Value-added scores show limited stability over time in primary school

Value-added (VA) models are used for accountability purposes and quantify the value a teacher or a school adds to their students' achievement. If VA scores lack stability over time and vary across outcome domains (e.g., mathematics and language learning), their use for high-stakes decision maki...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2022-12, Vol.17 (12), p.e0279255-e0279255
Main Authors: Emslander, Valentin, Levy, Jessica, Scherer, Ronny, Fischbach, Antoine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Academic Success
Accountability
Achievement
Achievement tests
Biology and Life Sciences
Data Collection
Decision making
Domains
Education, Primary
Elementary schools
Evaluation
Humans
Language
Learning
Life skills
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
People and Places
Regression analysis
School effectiveness
School Teachers
Schools
Social Sciences
Stability
Students
Teachers
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Summary:Value-added (VA) models are used for accountability purposes and quantify the value a teacher or a school adds to their students' achievement. If VA scores lack stability over time and vary across outcome domains (e.g., mathematics and language learning), their use for high-stakes decision making is in question and could have detrimental real-life implications: teachers could lose their jobs, or a school might receive less funding. However, school-level stability over time and variation across domains have rarely been studied together. In the present study, we examined the stability of VA scores over time for mathematics and language learning, drawing on representative, large-scale, and longitudinal data from two cohorts of standardized achievement tests in Luxembourg (N = 7,016 students in 151 schools). We found that only 34-38% of the schools showed stable VA scores over time with moderate rank correlations of VA scores from 2017 to 2019 of r = .34 for mathematics and r = .37 for language learning. Although they showed insufficient stability over time for high-stakes decision making, school VA scores could be employed to identify teaching or school practices that are genuinely effective-especially in heterogeneous student populations.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0279255