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Are Effective Teachers for Students with Disabilities Effective Teachers for All?
The success of many students with disabilities (SWDs) depends on access to high-quality general education teachers. Yet, most measures of teacher value-added measures (VAM) fail to distinguish between a teacher’s effectiveness in educating students with and without disabilities. We create two VAM measures: one focusing on teachers’ effectiveness in improving outcomes for SWDs, and one for non-SWDs. We find top-performing teachers for non-SWDs often have relatively lower VAMs for SWDs, and that SWDs sort to teachers with lower scores in both VAMs. Overall, SWD-specific VAMs may be more suitable for identifying which teachers have a history of effectiveness with SWDs and could play a role in ensuring that students are being optimally assigned to these teachers.
Citation: W. Jesse Wood, Ijun Lai, Neil R. Filosa, Scott A. Imberman, Nathan Jones, Katharine O. Strunk (2022). Are Effective Teachers for Students with Disabilities Effective Teachers for All?. CALDER Working Paper No. 268-0622
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Research Area: Educational accountability