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ERIC Number: ED510532
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Jul
Pages: 49
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Exploring Student-Teacher Interactions in Longitudinal Achievement Data. Working Paper 2008-24
Lockwood, J. R.; McCaffrey, Daniel F.
National Center on Performance Incentives, Paper presented at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research's National Center on Value-Added Measurement (Mar 2008)
This paper develops a model for longitudinal student achievement data designed to estimate heterogeneity in teacher effects across students of different achievement levels. The model specifies interactions between teacher effects and students' predicted scores on a test, estimating both average effects of individual teachers and interaction terms indicating whether individual teachers are differentially effective with students of different predicted scores. Using various longitudinal data sources, we find evidence of these interactions that are of relatively consistent but modest magnitude across different contexts, accounting for about 10% of the total variation in teacher effects across all students. However, the amount that the interactions matter in practice depends on how different are the groups of students taught by different teachers. Using empirical estimates of the heterogeneity of students across teachers, we find that the interactions account for about 3%-4% of total variation in teacher effects on different classes, with somewhat larger values in middle school mathematics. Our findings suggest that ignoring these interactions is not likely to introduce appreciable bias in estimated teacher effects for most teachers in most settings. The results of this study should be of interest to policymakers concerned about the validity of value-added modeling (VAM) teacher effect estimates. Additional details on the prior distributions and MCMC results are provided in the Appendix. (Contains 3 figures, 2 tables and 5 footnotes.)
National Center on Performance Incentives. Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, PMB #43, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203. Tel: 615-322-5538; Fax: 615-322-6018; e-mail: ncpi@vanderbilt.edu; Web site: http://www.performanceincentives.org
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: Elementary Education; Middle Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Vanderbilt University, National Center on Performance Incentives
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: R305A060034