Value-Added Analysis Services for the State of Oklahoma

Value-added results measure school and teacher effectiveness as the contribution of a school or teacher to students’ academic growth. In this project, Mathematica provides support to the Oklahoma State Department of Education on developing value-added measures of educator effectiveness for their educator evaluation system. The 2013–2014 school year was the first pilot year of the state’s educator evaluation system, with full implementation in the 2016–2017 school year.

Our primary tasks are to (1) engage with stakeholders to design value-added models for teachers and schools that meet the needs of the state, (2) estimate value-added results based on student test scores, (3) support the efforts of Urban Policy Development (UPD) to provide training and communication to teachers and school administrators about the value-added models and their use in the evaluation system, and (4) support UPD’s efforts to design and deliver reports to teachers and administrators that include the pilot value-added results. During the pilot phase, eligible educators will receive their value-added results, although the results will not contribute to their performance evaluations. For full implementation, the Oklahoma State Department of Education intends for the value-added results to represent 35 percent of eligible educators’ evaluations.