eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Teacher evaluation is at the center of current education policy reform. Most evaluation systems rely at least in part on principals’ assessments of teachers, and their discretionary judgments carry substantial weight. However, we know relatively little about what they value when determining evaluations and high stakes personnel decisions. The author leverages unique data from a public charter school district to explore the extent to which school administrators’ formative evaluations of teachers align with teacher and school effectiveness and predict future personnel decisions. While previous research has examined administrators’ subjective evaluations of teachers in surveys and in practice, this study links a detailed evaluation in practice with multiple types of personnel decisions to provide new insights into administrator decision-making. A better understanding of the teacher contributions that administrators… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: William Taylor, 29, a third generation Washington, D.C. resident stands out for a number of reasons. For one, he is an African American man who taught math at an elementary school for many years. Taylor excelled in the role, so much so that he now coaches his fellow math teachers at Aiton Elementary School, which is located in a high-poverty Washington D.C. neighborhood. He has also been profiled in the national news–specifically in “The Atlantic”–where it was noted that, in a typical school year, 60 percent of Taylor’s students start their first day in his class doing math below grade level, but by the end of the year, 90 percent of his students are performing above grade level. For his exemplary work Taylor earned $131,000 in 2013–another… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: “The Right Trajectory” brings to the forefront an often-overlooked voice in the debate about new state assessments developed in consortia: that of the best teachers in the country. This research suggests, despite challenges still to overcome, that these front-line experts believe that the new consortia tests are an improvement on the former assessments and so represent movement in the right direction for students and for education in their states. What do great teachers think of the new assessments compared to the previous ones? As part of state transitions to college and career ready (CCR) standards, including the Common Core State Standards in more than 40 states (NGA & CCSSO, 2010), states are for the first time administering new summative assessments aligned to those standards and aiming for… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper contributes importantly to the growing literature on the training of special education teachers and how it translates into classroom practice and student achievement. The authors examine the impact of pre-service preparation and in-service formal and informal training on the ability of teachers to promote academic achievement among students with disabilities. Using student-level longitudinal data from Florida over a five-year span the authors estimate “value-added” models of student achievement. There is little support for the efficacy of in-service professional development courses focusing on special education. However, teachers with advanced degrees are more effective in boosting the math achievement of students with disabilities than are those with only a baccalaureate degree. Also pre-service preparation in special education has statistically significant and quantitatively substantial effects on the ability… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) provides grants to support performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in high-need schools. The goal of the grants is to increase the number of high-performing teachers in high-need schools by rewarding educators for improving students’ achievement. The report on which this snapshot is based describes TIF implementation in all 2010 TIF districts and analyzes, in greater detail, the implementation and impacts of pay-for-performance in 10 evaluation districts that implemented the TIF program for three years. Using information from the first (2011-2012), second (2012-2013), and third (2013-2014) years of TIF implementation, the report addresses the following four questions: (1) What are the characteristics of all 2010 TIF districts and their performance-based compensation systems? What implementation experiences and challenges have TIF districts encountered?;… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data and teacher survey data from a large urban school district, we examine schools’ responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find that teachers who produce greater student achievement gains in math and reading are more likely to be placed in a tested grade-subject combination in the following year and that the relationship between prior performance and assignment is stronger in schools where principals have more influence over assignments. This strategic response has the consequence of disadvantaging achievement in early grades, however, concentrating less effective teachers in K-2 classrooms, which in turn produces lower achievement for those students, as measured by low-stakes assessments, that may persist into tested… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Iowa is working to provide teachers with more effective and relevant professional development that measurably increases their instructional skills and their students’ learning growth. This is particularly important as new Iowa Core Standards with higher expectations for student learning are put in place. While the Iowa Core focuses on what students need to learn, an equally important question is: how do teachers adjust their instruction to support new, more challenging standards for learning? One important district initiative to support strong classroom instruction is TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP) which is being implemented with the support of a federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant. The TIF project in Iowa has an emphasis on the development of teacher leadership and effectiveness across all subjects, with… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The 2010 report from the National Research Council on teacher education programs in the United States, “Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy,” reported that “the empirical evidence on effective teacher preparation [is] nearly nonexistent” (p. 99). The publication later that year of two major studies, one on the preparation of mathematics teachers and the other on teacher preparation in early literacy, marked the first use of nationally representative data to begin to answer important questions concerning teacher preparation in the U.S. In June 2011, the Education Policy Center (EPC) at Michigan State University convened an audience of scholars and policymakers from across the country to discuss the results of the two studies, “Breaking the Cycle: An International Comparison of U.S. Mathematics Teacher Preparation, Initial Findings from… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The purpose of this descriptive survey research study conducted with agriculture teachers in North Carolina was to determine their in-service training needs in order to be effective for preparing students with the 21st century skills necessary for students to be successful. This study reaffirms the need for continuation of leadership education as an important skill and integration of reading, writing, and math concepts into all agricultural education curricula for preparing students to be successful in the 21st century. The role of agriculture in global food security; application of problem-based learning; planning and delivering lessons to utilize higher order thinking skills; teaching leadership skills; and development of teamwork and student collaboration were identified as the five most important in-service training needs for preparing agriculture teachers to be effective… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Students who have more effective teachers are more likely to attend college, earn a higher salary, and live in higher socioeconomic neighborhoods (Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2012). As such, teacher effectiveness is critically important, and identifying teachers who demonstrate high potential for growth in their first year of teaching could be a real asset to the districts in which they teach. The purpose of this project is to determine which teachers seem to measurably improve their instructional practice over the course of their first-year, measured via a series of observations conducted by normed observers using a common rubric. Data came from 965 first-year teachers recruited and trained by alternative certification programs in 15 geographic regions: Delaware; Baltimore; Washington, DC; Chicago; Charlotte; Nashville; Memphis; Texas (Fort Worth, Dallas,… Continue Reading →
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