As a result, many school district leaders and other policymakers are raising important questions about whether other criteria, such
as measures of teacher effectiveness, should inform layoffs.
Evaluation systems often attempt to offset the focus on test score data by incorporating
other measures of teacher effectiveness, including observations, peer review, and other teacher materials.
This research brief considers the stability of value - added
measures of teacher effectiveness over time and the resulting implications for the design and implementation of performance - based teacher compensation schemes.
Drew Furedi, an L.A. Unified official overseeing the district's evaluation system, said he could not comment on the proposals because he hadn't seen them yet, but he welcomed their support for
multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, including test score data.
The group admits that test -
based measures of teacher effectiveness correlate, on average, for any given teacher, from one year to the next, at no better than 0.35, well below the 0.90 correlation one would in principle like to have.
But now some 20 states are overhauling their evaluation systems, and many policymakers involved in those efforts have been asking the Gates Foundation for suggestions on
what measures of teacher effectiveness to use, said Vicki L. Phillips, a director of education at the foundation.
Their findings described VAM as an imprecise and
unstable measure of teacher effectiveness, particularly if the student assessment data are not of high quality or do not cover a sufficient number of years from which to predict student achievement with any degree of accuracy.
When gathering concurrent - related evidence of validity (see full definition on the Glossary page of this site), it is necessary to assess, for example, whether teachers who post large and small value - added gains or losses over time are the same teachers deemed effective or ineffective, respectively, over the same period of time using other independent quantitative and
qualitative measures of teacher effectiveness (e.g., external teaching excellence awards like in the case here).
The concern with confounding is that student characteristics will
conflate measures of teacher effectiveness in predictable ways: teachers in high - poverty schools might consistently receive scores that are too low, teachers of English language - learners might consistently receive scores that are too high, and so on.
A simple classroom average gain could then be a statistically
biased measure of teacher effectiveness, meaning it would systematically under - or over-estimate a teacher's ability depending on the characteristics of the students assigned to her.
The MET Project found that
composite measures of teacher effectiveness that combined, with roughly equal weights, value - added calculated with state tests, classroom observations, and student responses to surveys were somewhat better predictors of a teacher's future value - added calculated from an alternative test than was value - added calculated from the state test alone.
As a number of states begin to revamp their tenure - granting policies, the idea that high - stakes personnel decisions need to be linked to
direct measures of teacher effectiveness is gaining traction among education policymakers.
Principal Burris further notes that Dr. Tisch appears intent on ensuring that the predicted growth of students on standardized tests be the
supreme measure of teacher effectiveness, suggesting that teachers found ineffective by those measures be found ineffective overall and removed from the classroom after two such ratings.
First, assuming readily
available measures of teacher effectiveness actually measure true teacher effectiveness, an assumption to which we return below, the differences between seniority and effectiveness - based layoffs are larger and more persistent than we anticipated.
States can play a central role in driving
strong measures of teacher effectiveness by requiring measures that truly differentiate performers; shining a bright light on how different districts and schools are doing on improving effectiveness; creating a state - mandated «floor» for teacher evaluation systems; and driving an ongoing effort to improve the definition and measurement of teacher effectiveness.
He made five overarching points: that's it's possible to
implement measures of teacher effectiveness, that LA Unified has a higher ratio of ineffective teachers than school districts studied by other researchers, that a disproportionate number of ineffective teachers in LA Unified serve Latino and African American students, that effective teachers have a causal effect on student achievement and that teachers have long - term impacts not only on student achievement but also lifetime earnings.
This work argues the importance of the noncognitive for student life outcomes, reviews the little we know about how to improve student academic perseverance and mindset, and raises questions about our nation's
current measures of teacher effectiveness.
Through the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, the three sites and CMOs committed to giving teachers the feedback and support they need by incorporating
multiple measures of teacher effectiveness — including classroom observations, student achievement measures, and student surveys — in their evaluation systems.