How to Use Value-Added Analysis to Improve Student Learning
A Field Guide for School and District Leaders
- Kate Kennedy - Battelle for Kids
- Mary Peters
- Mike Thomas
Foreword by Douglas B. Reeves
A step-by-step guide to transforming student learning with value-added analysis
Value-added analysis is the most robust, statistically significant method available for helping educators quantify student progress over time. This powerful tool also reveals tangible strategies for improving instruction. Built around the work of Battelle for Kids, this book provides a field-tested continuous improvement model for using value-added information to increase student learning. The five-step process shows how to:
- Create the conditions for success
- Examine district, school, and classroom reports to assess strengths and challenges
- Use these reports to create an improvement plan
- Implement instructional changes
- Evaluate and adjust the changes as the new school year starts
Each chapter includes case studies, real-life examples, action steps, and reflective questions in addition to numerous tools, samples, and protocols for implementing the model. By focusing on specific professional practices associated with gains in student performance, conversations shift from blame to analysis, from defensiveness to professional learning, and from micromanagement to inquiry—a fresh perspective that results in student success!
“This book offers a practical, engaging introduction to value-added assessment — it should be read by educators at all levels. The authors demystify a complex topic, and give educators the tools they need to use value-added data to help students learn.”
"Value-Added Assessment is an extraordinarily important breakthrough in education research that provides a direct empirical measure of instructional effectiveness at the classroom level. This book could not be more timely, given the sea change now underway in how teachers and administrators are being evaluated and compensated."
“A welcome, plain-spoken and eminently practical guide to making the most of value-added analysis to strengthen data-driven decision making and boost achievement in our schools.”
"As districts across the country rapidly ramp up for using value-added performance measures in teacher evaluations, this book will provide invaluable information on making that data positive and productive, rather than frightening and antagonizing.”
