{"id":4229,"date":"2013-04-04T17:56:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T21:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/?p=4229"},"modified":"2013-04-08T15:25:43","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T19:25:43","slug":"a-strategic-search-for-scholarly-reviews-doug-harriss-value-added-measures-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/2013\/04\/a-strategic-search-for-scholarly-reviews-doug-harriss-value-added-measures-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"A Strategic Search for Scholarly Reviews: Doug Harris\u2019s Value-Added Measures in Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

#13\u00a0How do you locate a scholarly reviews of Doug Harris\u2019 book, Value-Added Measures in Education<\/em>? Describe your search strategy and summarize criticisms of his book.<\/p>\n

A Strategic Search for Scholarly Reviews:\u00a0Doug Harris\u2019s Value-Added Measures in Education<\/span><\/p>\n

To say the least, I was not entirely sure on where to begin my search for scholarly reviews of Doug Harris\u2019s book, Value-Added Measures in Education<\/span>. In part, my confusion was attributed to the ambiguity of the term \u201cscholarly.\u201d What exactly determines what would make a review \u201cscholarly?\u201d Is it a review written by a professor and\/or a person with some higher level education affiliation? Regardless, I knew I had to start somewhere.<\/p>\n

That said my motto has always been \u201cwhen in doubt, use Google,\u201d so I simply typed in \u201cScholarly reviews of Doug Harris\u2019s book Value-Added Measures in Education.\u201d Unfortunately (yet admittedly, unsurprisingly) my Google search did not provide me with much other than some blogs and articles citing the book. None of which seemed \u201cscholarly\u201d or at least appeared \u201cscholarly\u201d based upon my interpretation and understanding of the word.<\/p>\n

I then decided to turn my attention to the \u201cSearch Strategies Resource Page\u201d (compliments of Jack) and checked out WordCat.org. Unfortunately, my attempt was yet again unsuccessful, as no results matched my search of \u201cValue-Added Measures in Education au: Doug Harris.\u201d I decided to make my search less specific and took out the \u201cDoug Harris.\u201d To my delight, I did get results, however, there were far too many \u201cmatches\u201d and only one of which actually applied to Doug Harris\u2019s book. Yet again, no \u201cscholarly\u201d reviews were found and it was back to the drawing board.\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With an escalating frustration, I decided to make an appointment with Jack the following day. Together we went through and discussed various alternative search strategies. I began by searching EBSCOhost for \u201cValue-Added Measures in Education\u201d in the \u201ctitle field.\u201d I was relatively successful with two matches\u2014one written by Stephen Sawchuk called \u201c\u2018Value Added\u2019 Use at Secondary Level Questioned\u201d and another review written by Lane B. Mills, featured in School Administrator. <\/em>Two matches was a good start, but I knew it was not enough and my search resumed.\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More hopeful, I decided to try my luck again and check out the \u201cGoogle Scholar\u201d search engine. I used the \u201cadvanced search\u201d and typed in \u201cValue-Added Measures in Education\u201d in the \u201cwith exact phrase\u201d box and clicked on the \u201cSince 2012\u201d link to the left.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To my delight, about 36 searches appeared in approximately 0.06 seconds. One of the results I found was a rebuttal to a rebuttal, as you will. \u00a0The authors had written a review of Harris and his book, which was later greeted by a response from Harris and low and behold, here I was reading the reply to Harris\u2019 rebuttal. It was written by Clarin Collins and Audrey Amrein-Beardsley of Arizona State University where they were essentially defending and standing by their original interpretation of Harris\u2019 belief that \u201cvalue-added is good enough to be used for educational accountability\u201d (Collins 2012 pg.3). After quoting various sections of Harris\u2019s book, they conclude by asserting that they are standing by their original review of Harris\u2019s book and furthering that \u201cvalue-added is not good enough <\/em>to be attaching any sort of consequences much less any such decisions to its output. Value-added may not even be good enough <\/em>even at the most basic, pragmatic level\u201d (Collins 2012 pg. 4).<\/p>\n

In summarization, the book was incredibly controversial. Generally speaking, the criticisms of Harris\u2019s book did not vary greatly. Many of the reviews praised Harris in his ability to express the pros and cons of value-added most comprehensively (Collins 2011 pg.2) Most common of the criticisms was that there was no real definitive conclusion in the book and in effect, \u201c\u2026readers will take away various perceptions on the author\u2019s stance\u201d (Collins 2012 pg.3). Furthermore, many of the criticisms featured claims that Harris\u2019s logic was often times confusing \u201c\u2026even for readers who are familiar with value-added and the research\u201d (Collins 2011 pg.2). Support for this claim was Harris\u2019s belief that demographic information should be left unaccounted for when calculating value-added, however he maintains that \u201cresearch evidence\u201d indicates that students deemed as disadvantaged grow at slower rates (Harris pg. 75). Critics of Harris argues that this claim \u201ccounter[s] his logic that these factors should go away over time\u201d (Collins 2011 pg.3). Additionally, Harris has been criticized for downplaying the importance of the various concerns and issues presented in the book that completely contradicts the very essence of value-added and its sensibleness\u2014drawing support from Harris\u2019s segment on the method\u2019s inability to properly judge teacher effectiveness and the inadequate attention said issue received.<\/p>\n

For some interesting reviews on Harris\u2019s book Value-Added Measures in Education<\/span> check out the following:<\/p>\n

Collins, Clarin & Amrein-Beardsley, Audrey. (2011 November 23). Review of Value-added measures in education <\/em>by Douglas N. Harris. Education Review, 14<\/em>. Retrieved January 25, 2012 from http:\/\/www.edrev.info\/reviews\/rev1126.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Collins, Clarin & Amrein-Beardsley, Audrey. (2012 January 27) Reply to Harris. Education Review<\/em>, 15. <\/em>Retrieved April 4, 2013 from http:\/\/www.edrev.info\/reviews\/rev1144.pdf<\/p>\n

Scherrer, Jimmy. (2011). Measuring teaching using value-added modeling: The imperfect panacea. NASSP Bulletin, 95<\/em>(2), 122-140.<\/p>\n

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#13\u00a0How do you locate a scholarly reviews of Doug Harris\u2019 book, Value-Added Measures in Education? Describe your search strategy and summarize criticisms of his book. A Strategic Search for Scholarly Reviews:\u00a0Doug Harris\u2019s Value-Added Measures in Education To say the least, I was not entirely sure on where to begin my search for scholarly reviews of … Continue reading A Strategic Search for Scholarly Reviews: Doug Harris\u2019s Value-Added Measures in Education<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":351,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4229"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4393,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4229\/revisions\/4393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}