Measuring teacher quality

Education blogger Eduwonkette has a great list of questions that need to be asked about teacher evaluation, especially as more districts consider experimenting with “value-added” evaluation which uses student outcome data to evaluate teacher quality.

Here’s a quick paraphrase of her questions. The full article, including links to lots of interesting related articles is here.

1. Is teacher quality impacted by the school context, or is teacher quality an inherent personal quality?
2. How much are teachers impacted by their colleagues?  Do good colleagues make you a more successful teacher? What is the impact of the teachers your students saw in previous years, or see for other subjects during the day?
3. “Are the same teachers that are effective in promoting short-term score gains effective in promoting longer term academic growth?”
4. Is teacher quality subject specific?  Are some teachers really good at promoting reading success but not math, etc?
5. How do specific groups of students and the way they interact impact teacher performance?  (i.e. not the type of student, but actual individual kids with unique personalities and issues).
6. How does non-random student assignment impact teacher performance.  (i.e. getting assigned the toughest group of kids).
7. Is there a difference in the relative value added by a teacher who achieves a ten point gain among high achieving students vs. a teacher who achieves a ten point gain among low achieving students?

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These are all good questions, but suggest to me that Eduwonkette thinks this form of evaluation will not identify teacher effectiveness accurately.  They seem a bit defensive, although they are phrased in a seemingly objective way as reasonable questions. 

Specifically, the question, “What is the impact of the teachers your students saw in previous years, or see for other subjects during the day?”, implies an “out of my control” defense. 

My understanding of the VAT process is that it accounts for many of the factors that Eduwonkette teases out.  However, I am no expert in evaluation.  Those interested in Teacher Quality and VAT research can learn much more at http://www.edtrust.org