Just this week, in Education Week — the field’s leading national newspaper covering K–12 education — a blogger by the name of Matthew Lynch published a piece explaining his “Five Indisputable [emphasis added] Reasons Why You Should Be Implementing Value-Added Assessment.”

I’m going to try to stay aboveboard with my critique of this piece, as best I can, as by the title alone you all can infer there are certainly pieces (mainly five) to be seriously criticized about the author’s indisputable take on value-added (and by default value-added models (VAMs)). I examine each of these assertions below, but I will say overall and before we begin, that pretty much everything that is included in this piece is hardly palatable, and tolerable considering that Education Week published it, and by publishing it they quasi-endorsed it, even if in an independent blog post that they likely at minimum reviewed, then made public.

First, the five assertions, along with a simple response per assertion:

1. Value-added assessment moves the focus from statistics and demographics to asking of essential questions such as, “How well are students progressing?”

In theory, yes – this is generally true (see also my response about the demographics piece replicated in assertion #3 below). The problem here, though, as we all should know by now, is that once we move away from the theory in support of value-added, this theory more or less crumbles. The majority of the research on this topic explains and evidences the reasons why. Is value-added better than what “we” did before, however, while measuring student achievement once per year without taking growth over time into consideration? Perhaps, but if it worked as intended, for sure!

2. Value-added assessment focuses on student growth, which allows teachers and students to be recognized for their improvement. This measurement applies equally to high-performing and advantaged students and under-performing or disadvantaged students.

Indeed, the focus is on growth (see my response about growth in assertion #1 above). What the author of this post does not understand, however, is that his latter conclusion is likely THE most controversial issue surrounding value-added, and on this all topical researchers likely agree. In fact, authors of the most recent review of what is actually called “bias” in value-added estimates, as published in the peer-reviewed Economics Education Review (see a pre-publication version of this manuscript here), concluded that because of potential bias (i.e., “This measurement [does not apply] equally to high-performing and advantaged students and under-performing or disadvantaged students“), that all value-added modelers should control for as many student-level (and other) demographic variables to help to minimize this potential, also given the extent to which multiple authors’ evidence of bias varies wildly (from negligible to considerable).

3. Value-added assessment provides results that are tied to teacher effectiveness, not student demographics; this is a much more fair accountability measure.

See my comment immediately above, with general emphasis added to this overly simplistic take on the extent to which VAMs yield “fair” estimates, free from the biasing effects (never to always) caused by such demographics. My “fairest” interpretation of the current albeit controversial research surrounding this particular issue is that bias does not exist across teacher-level estimates, but it certainly occurs when teachers are non-randomly assigned highly homogenous sets of students who are gifted, who are English Language Learners (ELLs), who are enrolled in special education programs, who disproportionately represent racial minority groups, who disproportionately come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and who have been retained in grade prior.

4. Value-added assessment is not a stand-alone solution, but it does provide rich data that helps educators make data-driven decisions.

This is entirely false. There is no research evidence, still to date, that teachers use these data to make instructional decisions. Accordingly, no research is linked to or cited here (as well as elsewhere). Now, if the author is talking about naive “educators,” in general, who make consequential decisions as based on poor (i.e., the oppostie of “rich”) data, this assertion would be true. This “truth,” in fact, is at the core of the lawsuits ongoing across the nation regarding this matter (see, for example, here), with consequences ranging from tagging a teacher’s file for receiving a low value-added score to teacher termination.

5. Value-added assessment assumes that teachers matter and recognizes that a good teacher can facilitate student improvement.Perhaps we have only value-added assessment to thank for “assuming” [sic] this. Enough said…

Or not…

Lastly, the author professes to be a “professor,” pretty much all over the place (see, again, here), although he is currently an associate professor. There is a difference, and folks who respect the difference typically make the distinction explicit and known, especially in an academic setting or context. See also here, however, given his expertise (or the lack thereof) in value-added or VAMs, about what he writes here as “indisputable.”

Perhaps most important here, though, is that his falsely inflated professional title implies, especially to a naive or uncritical public, that what he has to say, again without any research support, demands some kind of credibility and respect. Unfortunately, this is just not the case; hence, we are again reminded of the need for general readers to be critical in their consumption of such pieces. I would have thought Education Week would have played a larger role than this, rather than just putting this stuff “out there,” even if for simple debate or discussion.