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Students & Educators

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Jennifer BellNovember 20, 2013 0

Bold efforts, hard work pay off for Tennessee education, and my daughter

With the others, I filed into the school gymnasium, my super zoom camera lens at the ready and a nervous smile on my face. Across the room, I caught a glimpse of my unsmiling daughter, and my apprehension grew about how this awards day program would play out for her.

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Jennifer BellSeptember 12, 2013 0

Building your teaching playbook

Like many of you teachers out there, I spent a lot of time recently preparing for the new school year. At home, it began with the therapeutic organization of children's rooms. As I sat amid in outgrown clothes, last year’s school work, and books to donate, I braced myself and

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Nadja YoungAugust 12, 2013 0

Beyond value-added: Teachers need diagnostic data to improve their practice

As student growth or value-added measures become more prevalent in educator evaluation systems, many question how those ratings actually help teachers improve their practice. i.e. “How does a level 3 teacher become a level 4 or 5?” Robust and reliable value-added data serve as a great starting point for teachers

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Nadja YoungMay 17, 2013 0

Value-added myth busting, Part 4: Value-added models cannot measure growth of students who have missing data or are highly mobile

Students with missing test scores are often highly mobile students and are more likely to be low-achieving students. It is important to include these students in any growth/value-added model to avoid selection bias, which could provide misleading growth estimates to districts, schools and teachers that serve higher populations of these

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Nadja YoungApril 15, 2013 1

Busting myths of education value-added analysis, Part 3: Simple growth measures provide better information to educators.

Welcome to Part 3 of the value-added Myth Busters blog series. I have heard a variation of this many times. “Why shouldn’t educators just use a simple gains approach or a pre- and post-test? They can trust simpler methodologies because they can replicate and understand them more easily.” Simple growth measures

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Nadja YoungMarch 27, 2013 1

Busting myths of education value-added analysis, Part 2: It is harder to show growth with high-achieving students

Welcome to Part 2 of the value-added Myth Busters blog series…have you heard this one before? Educators serving high-achieving students are often concerned that their students’ entering achievement level makes it more difficult for them to show growth. “How can my students show growth if they are already earning high

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Nadja YoungMarch 13, 2013 1

Busting myths of education value-added analysis, Part 1: You must control for demographics

In the past five years, value-added models have been increasingly adopted by states to support various teaching effectiveness policies. As educators make the paradigm shift from looking at only achievement data to incorporating growth data, many misconceptions have developed. Compounding this issue is the fact that not all value-added and

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Nadja YoungNovember 16, 2012 0

Data-driven education books make great holiday gifts for educators. Yes, really.

As the holidays approach, we’ll all have some down-time to catch up on personal and professional reading, hopefully cozied up by a fire with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. While most books regarding data-driven decision making and value-added analyses can be pretty heavy, I’d like to suggest two

English

Education | Government

Analytics | Students & Educators

Nadja YoungOctober 31, 2012 0

Education reform in Houston: Together we can. Whatever it takes. No excuses.

K-12 education reform and policy has seen a recent surge in the cinema with "Waiting for Superman," "The Lottery," and this fall’s "Won't Back Down.” However, if you can’t bring yourself to spend $9.00+ at the box office, or (like me) have a hard time finding babysitters to even get

English

Education | Government

Students & Educators

Nadja YoungSeptember 25, 2012 1

Transitioning value-added and growth models to new assessments

This summer’s education conferences have been dominated by sessions discussing the “next generation,” Common Core aligned assessments in English and mathematics. As 44 states plan for the transition from their state tests to the new PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium assessments, SAS has received repeated questions from our partners

English

Education | Government

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