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2012 BYU Educ. & L.J. 1 (2012)
The Legal and Policy Implications of Value-Added Teacher Assessment Policies

handle is hein.journals/byuelj2012 and id is 5 raw text is: THE LEGAL AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF VALUE- ADDED TEACHER ASSESSMENT POLICIES Preston C. Green III* Bruce D. Baker** Joseph Oluwole*** I. INTRODUCTION In the past few years, numerous political think-tanks have claimed that teacher evaluation systems must be strengthened to prevent the granting of tenure to incompetent teachers.1 Several states have responded to these criticisms by requiring teachers to be evaluated in part based on the academic achievement of their students.2 Colorado, Louisiana, and Tennessee have required their teacher evaluation systems to be * Harry Lawrence Batschelet II Chair Professor of Educational Administration, Professor of Education and Law, Penn State University. ** Associate Professor of Education, Rutgers University. *** Assistant Professor of Education, Montclair State University. 1. Authors of The Widget Effect from The New Teacher Project, in a study of twelve districts in four states, claim that 99% of tenured teachers in districts using a satisfactory/unsatisfactory evaluation system received a positive rating. The same study claims that in districts with more ratings options, 94% of teachers still received the two highest rating options and less than 1% received a rating of unsatisfactory. DANIEL WEISBERG ET AL., THE NEW TCHR. PROJECT, THE WIDGET EFFECT: OUR NATIONAL FAILURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND ACT ON DIFFERENCES IN TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS (2d ed. 2009), available at http://widgeteffect.org/downloads/ TheWidgetEffect.pdf. While the findings are striking, the study has come under fire for poor documentation of methods, leading to concerns that the findings are significantly overstated. RAYMOND L. PECHEONE & RUTH C. WEI, REVIEW OF THE WIDGET EFFECT: OUR NATIONAL FAILURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND ACT ON TEACHER DIFFERENCES (2009), available at http://nepc.colorado.edufiles/TTR-Pecheone-WIDGET.pdf. 2. This trend may be the result of President Obama's Race to the Top Program, by which the Department of Education provides $4.35 billion for educationally innovative programming. It has also encouraged states to revamp their teacher evaluation policies to include student achievement data. Andrew J. Rotherham, Rating Teachers: The Trouble with Value-Added Data, TIME, Sept. 23, 2010, available at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2020867,00.html. 1

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