From SchoolBook by Beth Fertig:
A national study by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found that effective teaching can be measured, adding weight to the arguments of those who support using students test scores to evaluate a teachers performance.
The results come as the clock is ticking on a teacher evaluation deal between New York Citys Department of Education and its teachers union, with negotiations stuck largely over this issue of value-added metrics.
We are confident that we can identify groups of teachers who are comparatively more effective than their peers in helping students learn, the researchers said. Great teaching does make a difference.
The report was released by the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, which relied on 3,000 teacher volunteers from New York City and five other public school systems, including Denver, Colorado and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina.
The $45 million, three-year project sought to answer a nagging question: do some teachers seem more effective just because they have higher performing students?
Researchers produced estimates of teacher effectiveness for each participant based on student test scores on state exams in 2009-10. They adjusted to account for differences in their students prior test scores, racial and ethnic demographics and poverty. Each teacher was then randomly assigned a whole classroom of students in 2010-11 to see what would happen once students were evenly distributed without the bias of principal selection.
Thomas Kane, the studys principal investigator and a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said he normally avoids the word cause because of his academic training. However, he said, We found that teachers that were more effective at promoting achievement on the state test also caused students to score higher on other more challenging assessments in math and in English.
The research project also looked at how much weight should be given to different measurements of teacher effectiveness. It found student test scores on state exams should count for 33-50 percent of a teachers rating. And it said student test scores are a more effective indicator of teacher effectiveness than either teacher experience or education.
But it also recommended at least two annual classroom observations by different trained observers. It found video recordings of lessons were useful and could lower the cost of additional observations, if necessary. It also recommends using student surveys.
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