Value-added scores show limited stability over time in primary school.

Value-added (VA) models are used for accountability purposes and quantify the value a teacher or a school adds to their students' achievement. If VA scores lack stability over time and vary across outcome domains (e.g., mathematics and language learning), their use for high-stakes decision making is in question and could have detrimental real-life implications: teachers could lose their jobs, or a school might receive less funding. However, school-level stability over time and variation across domains have rarely been studied together. In the present study, we examined the stability of VA scores over time for mathematics and language learning, drawing on representative, large-scale, and longitudinal data from two cohorts of standardized achievement tests in Luxembourg (N = 7,016 students in 151 schools). We found that only 34-38% of the schools showed stable VA scores over time with moderate rank correlations of VA scores from 2017 to 2019 of r = .34 for mathematics and r = .37 for language learning. Although they showed insufficient stability over time for high-stakes decision making, school VA scores could be employed to identify teaching or school practices that are genuinely effective-especially in heterogeneous student populations.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) fatality risk perception of US adult residents in March and April 2020.

The study compares empirical results on the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (causing COVID-19) fatality risk perception of US adult residents stratified for age, gender, and race in mid-March 2020 (N1  = 1,182) and mid-April 2020 (N2  = 953). While the fatality risk perception has increased from March 2020 to April 2020, our findings suggest that many US adult residents severely underestimated their absolute and relative fatality risk (i.e., differentiated for subgroups defined by pre-existing medical conditions and age) at both time points compared to current epidemiological figures. These results are worrying because risk perception, as our study indicates, relates to actual or intended health-protective behaviour that can reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates.