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ERIC Number: ED540959
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Jan
Pages: 52
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Have We Identified Effective Teachers? Validating Measures of Effective Teaching Using Random Assignment. Research Paper. MET Project
Kane, Thomas J.; McCaffrey, Daniel F.; Miller, Trey; Staiger, Douglas O.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
To develop, reward, and retain great teachers, school systems first must know how to identify them. The authors designed the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project to test replicable methods for identifying effective teachers. In past reports, the authors described three approaches to measuring different aspects of teaching: student surveys, classroom observations, and a teacher's track record of student achievement gains on state tests. In those analyses, they could only test each measure's ability to predict student achievement gains non-experimentally, using statistical methods to control for student background differences. For this report, they put the measures to a more definitive and final test. First, they used the data collected during 2009-10 to build a composite measure of teaching effectiveness, combining all three measures to predict a teacher's impact on another group of students. Then, during 2010-11, they randomly assigned a classroom of students to each teacher and tracked his or her students' achievement. They compared the predicted student outcomes to the actual differences that emerged by the end of the 2010-11 academic year. Here's what the authors found: First, the measures of effectiveness from the 2009-10 school year did identify teachers who produced higher average student achievement following random assignment. Second, the magnitude of the achievement gains they generated was consistent with their expectations. Appended are: (1) Description of the Randomization Process; and (2) Treatment of Outliers. (Contains 4 figures, 17 tables, and 42 footnotes.)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. P.O. Box 23350, Seattle, WA 98102. Tel: 206-709-3100; e-mail: info@gatesfoundation.org; Web site: http://www.gatesfoundation.org
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
IES Cited: ED544205; ED544797