The State of Maine benefits from WCER's Value-Added Research Center (Maine Public Broadcasting, 22 January).
Chris Thorn, Associate Director of VARC, discusses the Pittsburgh merit pay plan (Post-Gazette, 13 December), and how the Bush Foundation is partnering with VARC to evaluate teachers in Minnesota, and North and South Dakota, based on student performance (Pioneer Press, 3 December).
Rob Meyer talks with Todd Finkelmeyer of The Capital Times about value-added models and the "race to the top" (11/10/09).
On November 9, 2009, Wisconsin Public Radio featured the story Metrics system strives to provide comparisons that are "apples-to-apples," about value-added measures and the Value-Added Research Center.
The VARC project is helping NYC schools manage their data (NY Times, 8 September).
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.
