Contemporary teacher evaluation policies are built upon multiple-measure systems including, primarily, teacher-level value-added and observational estimates. However, researchers have not yet investigated how using these indicators to evaluate teachers might distort validity, especially when one indicator seemingly trumps, or is trusted over the…

For this study, researchers critically reviewed documents pertaining to the highest profile of the 15 teacher evaluation lawsuits that occurred throughout the U.S. as pertaining to the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers. In New Mexico, teacher plaintiffs contested how they were being evaluated and held accountable using a homegrown…

In this commentary, we discuss three types of data manipulations that can occur within teacher evaluation methods: artificial inflation, artificial deflation, and artificial conflation. These types of manipulation are more popularly known in the education profession as instances of Campbell's Law (1976), which states that the higher the…

Being an expert involves explaining how things are supposed to work, and, perhaps more important, why things might not work as supposed. In this study, researchers surveyed scholars with expertise in value-added models (VAMs) to solicit their opinions about the uses and potential of VAMs for teacher-level accountability purposes (for example, in…