Widespread support from SOAR districts, Ohio’s teachers’ unions, education associations, educators and business and community leaders led to the passage of Ohio House Bill 3 in August 2003. Receiving overwhelming bipartisan support, this legislation adopted the implementation of a value-added progress measure as an official metric in Ohio’s education accountability system in 2007-2008. All Ohio school districts will receive 4th-8th-grade reading and math value-added reports. Student reports will not be made public.

Statewide Rollout

In preparation for Ohio’s rollout, Battelle for Kids and the Ohio Department of Education led a professional development program to develop the skills of a cadre of educators representing Ohio’s 12 regions.

More than 100 Regional Value-Added Specialists (RVAS) made a two-year commitment (2005-2006) to learn to understand and use value-added information to accelerate progress for all students. In year two, RVAS trained 1,200 District Value-Added Specialists (DVAS). DVAS now are extending learning to educators in their districts.

In 2007-2009, we are providing continuing education for RVAS, support to Regional School Improvement Teams, professional development for DVAS and principals, communications to support teacher awareness and parent outreach, and technical support for value-added reporting.

Access to the Value-Added Learning Network for the 2007-2009 School Years

To help educators learn to understand and apply the important diagnostic information derived from value-added analysis to increase student progress...The Ohio Department of Education is offering free access to the Value-Added Learning Network (VALN) to all Ohio public school educators for the 2007-2009 school years.

To register, enter your district’s access code that you should have received from your VALN district administrator. This code also may be featured on a Network poster in your faculty office. You only need to enter this code when completing the registration process.