Has the time come for value-added assessment? That's what some are suggesting in this Ed Week article by Lynn Olson. She reports that 16 states have written to the Education Department requesting permission to explore value-added assessments as a way of meeting NCLB requirements, with Ohio and Pennsylvania moving ahead to install such systems for state testing purposes. Unfortunately, while everyone seems to like value-added assessment as a tool for refining teaching strategies or informing curriculum decisions, state bureaucrats and teacher unions get jittery if anyone suggests that such assessments be used in "high-stakes situations." Meaning: use them so long as they don't count. Our view is that value-added assessments are critical to solving a central problem with NCLB: the wide disparity in "proficiency" targets state-by-state. When the administration goes to Congress to extend NCLB to high school, we hope they include this common sense fix.
"'Value-added' models gain in popularity," by Lynn Olson, Education Week, November 17, 2004