VARC staff are participating in a series of webinars sponsored by the department of education to provide support for districts considering implementing performance incentive systems as part of Race to the Top, Teacher Incentive Fund, or local initiatives. Michael Christian will be presenting in the session on Structuring Your Alternative Compensation Program: Challenges and Opportunities (to register click here). Chris Thorn and Peter Witham are the hosts of a session on Anticipating the Data Quality Challenges in TIF: Delivering Student-Teacher Linkages and Managing and Presenting Complex Data (to register click here). Recorded webinars will also be available after the fact on the CECR web site.

Amy McIntosh, New York City Department of Education Chief Talant Officer, discusses VARC’s contribution to the district’s teacher data initiative (New York City Department of Education website).

The Racine [WI] Unified School Board on Monday approved a new partnership with the [Value-Added Research Center at the] University of Wisconsin-Madison that will allow the district to identify which specific schools and teachers advance student achievement (Racine Journal Times, 16 March, 2010).

VARC Job Candidate Talks

The mission of the Value-Added Research Center is to develop, apply, and disseminate value-added and longitudinal research methods to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of schools and teachers, and educational programs and policies. The Value-Added Research Center performs groundbreaking work on value-added systems, program and policy evaluation, and data-driven decision making. The Center is committed to promoting the use of value-added methods for education reform.

Value-Added Research Center (VARC)

Educators, researchers, and stakeholders have identified value-added models as prime areas of interest in the search for better ways to measure the performance of students, teachers, school districts, and state education organizations.

The Value-Added Research Center is directed by Rob Meyer. A staff of scientists, researchers, and education professionals provide a wide variety of cross-disciplinary expertise to allow for ground-breaking work on value-added systems and evaluation models. The work is rigorous, transparent, and highly collaborative.

Much basic research remains to be done to build high-quality value-added models and indicators that can legitimately support district and state accountability and high-stakes applications such as pay for performance.