Value Added Assessment of Teacher Preparation in Louisiana: 2005-2006 to 2008-2009. Overview of Performance Bands

The Louisiana Board of Regents is currently outpacing the nation in its ability to inform the public about the effectiveness of redesigned teacher preparation programs in preparing new teachers to teach grades 4-9 students in the areas of mathematics, science, social studies, reading, and language arts. Through the use of Louisiana's Value-Added Teacher Preparation Assessment Model, it is possible to determine the extent to which teacher preparation programs are preparing their graduates to enable grades 4-9 students to demonstrate predicted growth in achievement in tested content areas. Results show that it is possible for new teachers to teach students who demonstrate growth in achievement that is comparable or greater than the growth in achievement of students taught by average experienced teachers. The current analysis used State achievement data in the areas of mathematics, science, social studies, language arts, and reading for students enrolled in grades 4-9 who attended public schools in Louisiana during a full school year (2005-06, 2006-07, 2007-08, and 2008-09). In addition, the study used data for all grades 4-9 teachers in public schools in Louisiana who taught students mathematics, science, social studies, language arts, and/or reading during 2005-06, 2006-07, 2007-08, and 2008-09. A Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) was used for the analysis. Five bands of performance were created to focus attention on clusters of performance rather than a continuous ranking of teacher preparation programs: (1) Level 1--Programs whose "effect estimate" is above the mean effect for experienced teachers by its standard error of measurement or more; (2) Level 2--Programs whose "effect estimate" is above the mean effect for new teachers by its standard error of measurement or more; (3) Level 3--Programs whose "effect estimate" is within a standard error of measurement of the mean effect for new teachers; (4) Level 4--Programs whose "effect estimate" is below the mean effect for new teachers by its standard error of measurement or more; and (5) Level 5--Programs whose "effect estimate" is statistically significantly below the mean for new teachers. This report provides an overview of the Performance Bands for all alternate certification and undergraduate programs, as well as a specific breakdown of the performance levels, "effect estimates," confidence intervals, and number of new teachers included in the analysis for each university and private provider for each co