There may be no topic more controversial in the world of education than value-added assessment—essentially judging and ranking teachers based on how well they can get students to improve their scores on standardized tests.  Almost all of the discussion has centered around the question of whether or not it is appropriate to make test scores the determining factor in a teacher’s performance rating.  But beyond the headlines and the lawsuits, there is an issue that has gone completely unaddressed.  No one is asking how value-added assessments may affect the very students that this evaluation system is intended to help.  By my count, there are at least ten separate ways in which value-added assessment either does not accurately measure the needs of a student or is actually harmful to a child’s education.  Until these flaws are addressed, value-added assessment will be nothing more than a toy for politicians and headline writers, not a serious tool for improving learning.
1. The premise of value-added assessment is that standardized tests are an accurate and decisive measure of student learning.  In fact, standardized testing is neither definitive nor especially reliable.  City and state exams are snapshots, not in-depth diagnostic tools.