With federal support from the United States Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, researchers at the National Center on Performance Incentives are conducting research on value-added measurement. This particular supplemental study will provide greater understanding about the use of value-added assessment in making personnel decisions. To measure a teacher’s value-added well, it is necessary to separate the effect of a teacher from other influences on learning. Unfortunately, unless teachers are randomly assigned to students, there is not any straightforward way to select the most appropriate method to control for student and community characteristics.

NCPI affiliate Dale Ballou and Linda Cavalluzzo will compare methods of controlling for such non-teacher factors and the quality of resulting estimates. This study has, essentially, two components:

• Conducting mathematical simulations to identify conditions under which each method represents the best option for statistical analysis.
• Applying different techniques to panel data on teachers in a local school district.

Please revisit this site in coming months for additional information and forthcoming publications related to this research on value-added measurement.