Audrey Amrein Beardsley is one of the leading experts in the nation in the field of value-added assessment and also one of the nation’s leading skeptics of the claim that teacher “effectiveness” can be measured by the test scores of their students.

Recently, a study was published by economists that purported to measure the effect of teachers’ on their students’ height. The study was a blatant lampoon of VAM (value-added modeling or measurement).

It turns out that I was one of about 25 people who promptly forwarded it to Amrein-Beardsley.

She reviewed the study here. 

Beardsley reminds us of a paper written by economist Jesse Rothstein nearly a decade ago in which he lacerated VAM by showing that it could be twisted to show the effect of teachers on students’ past achievement, a feat that is clearly absurd.

When a policy idea like VAM becomes the target of satire, you…