ABSTRACT
The term ‘value added’ has become very popular among educators interested in determining the importance of certain factors in school effectiveness. The term refers to a statistical analysis that investigates the contribution to a student’s performance by one or more teachers, schools, programmes, or policies. When doing a value added analysis, the researcher is typically attempting to characterise the contribution of a certain factor to the changing performance that is observed in a set of students as they progress through school. For example, the contribution of different teachers to the change in school performance from fifth grade to sixth grade of a set of students might be the factor being examined. The current students’ performance, relative to some previous measure of performance might be examined, on the other hand, for a consistent effect due to the impact of system policy decisions or the quality of the teaching of a school system. Sometimes the analysis is so generic that the results might not even specify what it is about the school that seems to contribute to the change in performance from one year to another.
