As students' reading proficiency gaps persist across the United States, educational leaders have turned to alternative methods to foster effective instructional literacy practices. One approach to combat this dilemma is the implementation of scripted reading programs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of scripted reading…

Teachers need more clarity about effective teaching practices as they strive to help their low-achieving students understand mathematics. Our study describes the instructional practices used by two teachers who, by value-added metrics, would be considered "highly effective teachers" in classrooms with a majority of students who were…

Education agencies are evaluating teachers using student achievement data. However, very little is known about the comparability of test-based or "value-added" metrics across districts and the extent to which they capture variability in classroom practices. Drawing on data from four urban districts, we found that teachers were…

Like many states throughout the nation, Pennsylvania is in the midst of major reforms to its teacher evaluation system. Under the new system, the state will base annual evaluations on several measures, including supervisor observations using the Framework for Teaching (FFT) and, for many teachers, their contributions to student achievement growth…