Empowerment and Growth: The Application, Reflection, and Prospect of Value-Added Assessment in English Academic Quality Evaluation in Vocational Colleges

Abstract

Educational assessment reform is a pivotal lever for deepening high-quality development of vocational education in the new era. Traditional English academic assessment systems in vocational colleges suffer from inherent drawbacks such as “dominance of summative assessment, unidimensionality, and neglect of individual differences,” making it difficult to accurately measure teaching effectiveness and student growth. Value-Added Assessment (VAA), with its core characteristics of “focusing on the starting point, emphasizing the process, and considering progress,” provides a novel theoretical perspective and practical tool to address this dilemma. Based on the practice of English teaching in vocational colleges, this paper first explains the connotation of VAA and its applicability to the field of vocational college English. Secondly, it systematically constructs an academic quality VAA indicator system encompassing four dimensions—“language proficiency, professional competence, affective attitudes, and developmental potential”—and elaborates on its specific application models and methods in English teaching. Thirdly, it offers a profound reflection on the practical challenges encountered during implementation, including data collection, standardization of criteria, model accuracy, and application of results. Finally, it prospects future optimization paths, proposing strategies such as technological empowerment, deepening school-enterprise co-evaluation, enhancing teacher training, expanding research scope, and constructing a feedback loop. The aim is to promote the localized innovation and application of VAA, providing theoretical reference and practical paradigms for building a scientific, equitable, and developmental new ecosystem for English education assessment in vocational colleges.