methods that could be replicated by using in-house resources and standardized student assessment data which are either continuous or ordinal. One method is simpler to implement if one’s goal is to evaluate teachers’ performance based on students’ assessments scores reported as ordinal measures. The second method is similar to a more typical value-added approach and uses hierarchical linear structures to determine a classification of teachers’ performance based on their students’ assessment scores reported as continuous measures. Teachers’ “value-added” in a given academic year is typically calculated using students’ longitudinal New York State assessment data, reported in both ordinal and continuous forms. Comparison of results obtained from both methods, along with their interpretations, are used to examine trade-offs between accuracy of methods and their ease of use and transparency. The code used is included for practitioners who may wish to replicate this value-added methodology. Suggestions related to educational policy and feasibility of implementation of methods are also discussed.

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