Research on economization processes is increasingly taking seriously the social and material processes through which various policy domains are transformed into economic problems and solutions. This article engages “Value Added Modeling” (VAM) in teacher evaluation systems as a case study in economization. VAM is a statistical technology for evaluating the effectiveness of schoolteachers using student test scores, which wrests authority for the determination of quality teaching away from education professionals and toward quantitative economic modelers. Mobilizing field theory, we trace a half century of changing relationships among economists, other academics, and various policy audiences (from media to philanthropists to state and federal government) in struggles to define education policy concerning teacher quality. We show that economization is a set of overlapping, sometimes contradictory processes that can take different forms: in this case, the spread of an “economic style of reasoning” or the establishment of “economic policy devices.” The case of VAM shows stages of economization in which processes first proceeded independently of one another, then interacted in contradictory ways, and finally, mutually reinforced one another. What primarily drove these interactions was the struggle for scientific capital within the economics discipline and the changing place of education policy and VAM within it. Ultimately, VAM’s original role as a policy device for evaluating and selecting individual teachers has foundered even as it has become an important tool for economists to accrue scientific capital and expand their style of reasoning to broader audiences.

中文翻译：

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矛盾的经济化：以教师评价中的增值模型为例

对经济化过程的研究越来越重视将各种政策领域转化为经济问题和解决方案的社会和物质过程。本文将教师评估系统中的“增值建模”（VAM）作为经济化案例研究。VAM 是一种使用学生考试成绩评估学校教师有效性的统计技术，它从教育专业人员手中夺取了确定质量教学的权威，并转向了定量经济建模者。运用场域理论，我们追溯了半个世纪以来经济学家、其他学者和各种政策受众（从媒体到慈善家到州和联邦政府）在努力定义有关教师质量的教育政策的过程中不断变化的关系。我们表明，经济化是一组重叠的、有时相互矛盾的过程，它们可以采取不同的形式：在这种情况下，是“经济推理方式”的传播或“经济政策手段”的建立。VAM 的案例显示了经济化的各个阶段，其中各个过程首先彼此独立进行，然后以相互矛盾的方式相互作用，最后相互加强。推动这些互动的主要因素是经济学学科内对科学资本的争夺，以及教育政策和 VAM 在其中发生的变化。最终，尽管 VAM 已成为经济学家积累科学资本并将其推理方式扩展到更广泛的受众的重要工具，但它最初作为评估和选择个别教师的政策工具的作用已经失效。