Value Added Analysis

This article in The New Yorker magazine was shared with me by a non-teaching friend. I found it absolutely fascinating. The article makes many comparisons with the process by which NFL scouts select promising quarterback candidates and the ability to predict teacher effectiveness. If you not are interested in professional football, you may want to skip over the lengthy analogy. On to the research...

According to the author, Malcolm Gladwell, “A group of researchers -- Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard’s school of education; Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth; and Robert Gordon, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress -- have investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master’s degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom.”

In answering the question of what actually does matter in making a great teacher, Gladwell refers us to the work of Jacob Kounin, an educational researcher. Kounin called that indefinable ability “withitness.” This quality is defined as “a teacher’s communicating to the children by her actual behavior (rather than by verbally announcing: ‘I know what’s going on’) that she knows what the children are doing, or has the proverbial ‘eyes in the back of her head.’” Of course, this ability cannot possibly be demonstrated until a teacher actually stands in front of a classroom.

"One of the most important tools in contemporary educational research is 'value added' analysis. It uses standardized test scores to look at how much the academic performance of students in a given teacher’s classroom changes between the beginning and the end of the school year." The conclusion drawn by the author (and supported by research) is that you simply can’t tell from a piece of paper who’ll be effective in a classroom.

This is an interesting point to consider as we all progress toward another one of those pieces of paper.