School districts in the Madison area and other parts of the state are working with researchers at the University of Wisconsin to implement new ways of testing K-12 student progress and achievement.
The new method comes from the Value-Added Research Center, which is based at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW.
The new method being worked on there are value-added estimates that look to measure student progress and productivity through a certain time in their education, according to Associate Director of the VARC Christopher Thorn. He said the value-added estimates look at where a student starts on one standardized test and then sees how much progress they have made when they take another test the following year.
“What value-added does is [takes a] measure of productivity of where kids start at, whatever level they walk into the classroom, and then it uses a statistical model to control for differences in family characteristics, like social economic levels,” Thorn said.
Thorn said the way students are evaluated now is attainment. Students taking standardized tests in subjects like math or reading are measured by the level of the test scores they attain.
“Places with high attainment are places with high resource families. It doesn’t necessarily mean schools are productive, but means those kids are more likely to have good parents, be better educated, have books in their rooms and other things that go along with high educational achievement,” Thorn said.
However, because of attainment, some schools who are teaching their students a lot look like they are failing because the students know so little coming in.
“Some inner city schools that come in with terrible attainment scores, but these kids are learning enormous amounts in the year, but they still have low levels of proficiency. Without value-added numbers, those schools get identified only as failing schools when they’re the best school for our children,” Thorn said.
Last year, VARC did a demo trial of value-added statistics for the Wisconsin Department of Instruction in several areas across the state, including Madison and Milwaukee.
Associate Researcher for VARC Ernest Morgan said he likes the way value-added statistics are being introduced to Wisconsin schools.
“It’s sort of grassroots — schools can learn about the benefits without being pressured as something they have to do,” Morgan said.
Morgan said that value-added statistics were created by the Director of VARC Robert Meyer in the late 1980s. Meyer began to work with Milwaukee in 2002 and they are in their second year of value-added data for the Madison Metropolitan School District.
VARC is working with the Cooperative Education Service Agency Number Two to distribute the value-added testing services to districts who want to use it.
“What we are doing right now (with the school districts) is giving them information on what value-added is and then they will be getting their value-added data along with attainment data,” Morgan said.
