Carnegie Knowledge Network

Carnegie Panel on Assessing Teaching to Improve Learning: Value-Added Methods and Applications

carnegie panel

Technical Panel. L-R: Daniel McCaffrey, Dan Goldhaber, Stephen Raudenbush, Susanna Loeb, Douglas N. Harris

The Carnegie Foundation has brought together a distinguished group of researchers to translate cutting-edge research on value-added into useable information for the design and administration of teacher evaluation systems. Daniel Goldhaber, Doug Harris, Susanna Loeb, Daniel McCaffrey, and Steve Raudenbush have been selected to join the Carnegie Panel. The Foundation has purposely chosen for this panel individuals who have expertise in statistics and economics, who are impartial about particular value-added modeling strategies, and whose previous research, taken together, represents a range of views. These technical experts engaged with a panel of K-12 leaders to ensure that their work is relevant and accessible. The Carnegie Panel has co-developed a set of entries that explore issues critical to the use of value-added in teacher evaluation systems.

Technical Panel

Dan Goldhaber is the Director of the Center for Education Data & Research and a Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell. He is also the co-editor of Education Finance and Policy, and a member of the Washington State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Dan previously served as an elected member of the Alexandria City School Board from 1997-2002, and as an Associate Editor of Economics of Education Review. Dan’s work focuses on issues of educational productivity and reform at the K-12 level, the broad array of human capital policies that influence the composition, distribution, and quality of teachers in the workforce, and connections between students’ K-12 experiences and postsecondary outcomes. Topics of published work in this area include studies of the stability of value-added measures of teachers, the effects of teacher qualifications and quality on student achievement, and the impact of teacher pay structure and licensure on the teacher labor market. Previous work has covered topics such as the relative efficiency of public and private schools, and the effects of accountability systems and market competition on K-12 schooling. Dan’s research has been regularly published in leading peer-reviewed economic and education journals such as: American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy and Management, Journal of Urban Economics, Economics of Education Review, Education Finance and Policy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. The findings from these articles have been covered in more widely accessible media outlets such as National Public Radio, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and Education Week. Dr. Goldhaber holds degrees from the University of Vermont (B.A., Economics) and Cornell University (M.S. and Ph.D., Labor Economics).

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Douglas N. Harris is Associate Professor of Economics and University Endowed Chair in Public Education at Tulane University. His research explores how students’ educational outcomes are influenced by school choice, standards, teacher evaluation, test-based accountability, college financial aid, and college access programs. A former school board member, his research marries theory and rigorous research with the practical realities of schooling with publications ranging from the general interest journal Science to the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and others. His recent book, Value-Added Measures in Education (Harvard Education Press, 2011) was nominated for the national Grawemeyer Award. Washington Monthly magazine has used his research on college performance measures in its college ratings and David Brooks has cited related work in his New York Times column. He has advised eight state departments of education, elected officials at all levels of government, and groups such as the National Academy of Sciences, National Council of State Legislatures, National Governors Association, and National School Boards Association. His work is frequently cited in the national media, including CNN, Education Week, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

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Susanna Loeb is the Barnett Family Professor of Education at Stanford University, Faculty Director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis, and a Co-Director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). She specializes in the economics of education and the relationship between schools and federal, state and local policies. Her research addresses teacher policy, looking specifically at how teachers’ preferences affect the distribution of teaching quality across schools, how pre-service coursework requirements affect the quality of teacher candidates, and how reforms affect teachers’ career decisions. She also studies school leadership and school finance, for example looking at how the structure of state finance systems affects the level and distribution of resources across schools. Susanna is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Policy Council of the Association for Policy Analysis and Management, and Co-Editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

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Daniel F. McCaffrey is a Principal Research Scientist at Educational Testing Service. Previously, he was a Senior Statistician and PNC Chair in Policy Analysis at the RAND Corporation. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and is nationally recognized for his work on value-added modeling for estimating teacher performance. McCaffrey oversaw RAND’s efforts as part of the Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching study to develop and validate sophisticated metrics to assess and improve teacher performance. He is currently working on additional studies comparing value-added measures to other measures of teaching, including classroom observations. He recently completed work on a four year project funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) that developed alternative value-added models of teachers’ effectiveness. McCaffrey is also the principal investigator of a National Institute on Drug Abuse–funded study, and recently led RAND’s efforts as a major partner in the National Center on Performance Incentives, which conducted random control experiments to test the effects of using value-added to reward teachers with bonuses. He led an evaluation of the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment Pilot Program (PVAAS) and was the lead statistician on other randomized field trials of school-based interventions; including evaluations of the Cognitive Tutor geometry curriculum, the Project ALERT Plus middle and high school drug prevention program, and the teen dating violence prevention curriculum, Break the Cycle. McCaffrey received his Ph.D. in statistics from North Carolina State University.

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Stephen Raudenbush, Ed.D. is the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology, Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and is Chairman of the Committee on Education at the University of Chicago.  He received an Ed.D in Policy Analysis and Evaluation Research from Harvard University.  He is a leading scholar on quantitative methods for studying child and youth development within social  settings such as classrooms, schools, and neighborhoods.  He is best known for his work on developing hierarchical linear modes, with broad applications in the design and analysis of longitudinal and multilevel research. He is currently studying the development of literacy and math skills in early childhood with implications for instruction, and methods for assessing school and classroom quality.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of the American Educational Research Association Award for distinguished contributions to educational research.

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Co-Authors

Andrew Anderson is completing a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. His work investigates heterogeneity across postsecondary schooling options. He is interested in how vocational certificate programs differ from degree granting programs, how two-year colleges differ from four-year colleges and how career-oriented fields of study differ from liberal arts education. His goal is to understand how these educational pathways impact students as well as the consequences for lifetime income, occupational stability, labor market participation and welfare. Andrew finds these topics interesting in themselves as well as due to their policy implications.

Christopher Candelaria is a Ph.D. student in the Economics of Education program at Stanford University. He earned a B.A. in economics from from Stanford in 2006. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked for four years as a research associate at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. His research interests include teacher labor markets, education finance, and quantitative methods in education research. At Stanford, Christopher is also pursuing a master’s degree in economics.

Jason A. Grissom is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education, at the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. He studies the policy, politics, and governance dimensions of K-12 education. He is particularly interested in identifying the impacts of school and district leaders on teacher and student outcomes. He has published widely in education, public administration, and political science, with articles appearing in such outlets as American Educational Research Journal, American Journal of Education, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Politics, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, and Teachers College Record. Currently, he is principal investigator on an Institute of Education Sciences-funded, longitudinal study of school leader effectiveness in four large, urban districts. Other current research explores the causes and consequences of administrator turnover, school board decision-making, and public opinion in education. Professor Grissom holds a master’s degree in education and a Ph.D. in political economics from Stanford University.

Marshall Jean is a Ph.D student in sociology at the University of Chicago, he is interested in how structural conditions of schooling affect the individual academic outcomes of students. As an Institute of Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow, his training has focused on the application of quantitative analysis to primary and secondary education data. His recent research includes the study of how student mobility rates affect the rate of learning growth, the use of surveys of student perceptions in evaluation classroom environments, the effects of homogenous ability grouping and tracking, and the interpretation of value-added test scores.

Roddy Theobald is a Ph.D. student in statistics at the University of Washington, a research assistant at the Center for Education Data and Research (CEDR), and a former 7th-grade math teacher in the Oakland (CA) Unified School District. At CEDR, he has worked on projects assessing the determinants and implications of teacher layoffs, evaluating teacher training programs using student test scores, and estimating the impact of collective bargaining provisions on teacher mobility and retention. His research has been accepted for publication at Economics of Education Review, Education Finance and Policy, and Education Next, and he has served as a peer reviewer for Education Finance and Policy and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

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Funded through a cooperative agreement with the Institute for Education Sciences. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.