Value-added indicators for a fairer Chilean school accountability system: a pending subject

ABSTRACT

Although schools’ relative contribution to pupils’ progress is increasingly used in accountability systems around the world, momentum for value-added models (VAM) has not been reached in Chile. This small-scale study explores qualitatively the policy context in which this omission takes place, by analyzing policy documents and interviewing local policymakers and researchers about their views on VAM. These agents and official documents not only point to political, methodological and pragmatic reasons for and against value-added indicators, but also highlighted ethical and legal reasons pro (but not against) VAM. Overall, the most prominent reason for including VAM into the new accountability system was the ethical consideration. The notion that a fairer indicator could make justice, especially for those schools working in disadvantaged contexts, was a recurrent idea. In contrast, the most recurrent reasons against VAM were methodological. Whilst research on VAM for the Chilean school system has been conducted over the last decade, it has impacted very little the policy arena. Given that the creation of frameworks for assessing value-added indicators takes time, needs policy and research support and needs to consider potential unintended consequences, the road towards including them into the Chilean school accountability system is just starting.

KEYWORDS:

• Value-added
• value-added models
• Chilean educational system
• school accountability
• Chilean school system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) 2017 Postdoctoral Fellowships Scheme. ‘Levelling the playing field: assessing through equity the quality of Chilean schools’ [ES/P009611/1].

Notes on contributors

Bernardita Munoz-Chereau

Bernardita Munoz-Chereau is aSenior Research Fellow in Education, Department Learning and Leadership, UCL Institute of Education and an Honorary Research Associate at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol. Bernardita is the new coordinator of the special interest group on Educational Evaluation, Accountability and School Improvement of the EARLI (European Association for Research and Learning Instruction). In 2017 she successfully managed an ESRC GCRF funded study of educational quality and ‘value added’ measures of Chilean school effectiveness. She has extensive experience in analyzing international quantitative datasets (i.e. SIMCE), and has worked on several qualitative projects, such as the current Evaluation of the 5-year Study of the World Bank Early Learning Partnership Programme in 15 low and middle income countries.

Andrés Anwandter

Dr Andrés Anwandter is an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Education, University of Bristol. His research has explored the impact of assessment on learning and teaching and the curriculum from different stakeholders perspectives, such as policymakers, teachers and students. His latest research includes an evaluation of research on Professional Learning Communities for the Educational Endowment Foundation (EEF). His Phd research used narrative inquiry to explore the place of poetry in a school culture heavily driven by testing.

Sally Thomas

Sally Thomas is Professor of Education at the School and Director of the SOE Centre for Assessment and Evaluation Research (CAERe), University of Bristol. She has conducted and led academic research studies for 25+ years. Previously she was an Associate Director and founding member of the International School Effectiveness and Improvement Centre at the London Institute of Education, and has also worked at University of Oxford and the London School of Economics.

Her main publications are on different aspects of educational quality, which have examined a variety of factors, indicators and processes related to school and institutional effectiveness and improvement (both in UK and abroad). In particular she has carried out extensive research studies on ‘value-added’ measures of school effectiveness and the application of these measures for different, or overlapping, purposes including: school improvement, school evaluation and self-evaluation, international quality indicators and academic knowledge-base research.