Education "reform" is unfolding at an unprecedented rate, with little public input. The most discussed factor driving this transformation is the nearly $5 billion in discretionary funding provided to the United States Department of Education (USDOE) by the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (ARRA), known as Race…

There are ongoing debates as to the merits of mastery and performance (or competitive) approaches to school and student learning. Mastery approaches are focused on factors and processes such as effort, skill development, learning, and understanding. Performance approaches are focused more on competition, demonstrating relative ability, social…

The purpose of this study was to clarify the ways that a district used its teacher staffing and professional development policies to increase the supply of effective teachers in high-poverty schools, to determine the efficacy of these policies in the view of district administrators and teachers, and to identify the facilitators and constraints to…

The growing availability of data linking students to classroom teachers has made it possible to estimate the contribution teachers make to student achievement. While there is a growing consensus that teacher quality is important and current evaluation systems are inadequate, many have expressed concerns over the use of value-added measures (VAMs)…

Teacher evaluation is currently a major policy issue at all levels of the K-12 system driven in large part by current US Department of Education requirements. The main objective of this study is to explore the patterns of relationship between observational scores and value-added measures of teacher performance in math classrooms and the variation…

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…

This paper examines the value added by engaging pre-service teacher candidates in action research. At a time when teacher preparation programs are under pressure to respond to state and national assessments, extend field experiences, and meet other external demands, what added benefits are gained from also requiring action research from the…

Unlike in elementary school, high-school teacher effects may be confounded with both selection to tracks and unobserved track-level treatments. I document sizable confounding track effects, and show that traditional tests for the existence of teacher effects are likely biased. After accounting for these biases, high-school algebra and English…

Effective teaching has long been an issue of national concern, but in recent years focus on the effectiveness of programs to produce high-quality teachers has sharpened. Long-standing achievement gaps persist despite large-scale legislative changes at the federal and state levels, and American students continue to show poorer performance on…

NCLB policies in the United States focus schools' efforts on implementing effective instructional processes to improve student outcomes. This study looks more specifically at how schools are perceived to be implementing state required curricula and benchmarks and developing teaching and learning processes that support the teaching of state…

This study investigates the value of reporting the reading, listening, speaking, and writing section scores for the "TOEFL iBT"® test, focusing on 4 related aspects of the psychometric quality of the TOEFL iBT section scores: reliability of the section scores, dimensionality of the test, presence of distinct score profiles, and the…

What is effective teaching? It is not enough to say "I know it when I see it"--not when we are expecting so much more from students and teachers than in the past. To help teachers achieve greater success with their students we need new and better ways to identify and develop effective teaching. The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET)…

Effective teachers have an enormous impact on the lives of their students. Great teachers can help students who are behind academically catch up to grade-level expectations. By accelerating student performance, they can help close the opportunity and achievement gaps that cut short the college and career dreams of so many low-income students and…

North Carolina has embarked on an ambitious effort to improve its public schools. Career-and college-ready standards, high-quality assessments, and advanced technology are all part of this effort, and each plays an important role. No part of students' educational experience matters more than the teachers who facilitate their learning. North…

Relatively little research has explored whether schools differ in their effectiveness for different group of pupils (e.g. by ethnicity, poverty or gender), for different curriculum subjects (e.g. English, mathematics or science) or over time (different cohorts). This paper uses multilevel modelling to analyse the national test results at age 7 and…