Education Week on Using Value Added Data

Ed Week reported on a meeting at the Urban Institute that was a summary/policy implications round up of a much more technical meeting held here in Madison in late April, 2008.

One of the most important things delivered by the April meeting was a concerted attempt to translate between economists, statisticians, psychometricians, and sociologists. There are is an emerging consensus on the minimum requirements for a value added model used for high-stakes decisions. As the number of scholars engaged in real world analysis converge on a set of recommendations, we should be able to form a more consistent, non-technical explanation of VA model features and assumptions. One of the biggest stumbling blocks facing the wide spread adoption of VA models is the perception that ordinary people cannot understand them. We are getting close to the prerequisites for a coherent set of explanations.

Chris