Bush Foundation Teacher Effectiveness Initiative

Over the next 10 years, at least half of the 50,000 teachers in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota will retire or leave. In the next decade, the Bush Foundation will focus its resources on producing 25,000 new effective teachers for Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research has been asked to help to reach this goal.

VARC will convert currently available data into information that can be used to develop strong measures of teacher effectiveness. We will also provide every new teacher the needed tools and information necessary to assess changes in his or her students’ achievement (and thus measure his or her own teaching effectiveness).

The Bush Foundation has selected proposals from fourteen education institutions in the three states (MN, ND, and SD) to re-develop their admissions, curriculum, and subsequent post-graduation tracking of their teacher education students. VARC's work in this large scale project will be focused on working with teacher education institutions, school districts, and state agencies to create databases that link PK-12 students to their teachers by grade and subject taught.

The Value-Added Research Center will also be providing direct professional development to all participating institutions on the calculation and use of value-added metrics. We will also be working with teacher preparation institutions to include value-added assessment in their pre-service programs. Assessment literacy is a key component of this work since the value-added metrics will be pervasive in the program.

Professional Development Resources

Introduction

Value-Added Analogy (Oak Tree) - Animated version
Value-Added Analogy (Oak Tree) - Powerpoint version
The Oak Tree Analogy is designed to explain the concept of Value-Added analysis.

Value-Added Analogy (Oak Tree) Additional Topics - Powerpoint version
This expansion of the original analogy tackles the questions of:

What about tall or short trees?
(high or low achieving students)

How does VARC choose what to control for?
(proxy measurement for causal factors)

What if a gardener just gets lucky or unlucky?
(groups of students and confidence intervals

Presenter note: This Powerpoint involves group discussion topics. A solid understanding of Value-Added Analysis in the education context is recommended when presenting this material in front of others. Deceptively simple "checking for understanding" questions can lead to complex answers relating to econometric modeling.

Reporting

Value-Added Report Interpretation
This presentation introduces the 1-5 scale of Value-Added and the color coding of estimates. A series of scenarios at the school, district, and Institution of Higher Education (IHE) level are posed to model decisions based on Value-Added data.

Presenter note: Value-Added should always be used with multiple measures. Keep in mind that this Powerpoint is presenting scenarios based solely on Value-Added data. Especially when making higher stakes decisions, Value-Added should only be a piece of the puzzle when using data to make decisions.

Value-Added Reporting Online Tool
Districts and schools partnering with Institutions of Higher Education in the project will be able to access their data here. Data is available in an interactive format, in static PDFs, and in CSV data files.

Minnesota sample username: MNSampleSchool
Minnesota sample password: sample$

North Dakota sample username: NDSampleSchool
North Dakota sample password: sample$

Minnesota Sample Value-Added Report 1
Minnesota Sample Value-Added Report 2

North Dakota Sample Value-Added Report 1
North Dakota Sample Value-Added Report 2

Online Course (in development)

VARC Online Course Preview Powerpoint

Example materials
Chapter 1: The Oak Tree Analogy
Chapter 2: The Power of Two
Chapter 3: Interpreting Results
Chapter 4: Factors Influencing Growth

News

During the Spring of 2011, staff from VARC visited the Bush Foundation’s Teacher Effectiveness Initiative P20 partner sites across Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota (planned for late Spring). VARC’s site visits supported the Bush Foundation’s Teacher Effectiveness Initiative by providing value-added analysis designed to help the foundation’s partner institutes for higher education (IHE) reach their goal of placing new, highly effective teachers in schools in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. Site visits included an overview of value-added, standards of practice, and school and grade level value-added reports. Next steps for the project include an examination of student-teacher linking data, a teacher level value-added report and a value-added report for IHEs.

Minnesota Public Radio discussed the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative on January 14, 2010. Listen to the show here.

Read the Bush Foundation's 2010 Education Update about their work with VARC here (PDF).

Contact

Mikhail Pyatigorsky
Phone: (608) 263-3415
Office: 1186C Ed Sciences
pyatigorsky@wisc.edu