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A new article titled “The Effect of Summer on Value-added Assessments of Teacher and School Performance” was recently released in the peer-reviewed journal Education Policy Analysis Archives. The article is authored by Gregory Palardy and Luyao Peng from the University of California, Riverside. 

Before we begin, though, here is some background so that you all understand the importance of the findings in this particular article.

In order to calculate teacher-level value added, all states are currently using (at minimum) the large-scale standardized tests mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002. These tests were mandated for use in the subject areas of mathematics and reading/language arts. However, because these tests are given only once per year, typically in the spring, to calculate value-added statisticians measure actual versus predicted “growth” (aka “value-added”) from spring-to-spring, over a 12-month span, which includes summers.

While many (including many policymakers) assume that value-added estimations are calculated from fall to spring during time intervals under which students are under the same teachers’ supervision and instruction, this is not true. The reality is that the pre- to post-test occasions actually span 12-month periods, including the summers that often cause the nettlesome summer effects often observed via VAM-based estimates. Different students learn different things over the summer, and this is strongly associated (and correlated) with student’s backgrounds, and this is strongly associated (and correlated) with students’ out-of-school opportunities (e.g., travel, summer camps, summer schools). Likewise, because summers are the time periods over which teachers and schools tend to have little control over what students do, this is also the time period during which research  indicates that achievement gaps maintain or widen. More specifically, research indicates that indicates that students from relatively lower socio-economic backgrounds tend to suffer more from learning decay than their wealthier peers, although they learn at similar rates during the school year.

What these 12-month testing intervals also include are prior teachers’ residual effects, whereas students testing in the spring, for example, finish out every school year (e.g., two months or so) with their prior teachers before entering the classrooms of the teachers for whom value-added is to be calculated the following spring, although teachers’ residual effects were not of focus in this particular study.

Nonetheless, via the research, we have always known that these summer (and prior or adjacent teachers’ residual effects) are difficult if not impossible to statistically control. This in and of itself leads to much of the noise (fluctuations/lack of reliability, imprecision, and potential biases) we observe in the resulting value-added estimates. This is precisely what was of focus in this particular study.

In this study researchers examined “the effects of including the summer period on value-added assessments (VAA) of teacher and school performance at the [1st] grade [level],” as compared to using VAM-based estimates derived from a fall-to-spring test administration within the same grade and same year (i.e., using data derived via a nationally representative sample via the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) with an n=5,034 children).

Researchers found that:

• Approximately 40-62% of the variance in VAM-based estimates originates from the summer period, depending on the reading or math outcome;
• When summer is omitted from VAM-based calculations using within year pre/post-tests, approximately 51-61% of the teachers change performance categories. What this means in simpler terms is that including summers in VAM-based estimates is indeed causing some of the errors and misclassification rates being observed across studies.
• Statistical controls to control for student and classroom/school variables reduces summer effects considerably (e.g., via controlling for students’ prior achievement), yet 36-47% of teachers still fall into different quintiles when summers are included in the VAM-based estimates.
• Findings also evidence that including summers within VAM-based calculations tends to bias VAM-based estimates against schools with higher relative concentrations of poverty, or rather higher relative concentrations of students who are eligible for the federal free-and-reduced lunch program.
• Overall, results suggest that removing summer effects from VAM-based estimates may require biannual achievement assessments (i.e., fall and spring). If we want VAM-based estimates to be more accurate, we might have to double the number of tests we administer per year in each subject area for which teachers are to be held accountable using VAMs. However, “if twice-annual assessments are not conducted, controls for prior achievement seem to be the best method for minimizing summer effects.”

This is certainly something to consider in terms of trade-offs, specifically in terms of whether we really want to “double-down” on the number of tests we already require our public students to take (also given the time that testing and test preparation already takes away from students’ learning activities), and whether we also want to “double-down” on the increased costs of doing so. I should also note here, though, that using pre/post-tests within the same year is (also) not as simple as it may seem (either). See another post forthcoming about the potential artificial deflation/inflation of pre/post scores to manufacture artificial levels of growth.

To read the full study, click here.

*I should note that I am an Associate Editor for this journal, and I served as editor for this particular publication, seeing it through the full peer-reviewed process.

Citation: Palardy, G. J., & Peng, L. (2015). The effects of including summer on value-added assessments of teachers and schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(92). doi:10.14507/epaa.v23.1997 Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1997