Value-added Methodology for Instructional Improvement,
Program Evaluations, and Educational Accountability: A Workshop

Statement of Task

An ad hoc committee, under the auspices of the NRC's Center for Education, working in collaboration with the National Academy of Education (NAEd), will plan and conduct a workshop to present and discuss the emerging consensus in the technical community around the appropriate use of value-added methodology (VAM). Value-added methods are designed to isolate the unique contribution that a teacher or school makes to student achievement--as measured by test scores--separate from other influences such as the family. While there remain a number of difficult technical issues in realizing this promise of VAM, the substantial technical work conducted over the past several years gives a strong basis for providing policymakers with guidelines about policy applications of VAM that are reasonable given the current state of knowledge. The workshop will feature invited presentations and discussions that will focus on the motivation for using VAM, the tradeoffs of different VAM approaches, the prerequisites to applying VAM, and appropriate applications of VAM for instructional improvement, program evaluation, and accountability, along with examples of best practice. The event will be organized to engage leaders in education research and policy, including education scholars, legal experts, and education policy makers, statisticians and data systems experts at the national, state and local levels. Following the workshop, the committee will prepare a concise workshop report that will be disseminated to federal and state education officials, education scholars, advocacy groups and educators.

The project is sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The approximate start date for the project is August 1, 2007.

Date	Event	Location	Meeting Materials
May 14, 2008	Steering Committee Workshop Planning Meeting	Washington, DC	Agenda
November 13-15, 2008	Workshop	Washington, DC

MEMBERSHIP:

Henry Braun (Chair), Education Testing Service, Princeton, NJ
Jane Hannaway, Education Policy Center, Washington, DC
Kevin Lang, Boston University, MA
Scott Marion, National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Dover, NH
Lorrie Shepard, University of Colorado, Boulder
Judith Singer, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA
Mark Wilson, University of California, Berkeley

The National Academies
Center for Education – 11th Floor
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20001
Tel: 202-334-2353
Fax: 202-334-1294