Improvement of Educational Assessment

advanced the use of large-scale assessment results in analyses directed toward the evaluation of teacher quality. The vast majority of research conducted on the use of large-scale assessment outcomes for teacher evaluation has focused on the technical characteristics of the indicators (often referred to as teacher “value-added ” effects). Though of great importance, the technical characteristics of value-added/student growth statistics goes only part way toward addressing larger issues associated with the development and implementation of complex indicator systems. The trajectory in the development of value-added/student growth and its use for teacher evaluation is not unlike the early development of large-scale assessments where technical considerations dominated the discussions about the tests and the ultimate (ab)use of the results was not as well mapped out in advance. In a recent piece entitled Problems with the use of test scores to evaluate teachers issued by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI, 2010), the distinguished authors document many of the lessons learned over the past two decades with the use of large-scale assessment. The authors highlight the importance of creating a comprehensive evaluation system that supports increased teacher performance. They point out that the use of large-scale test results is not orthogonal t