Buddin's Argumentative Analysis

1. Los Angeles Times presented an analysis of student test data to provide information about teacher and school effectiveness. They were to predict student test scores for students on the basis of five factors: test performance in the previous year, gender, English language proficiency, eligibility of Title 1 services, and whether they began schooling in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after kindergarten. These predicted scores were then subtracted from the scores that students actually obtained, with the difference being attributed to each student’s teacher. Richard Buddin conducted an independent study and his research questions related to the evaluation of teachers using value-added models: How much does quality vary

He also concluded that measures of teacher qualifications have a weak association with teacher effectiveness. In this report, Briggs and Domingue evaluated whether the evidence supports the use of value-added estimates to classify teachers as effective or ineffective. They also attempted to replicate Buddin’s empirical findings. This report felt Buddin left items unexamined: did he successfully isolate the effects of teachers on their students’ achievement? They believed a sensitivity analysis should have been done as a part of Buddin’s idea of using a value added model as a principal means for evaluating teachers. A sensitivity analysis is a technique used to determine how different values of an independent variable will impact a particular dependent variable under a given set of assumptions. Briggs and Domingue conducted sensitivity analysis in several stages: they looked for empirical evidence that students and teachers were sorted into classrooms non-randomly on the basis of variables that are not controlled for in Buddin’s value-added model. Briggs and Domingue also controlled for three variables: a longer history of a student’s test performance, peer influence, and school-level factors to measure teacher