Atlanta Public School's vision is to raise student achievement by focusing on teacher effectiveness by creating a system of support within the Atlanta Public Schools that:

• Recognizes that teachers are the single most important factor in closing the student achievement gap;
• Evaluates all teachers fairly and consistently;
• Gives all teachers the support they need to improve; and
• Hires, retains and rewards the most effective teachers.

As Atlanta Public Schools (APS) continues efforts as part of the Effective Teacher in Every Classroom (ETEC) Initative, the district is utilizing a value-added measure of student growth. With value-added analysis, APS will be able to accurately measure teacher effectiveness with data on students, test results and information on which students are taught. To ensure the quality of APS data going into the analysis, we are performing a data quality activity to verify the teacher-student data link.

Working with Battelle for Kids and the Value-Added Research Center, APS conducted a 16-school pilot during the 2010-2011 school year. Results and lessons learned from that pilot will inform a district-wide roll-out of APS value-added analysis in the spring of 2012. The pilot opportunity allowed APS to learn, improve and create a scalable approach to value-added analysis in a way that makes it most effective for the district.

This pilot project, ensuring the instructional linkage between teachers and students was accurately captured, included 16 elementary and middle schools and approximately 7,600 students.