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In recent years, 14 states in the U.S. have begun assessing teachers and schools using Value-Added Models, or VAMs. The idea is simple enough: A VAM looks at year-to-year changes in standardized test scores among students and rates those students’ teachers and schools accordingly. When students are found to improve or regress, teachers and schools get the credit or the blame.
A new study by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-based team of economists has developed a novel way of evaluating and improving VAMs. By taking data from Boston schools with admissions lotteries, the scholars have used the random assignment of students to schools to see how similar groups of students fare in different classroom settings.Image credit: MIT news
