As states and districts seek to overhaul teacher-evaluation systems, this NBER paper answers a salient question: Do evaluations actually improve a teacher’s performance? That’s one hope of reformers and unions alike—that clear and regular feedback will help instructors improve their craft.
As states and districts seek to overhaul teacher-evaluation systems, this NBER paper answers a salient question: Do evaluations actually improve a teacher’s performance? That’s one hope of reformers and unions alike—that clear and regular feedback will help instructors improve their craft. Based on eight years of data from Cincinnati’s Teacher Evaluation System (TES), the answer is yes—in math, anyway. TES is an evaluation system that uses periodic, unannounced classroom observations coupled with student-work portfolios. For this report, researchers examined data from 2003-04 to 2009-10 to ascertain the impact of TES on mid-career teachers (those in the system for five to 19 years). Building on performance-evaluation research, these analyses looked not just at any immediate improvements incurred during a teacher’s evaluation period, but at the long-term impacts resulting from participation in TES itself.
They do this by comparing achievement of students taught before teacher participation in TES with student achievement during or after TES participation, while also controlling for students’ prior achievement, teacher experience, and relevant demographic variables. Though there were no significant differences found in reading, teacher performance in math improved both during the evaluation period and afterwards. For example, a teacher whose pupils had typically scored in the 50th percentile on math tests before being evaluated begins to see results in the 55th percentile range in the years after evaluation. Teachers who scored in the lowest quartile on their evaluations showed the greatest improvements. As we rethink teacher evaluation, these are promising findings indeed. But be forewarned: A system like TES comes with a lofty price tag—roughly $7,500 for each teacher evaluated (over the course of the six studied years). If districts or states plan on taking it to scale, some financial juggling will be in order.
The Effect of
Evaluation on Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Student Achievement Data
of Mid-career Teachers
Eric S. Taylor and John H. Tyler
National Bureau of Economic Research
March 2011
The title really says it all in the latest Center for American Progress report, The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction. Author Matthew Chingos highlighted research on class-size reduction (CSR) and found that placing students in smaller classes had no real impact on student achievement. This is especially problematic due to the exorbitant costs that CSR imposes. Twenty-four states including Ohio have or recently had policies that require schools to reduce class sizes (the Buckeye State just repealed class-size mandates imposed by the last governor). Previous legislation required class sizes as low as 15 (per one teacher), but provided no funding for schools to incur the additional costs imposed by CSR.
Under CSR, schools are often forced to hire new teachers, as well as build new facilities to accommodate an increase in the number of classes. This places additional strain on districts to find resources and personnel. Although teachers and parents generally support smaller class sizes because they are easier to manage and provide students with more individual interaction with the teacher, Chingos cites research showing that teacher effectiveness, not class size, is the chief in-school determinant of student achievement. He proposes that states and districts might benefit by redirecting resources from class size reduction to teacher quality-focused initiatives, as this could simultaneously cut costs and boost student achievement. Additionally, Chingos suggests that districts interested in accessing the benefits of additional individualized instruction might employ the lower-cost option of using new technologies that tailor lessons to individual students instead of the expensive practice of hiring multiple new teachers to achieve smaller class sizes.
With weak evidence that CSR is effective, and schools being forced to make do with limited resources, states should undo CSR policies and free districts up to reward the best teachers for taking on larger class sizes, an idea that is currently in the governor’s budget proposal.
The
False Promise of Class-Size Reduction
Center for American
Progress
Matthew M. Chingos
April 2011
A recent study produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation confirms what educators and researchers have long hypothesized: reading at grade level by the third grade is a critical indicator as to whether students will graduate from high school. This study found a strong link between graduation rates and third-grade reading levels, discovering that students who don’t read at grade level by the third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school than their peers who are proficient readers.
To determine the correlation between a student’s ability to read on grade level by the third grade, and his/her likelihood to graduate (by the age of 19) researchers collected data on 3,975 students born between 1979 and 1989. Reading progress was tracked using the Peabody Individual Achievement Reading subtest (the database shows whether kids graduate from school by the age of 19). To make reporting more consistent with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) the researchers divided reading performance scores into three groups: proficient, basic, and below basic. Furthermore, to gain a better understanding of the impact that poverty can have on reading proficiency, researchers surveyed students’ families every two years, asking them questions about their economic status.
The findings are stark. While 88 percent of students nationwide graduate high school by the age of 19, this fluctuates dramatically for students with different levels of reading proficiency in the third grade. Among proficient readers only four percent fail to graduate; however, students scoring below basic proficiency in third grade reading account for 63 percent of those who don’t graduate from high school. Unsurprisingly, third-grade reading is hugely predictive of success later in school and in life.
Poverty also predicts whether a student will graduate from high school. Twenty-two percent of students who live in poverty don’t graduate from high school and this number jumps to 32 percent for those students who have spent more than half their lifetime in poverty. Subsequently students coming from poverty-stricken families are in “double jeopardy” – they are more likely to have lower reading scores and thus be at higher risk of not graduating. Twenty-six percent of children experiencing both poverty and low reading scores fail to graduate from high school.
In the 2009-10 school year, 10 percent of all third grade student who took the Ohio Achievement Assessment test had a below basic reading proficiency. When broken down further 17 percent of students coming from economically disadvantaged families had below basic proficiency in third-grade reading. Furthermore, only 71 percent of economically disadvantage students in Ohio graduated last year. Ohio must find a way to increase third-grade reading scores among all students to bolster their chances of graduating later on in life.
Double Jeopardy:
How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation
The Annie E. Casey Foundation
Donald J. Hernandez
April 2011
In recent months, education reformers have started buzzing about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and several, including Fordham’s own Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli, have proposed substantial revisions. In its latest report, Incentivizing School Turnaround: A Proposal for Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Center for American Progress (CAP) lays out its own set of proposals regarding the act’s school turnaround provisions. The report names four key recommendations:
Changes to ESEA, particularly the SIG provisions, will certainly affect Ohio, which received $19.5 million in SIG funds earlier this year. Even with the law in its current form, some Ohio schools have already implemented large-scale staff replacements, and one school will likely be run by an education management organization starting this fall. However, some schools receiving SIG funds have not made progress in implementing substantial reforms, as we’ve pointed out in the past, one of many reasons an ESEA overhaul is long-overdue.
Incentivizing
School Turnaround: A
Proposal for Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary
Education
Act
Jeremy Ayers and Melissa Lazarín
Center for American Progress
April 2011
A new monograph from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers examines authorizer (aka sponsor) oversight practices for online and “blended” (online instruction combined with traditional classroom instruction) charter schools, and finds that the development of authorizing practices for these schools lags behind the rate at which such schools are opening across the county.
According to the report, online authorizing practices – including the review of applications, school renewal, and annual oversight – are still in their early stages. (It’s worth noting, though, that some online programs are roughly 10 years old; one hopes that this finding is limited to states where online schools are much newer.) The report also finds that accounting for student achievement is a challenge, given the sometimes unique situations of students in online/blended schools (e.g., students who enroll in online school temporarily to deal with an unusual life circumstance); that governing boards of online schools sometimes do not have the expertise or capacity to adequately oversee the school; that special education presents special challenges in an online context; and, that funding levels and methods for enrollment counts are in flux at a policy level in several states.
Some of these issues are not unique to online/blended models; for example, governance and funding present challenges for any authorizer of any type of charter school. And there are of course minimum performance expectations that can and should be written into a charter (aka contract for sponsorship) regardless of whether the school is online, blended, or brick and mortar (e.g., goals for academic and operational performance).
Most importantly, the report points out that policy must keep pace with the growth of online learning. The absence of best authorizing practices could hamper the long-term viability and quality of online and blended programs which, to be sure, will be part of the nation’s K-12 educational landscape for the foreseeable future. Note to selves, Ohio, on both the online and blended fronts.
Quality
Authorizing for Online and Blended-Learning Charter Schools
National Association of Charter School Authorizers
John Watson and Chris Rapp
April 2011
As states and districts seek to overhaul teacher-evaluation systems, this NBER paper answers a salient question: Do evaluations actually improve a teacher’s performance? That’s one hope of reformers and unions alike—that clear and regular feedback will help instructors improve their craft. Based on eight years of data from Cincinnati’s Teacher Evaluation System (TES), the answer is yes—in math, anyway. TES is an evaluation system that uses periodic, unannounced classroom observations coupled with student-work portfolios. For this report, researchers examined data from 2003-04 to 2009-10 to ascertain the impact of TES on mid-career teachers (those in the system for five to 19 years). Building on performance-evaluation research, these analyses looked not just at any immediate improvements incurred during a teacher’s evaluation period, but at the long-term impacts resulting from participation in TES itself.
They do this by comparing achievement of students taught before teacher participation in TES with student achievement during or after TES participation, while also controlling for students’ prior achievement, teacher experience, and relevant demographic variables. Though there were no significant differences found in reading, teacher performance in math improved both during the evaluation period and afterwards. For example, a teacher whose pupils had typically scored in the 50th percentile on math tests before being evaluated begins to see results in the 55th percentile range in the years after evaluation. Teachers who scored in the lowest quartile on their evaluations showed the greatest improvements. As we rethink teacher evaluation, these are promising findings indeed. But be forewarned: A system like TES comes with a lofty price tag—roughly $7,500 for each teacher evaluated (over the course of the six studied years). If districts or states plan on taking it to scale, some financial juggling will be in order.
The Effect of
Evaluation on Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Student Achievement Data
of Mid-career Teachers
Eric S. Taylor and John H. Tyler
National Bureau of Economic Research
March 2011
The title really says it all in the latest Center for American Progress report, The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction. Author Matthew Chingos highlighted research on class-size reduction (CSR) and found that placing students in smaller classes had no real impact on student achievement. This is especially problematic due to the exorbitant costs that CSR imposes. Twenty-four states including Ohio have or recently had policies that require schools to reduce class sizes (the Buckeye State just repealed class-size mandates imposed by the last governor). Previous legislation required class sizes as low as 15 (per one teacher), but provided no funding for schools to incur the additional costs imposed by CSR.
Under CSR, schools are often forced to hire new teachers, as well as build new facilities to accommodate an increase in the number of classes. This places additional strain on districts to find resources and personnel. Although teachers and parents generally support smaller class sizes because they are easier to manage and provide students with more individual interaction with the teacher, Chingos cites research showing that teacher effectiveness, not class size, is the chief in-school determinant of student achievement. He proposes that states and districts might benefit by redirecting resources from class size reduction to teacher quality-focused initiatives, as this could simultaneously cut costs and boost student achievement. Additionally, Chingos suggests that districts interested in accessing the benefits of additional individualized instruction might employ the lower-cost option of using new technologies that tailor lessons to individual students instead of the expensive practice of hiring multiple new teachers to achieve smaller class sizes.
With weak evidence that CSR is effective, and schools being forced to make do with limited resources, states should undo CSR policies and free districts up to reward the best teachers for taking on larger class sizes, an idea that is currently in the governor’s budget proposal.
The
False Promise of Class-Size Reduction
Center for American
Progress
Matthew M. Chingos
April 2011
