Materials Under Development

Presentation: Rob Meyer, Director of the Value-Added Research Center
Video	Introduction to Value-Added - Introduction to Value-Added - Lecture 1 - What is Value-Added - Why use Value-Added - Value-Added vs. Attainment - Applications of Value-Added Analysis
Video	Value-Added Data, Model and Issues - Introduction to Value-Added - Lecture 2 - Districts, Schools and Grades - Statewide Value-Added Systems - Use of Coefficients - Differential Effects - Measurement Error and Shrinkage - Test Issues
Video	Follow up questions - Value-Added Question and Answer Session
Supporting Materials used in these sessions
Materials	Value-Added Teacher I Presentation.ppt Introductory value-added presentation to teachers in Milwaukee Public Schools. This presentation is intended to be used by school improvement and data use experts from the Milwaukee school turnaround experts.
Video	Value-Added Analogy (Oak Tree) This is a “big picture” view of the Value-Added process taking the concept out of the education context and substituting a gardener/oak tree example. We start by looking at the trees at one point in time and measuring height, this is analogous to an “Attainment Model”. Then we measure the starting height and ending height (pretest and posttest) and find the difference. That is analogous to a “Simple Growth (Gain) Model”. We adjust for effects outside of the gardener (teacher) control and come up with an adjusted growth model. This is analogous to a “Value-Added Model.”
Materials	Value-Added Meyer-Dokumaci AEFA 2009 Slides.pdf This presentation is the first public presentation of the Wisconsin state-wide value-added system. It includes comparisons of how school and grade-level value-added can be used by district, regional, and state agencies.
Quadrants Exercise
What is the value of designating a school High Value-Added / Low Attainment? Can we learn anything by studying such a school? The quadrant exercise takes the participants through and exploration of describing schools in each of the four quadrants created by and X-Y chart that has “Prior Year Attainment” on the vertical axis and “Post-on-Pre Value-Added” on the horizontal axis.
Video	Quadrant 1 – Understanding Quadrant Analysis, Michael Christian Mike explains what it means to be a High Value-Added / High Attainment school. He also explains that it is important to know the limitations of the “Quadrants Plus” representation of Value-Added and Attainment. A viewer must be careful about interpreting the significance of a school’s classification based on their proximity to the Value-Added and Attainment averages. The gray bars in the “Quadrants Plus” representation helps viewers make a determination of how a school compares to other schools in the district/state.
Video	Quadrant 3 – The Ceiling Effect Myth, Brad Carl Revised edition coming soon Brad explains that schools that are Low Value-Added / High Attainment cannot use the excuse of a “ceiling effect” to explain why their students are not high Value-Added. On the WKCE, only a few students each year score the Highest Obtainable Scale Score (HOSS). The percentage of HOSS students is so low and so lightly distributed over the state that this result does not impact Value-Added results in a significant way. Quadrant 3 schools cannot use the excuse that their students have reached the ceiling of the test for explaining a Low Value-Added result.
Video	Quadrant 2 – High Value-Added, Low Attainment, Elisabeth Geraghty Lisa Geraghty explains what it means to be a Quadrant 2 school (High Value-Added, Low Attainment). Lisa goes over some results from an exploratory study on the findings from Quadrant 2 schools. Quadrant 2 schools have traditionally been seen as failing. When considering Value-Added results, we can see these schools as being highly successful. Districts can learn a lot from Quadrant 2 schools that are producing a lot of growth in students that are generally underserved.
Video	Quadrant 4 – Low Value-Added, Low Attainment, Sara Kraemer Sara Kraemer explains what is means to be a Quadrant 4 school (Low Value-Added, Low Attainment). Sara goes over some results from an exploratory study on the findings from Quadrant 4 schools. Quadrant 4 schools serve students who have below-average Attainment and below-average Value-Added. These are the students that are at the highest risk of failure. Quadrant 4 schools may have several misconceptions and poor practices that are leading to low Value-Added results. It may be beneficial for Quadrant 4 schools to be paired with High Value-Added Quadrant 2 schools as models.
Materials	Value Added Quadrants Exercise.ppt The quadrant exercise is a critical part of helping a school or district come to terms with examining attainment and value-added results at the same time.
Materials	Chicago TAP Lead Teacher Presentation This presentation was presented to school staff participating in the Teacher Incentive Fund experiment being run by Chicago Public Schools. It focuses on explaining the Chicago reports.
Materials	Wisconsin State-Wide Value-Added final report This report provides both a technical description and analysis of a model state value-added system as well as a set of reports (in the last appendix) that should be considered as the state develops its reporting infrastructure.
Deb Lindsey, Director of Research and Assessment for the Milwaukee Public Schools
Video	Value-Added: A Practitioner's Perspective Practitioner Presentation #1 Discussion: Building and Using a Value-Added System
Materials	Lindsey, VARC Presentation.ppt
Materials	MPS Value-Added Report (2008-2009) v1.5c.xls The MPS Value-Added Report is a live document that contains historial value-added results for all schools in Milwaukee (with valid data). This reporting and analysis tool allows district and school staff to explore historical tends in value-added results and to compare the performance of various schools to one another.
David Heisted, Director of Research, Evaluation and Assessment for the Minneapolis Public Schools
Video	"Beat the Odds" Studies: Connecting Reading and Math Instructional Practice to Value-Added Results Practitioner Presentation #2 David Heistad addresses the flaws of using attainment for evaluating school effectiveness. He goes on to cover the policy and evaluation uses of value-added analysis and evolution of value-added use of the long history of use in Minneapolis.
Materials	Heistad, VARC Presentation.ppt
PD Content - These resources are intended to provide "plug and play" enhancements to both face-to-face and online presentations.
Video	An Introduction of Attainment and Growth This learning object follows a cohort of students from 3rd grade to 8th grade. When looking at attainment, their school is failing each year. When looking at growth, we see that this school makes tremendous improvement in the performance of its students.
Video	The Equitable Nature of Growth Measures This learning object follows a cohort of students from the end of 3rd grade until the end of 6th grade. At the end of the 3rd grade year, students are on track to meet proficiency standards. At the end of 4th grade, they are still on track. In 5th grade, the cohort experiences a year of low growth and fails to meet attainment standards. In 6th grade, the cohort makes more than a year’s worth of growth, but they are still below attainment standards. We track the progress of this cohort and see how growth is a more accurate and complete picture of student progress vs. only looking at attainment. When looking at growth, we can determine during what time periods students are making progress and can make more informed decisions about attributing that growth to the right classrooms / teachers / years / etc.
Video	Scale Scores and NCLB A single cohort group is followed from 4th grade to 6th grade. We examine the proficiency cutoff scores for the WKCE math examination for the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade tests. As students take tests over time, their scores must increase by a certain amount of scale score points in order to stay within the same proficiency range. There is another layer of growth that must occur to get proficiency rates up for cohorts as a whole. Even when only considering attainment, growth must be made to maintain proficiency levels. The Federal Government’s goals for 100% proficient or advanced by 2014 means that not only must students make enough growth to maintain their proficiency, but more and more students must make enough growth to just proficiency levels into the higher categories.
Video	Proficiency Index Limitations Description “Three cohort groups are followed at three different schools. The basic Proficiency Index calculation is explained. We look at different scenarios where three schools have different outcomes in their Proficiency Index over time. We do a closer examination of actual student test score averages and find that the Proficiency Index can be misleading. Proficiency Index is a limited way of looking at school performance. The actual test scores of students can tell a very different story than what the Proficiency Index tries to capture. Proficiency Index calculations miss growth within categories, and miss the difference between Proficient and Advanced.
Materials	Components of The Basic Value-Added Model This is a user navigated explanation of the components that go into Value-Added modeling. Basic information and examples are provided for the following topics: Posttest Post on Pre Link Pretest Student Characteristics District / School / Classroom Effects (Value-Added)-Unknown Student Characteristics and Randomness