1st Edition
Rethinking Value-Added Models in Education Critical Perspectives on Tests and Assessment-Based Accountability
Section I: Introduction
Chapter 1: Socially Engineering the Road to Utopia
Chapter 2: Value-Added Models (VAMs) and the Human Factor
Chapter 3: A VAMoramic View of the Nation
Section II: Highly Questionable Yet Often Unquestioned Assumptions
Chapter 4: Assumptions Used as Rationales and Justifications
Chapter 5: Test-Based, Statistical, and Methodological Assumptions
Section III: Nontraditional Concerns about Traditional Methodological Notions
Chapter 6: Reliability and Validity
Chapter 7: Bias and the Random Assignment of Students into Classrooms
Section IV: Alternatives, Solutions, and Conclusions
Chapter 8: Alternatives, Solutions, and Conclusions
Biography
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Ph.D., is currently an Associate Professor in Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. She is one of the top Edu-Scholars in the nation, honored for being an academic who is contributing substantially to public debates about the nation's educational system. She is also creator and host of the blog: VAMboozled! (vamboozled.com).
"Amrein-Beardsley (Arizona State Univ.) gives readers a thorough critique of the various analytical measures used to document students’ academic progress over time as such measures are used to assess the value of a teacher and/or school...Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections."- A. L. Hsu, State University of New York College at Old Westbury, in CHOICE, January 2015
"Rethinking Value-Added Models in Education is the single most comprehensive resource on the uses and abuses of Value-added Measurement (VAM) in U.S. education policy. There is something for everyone in this text: from definitions for those with no background in statistics to thorough discussions of the reining positions and debates between researchers. It therefore serves as a primer on education policy as well as a deep dive into the specifics of VAM." —Education Review
