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Eric.ed.gov – Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers: A Review of the Value-Added Analysis Underlying the Effectiveness Rankings of Los Angeles Unified School District Teachers by the “Los Angeles Times”

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: On August 14, 2010, the “Los Angeles Times” published the results of a statistical analysis of student test data to provide information about elementary schools and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The analysis, covering the period from 2003 to 2009, was put forward as an evaluation of the effects of schools and their teachers on the performance of students taking the reading and math portions of the California Standardized Test. In Los Angeles, teachers were classified into one of five levels of “effectiveness” for their teaching in reading, math and a composite of the two. The decision by the “L.A. Times” to make these results publicly available at a dedicated web site, and to publish an extensive front page story that contrasted–by name–teachers… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Using Competency-Based Evaluation to Drive Teacher Excellence: Lessons from Singapore. Building an Opportunity Culture for America’s Teachers

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The United States’ education system needs to take its critical next step: fairly and accurately measuring teacher performance. Successful reforms to teacher pay, career advancement, professional development, retention, and other human capital systems that lead to better student outcomes depend on it. Where can the U.S. find the best-practice know-how for this? To start, it should look to nations that have revamped teacher performance measurement to sustain teaching excellence, and Singapore offers a remarkable example. In the early 2000s, the small but racially and economically diverse nation of Singapore designed and implemented a new, performance-linked method of measuring teacher effectiveness that enables measurement of teachers in all subjects and grades. Singapore had already developed a high-performing education system. But as global economic opportunities for its citizens increased,… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Boosting the Supply and Effectiveness of Washington’s STEM Teachers. Executive Summary

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In the spring of 2009, the Partnership for Learning (PFL) asked The New Teacher Project (TNTP) to analyze challenges Washington faces in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instruction and to make recommendations to overcome these challenges as part of a new STEM initiative. This initiative aims to dramatically raise student achievement in STEM subjects and close the achievement gap in math and science–ensuring that all Washington students graduate from high school college- and career-ready. Research has shown that teachers have a greater impact on student success than any other school factor, which means that teachers are a critical part of any solution to Washington’s STEM challenges. With this in mind, TNTP drew on its experience studying human capital challenges in education to identify the policies and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality. Working Paper 56

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality. This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher achievement. It begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement, which provides the basis for consideration of the derived demand for teachers which comes from their impact on economic outcomes. Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement. A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Blueprint for Change in Georgia: State Teacher Policy Yearbook, 2010

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The 2009 “State Teacher Policy Yearbook” provided a comprehensive review of states’ policies that impact the teaching profession. As a companion to last year’s comprehensive state-by-state analysis, the 2010 edition provides each state with an individualized “Blueprint for Change,” building off last year’s “Yearbook” goals and recommendations. State teacher policy addresses a great many areas, including teacher preparation, certification, evaluation and compensation. With so many moving parts, it may be difficult for states to find a starting point on the road to reform. To this end, this paper provides a state-specific roadmap, organized in three main sections. Section 1 identifies policy concerns that need critical attention, the areas of highest priority for state policymakers. Section 2 outlines “low-hanging fruit,” policy changes that can be implemented in relatively… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Measuring Teacher Effectiveness: Credentials Unrelated to Student Achievement. Issue Brief No. 10

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Given the challenges facing American public education today, identifying effective teachers is a more vital task than ever before. In the U.S. public school system today, the method used to determine teacher effectiveness–and thus to drive salary, promotion, and tenure decisions–is based on a few external credentials: certification, advanced degrees, and years of experience in the classroom. Yet according to a new analysis of student performance in Florida that two colleagues and the author conducted, little to no relationship exists between these credentials and the gains that a teacher’s students make on standardized math and reading exams. The expansive study included all test-taking public elementary school students in the state of Florida over a period of four years. This study, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Using Alternative Student Growth Measures for Evaluating Teacher Performance: What the Literature Says. REL 2013-002

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: States are increasingly interested in including measures of student achievement growth, or “value- added,” in evaluating teachers. Annual state assessments, however, which are the typical measure of student growth, usually cover only reading and math teachers and only in grades 4-8. These state assessments thus cannot generally be used to measure contributions to student achievement growth for early elementary school teachers, most high school teachers, and teachers of other subjects. As a consequence, a growing number of states and school districts are exploring alternatives for measuring teachers’ contributions to student learning. These alternatives have the potential to be used for evaluating not only teachers who work in grades and subjects outside the annual state testing regime but also as complementary growth measures for teachers of tested grades… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Teacher Training, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement. Working Paper 3

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: We study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement. Previous studies on the subject have been hampered by inadequate measures of teacher training and difficulties addressing the non-random selection of teachers to students and of teachers to training. We address these issues by estimating models that include detailed measures of pre-service and in-service training, a rich set of time-varying covariates, and student, teacher, and school fixed effects. Our results suggest that only two of the forms of teacher training we study influence productivity. First, content-focused teacher professional development is positively associated with productivity in middle and high school math. Second, more experienced teachers appear more effective in teaching elementary math and reading and middle school math.… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Alternative Student Growth Measures for Teacher Evaluation: Profiles of Early-Adopting Districts. REL 2014-016

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: States and districts are beginning to use student achievement growth–as measured by state assessments (often using statistical techniques known as value-added models or student growth models)–as part of their teacher evaluation systems. But this approach has limited application in most states, because their assessments are typically administered only in grades 3-8 and only in math and reading. In response, some districts have turned to alternative measures of student growth. These alternative measures include alternative assessment-based value-added models (VAMs) that use the results of end-of-course assessments or commercially available tests in statistical models, and student learning objectives (SLOs), which are determined by individual teachers, approved by principals, and used in evaluations that do not involve sophisticated statistical modeling. For this report, administrators in eight districts that were early… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Alternative Student Growth Measures for Teacher Evaluation: Profiles of Early-Adopting Districts. Summary. REL 2014-016

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: States and districts are beginning to use student achievement growth–as measured by state assessments (often using statistical techniques known as value-added models or student growth models)–as part of their teacher evaluation systems. But this approach has limited application in most states, because their assessments are typically administered only in grades 3-8 and only in math and reading. In response, some districts have turned to alternative measures of student growth. These alternative measures include alternative assessment-based value-added models (VAMs) that use the results of end-of-course assessments or commercially available tests in statistical models, and student learning objectives (SLOs), which are determined by individual teachers, approved by principals, and used in evaluations that do not involve sophisticated statistical modeling. For this report, administrators in eight districts that were early… Continue Reading