Linda Steinberg and Howard Wainer

Value-Added Models (VAMs) are an attempt to rate teachers based on the performance of their students. Their use has met with a substantial amount of criticism, much of it well-deserved (e.g., Wainer, 2011, Chapter 9). Defenders of their use show that students whose teachers have high VAM scores tend to do better in the following school year than students whose teachers had lower VAM scores (described by Buddin, 2011). Opponents counter that students who do well in a school year tend to have teachers with higher VAM scores in the next year (Durso, 2012).

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