For Immediate Release: July 14, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO – Value-added testing is an innovative new tool that helps evaluate schools and teachers fairly, identifies students who are falling behind, and helps states meet their obligations under the No Child Left Behind Act. This new model is explained in Putting Education to the Test: A Value-Added Model For California, released today by the Pacific Research Institute.

“Value-added testing tells us whether students are making progress and whether teaching methods work. That’s something every parent deserves,” said Lance Izumi, co-author of the study.

“Value-added testing can also make sure that both students and teachers get the help they need or the recognition they deserve,” he said.

Value-added testing solves major flaws in current student achievement measurements now used in elementary and secondary schools everywhere. Traditional measurement misleads by relying too much on averages, which fail to show how individual students have performed.

Using averages to measure a school’s progress motivates teachers to move as many students as possible from not-quite-there to doing-just-enough. But it does nothing to help those students who are severely lagging, or to encourage above-average students to excel.

Putting Education to the Test explains that the value-added model addresses such problems. It produces a score that shows how much a student’s state test results have to improve in order for that student to become proficient in that subject.

The score produced by the value-added model answers the question: “Given a student’s current location on the ability scale, how much does he need to grow each year in order to be proficient by the time he leaves school?”

“In the value-added system, students are tracked individually, so no one can fall through the cracks,” said Izumi. “And the model enables schools to reward teachers for individual student progress, no matter where those students initially rank compared to their peers.”

Value-added testing has been pioneered in Tennessee and is now under consideration in several other states. Colorado lawmakers have introduced legislation that would implement a value-added model, and the state Board of Education in Utah is considering a similar proposal. Some states have already passed legislation that paves the way for this reform.

In 2003, California adopted a law that would assign every student a unique identification number by the 2005-2006 school year. The student identification number will allow individual student test scores to be tracked and compiled over time, thus making possible the database necessary for creating a value-added model.

“The value-added model proposed by PRI,” concluded Izumi, “gives educators in California and all other states an important tool to better evaluate the effectiveness of education policies and programs, promote better student instruction, better measure school effectiveness, improve teacher training, and meet the No Child Left Behind requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math.”

About PRI
For more than two decades, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI) has championed individual liberty through free markets. PRI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility.