The transition to new assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards was a significant turning point in the standards' implementation. Concerns about the transition led districts to suspend the use of value-added scores for evaluating teachers, but changes to other measures, such as classroom observations, were rare. Using data from the…

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…

Value-added assessment is designed to measure teacher contributions to student achievement in order to promote effective teaching (Battelle for Kids, 2011b; Darling-Hammond et al., 2012; Lee, 2011). When value-added assessment is used, research indicates that in some cases effective teaching is promoted, but in other cases it is not…

This paper reports on a study of collaborative group work in mathematics. Although collaborative group work is known as one of the important approaches in education, it is still uncertain how group thinking can be measured in various learning contexts. We used the Group Thinking Measure (GTM) test developed by [Wegerif, R., T. Fujita, J. Doney, J.…

In 2016, Walstad and Wagner developed a procedure to split pre-test and post-test responses into four learning types: positive, negative, retained, and zero learning. This disaggregation is not only useful in academic studies; but also provides valuable insight to the practitioner: an instructor would take different mitigating actions in response…

Using administrative data from D.C. Public Schools, I use exogenous variation in the presence and intensity of teacher monitoring to show it significantly improves student test scores and reduces suspensions. Uniquely, my setting allows me to separately identify the effect of pre-evaluation monitoring from post-evaluation feedback. Monitoring's…

Educators struggle with "value-added" teacher evaluation models based on high-stakes student assessments. Despite validity and reliability threats, these models evaluate university-based teacher preparation programs (TPPs), and play a role in state and professional accreditation. This study reports a more rational value-added evaluation…

In this study, we compare the teacher quality distributions in charter schools and traditional public schools, and examine mechanisms that might explain cross-sector differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by teacher value-added scores using school and teacher level data from Florida. We have three main findings. First, we find that…

Since its entry into the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009, the Chinese province of Shanghai has been the top-performing economy within these international rankings. Many have interpreted this as demonstrating how Shanghai has a "world class" education system, the most effective teaching methods, and the best…

In the twenty-first century, the use of standardized tests as the primary means to evaluate schools and teachers in the United States has contributed to severe dilemmas, including misleading information on what students know, lower-level instruction, cheating, less collaboration, unfair treatment of teachers, and biased teaching. This article…

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…