Sentences with phrase «measured teacher characteristics»

We find that, on average, initial performance is quite predictive of future performance, far more so than typically measured teacher characteristics.

Not exact matches

This lack of agreement, even along the most general lines, is a characteristic feature of the situation today and accounts in a large measure for the low educational status of the ministry The work of the lawyer, the physician, the teacher, the artist, the writer and the engineer, is clear - cut and rather sharply defined (at least in the mind of the average man), so that when a young man chooses one of these professions he has some idea of what he is getting into.

If the socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics of the classrooms taught by National Board teachers differ from those of noncertified teachers, measures of teacher quality that rely on student performance may be biased.

To test the sensitivity of our results to this methodological decision, we constructed a value - added indicator that measures a teacher's contribution to student achievement (accounting for a wide variety of student and classroom characteristics that could affect achievement independent of the teacher's ability).

In addition, the variance of our value - added measure is significantly higher within higher - poverty schools than in lower - poverty schools, even after we control for the experience level and other observable characteristics of teachers within each school, which supports the second prediction.

It is first worth noting that the inclusion of the teacher effectiveness measures does little to change the estimated effects of the teacher, school, and district characteristics discussed above.

The school characteristics include whether it is in an urban area, grade level (e.g., high school), the number of students enrolled, student - teacher ratio, the percentage of students who are eligible for the free or reduced - price lunch program, the percentage of minority students, and measures of student achievement in reading and math.

In other words, qualitative differences among teachers have large impacts on the growth in student achievement, even though these differences are not related to the measured background characteristics or to the training teachers have received.

But of the characteristics and attitudinal factors that were measured, «those that bear the highest relationship to pupil achievement are first, the teacher's score on the verbal skills test, and then his educational background — both his own level of education and that of his parents.»

In addition, research showing that value - added measures outperform other teacher characteristics at predicting a teacher's impact on student growth in future years — and that they also capture information on teachers» impacts on longer - term life outcomes like teen pregnancy, college going, and adult earnings — served as an important justification for differentiating teacher effectiveness.

A handful of school districts and states — including Dallas, Houston, Denver, New York, and Washington, D.C. — have begun using student achievement gains as indicated by annual test scores (adjusted for prior achievement and other student characteristics) as a direct measure of individual teacher performance.

The third approach is also VAM - based, but fully levels the playing field between schools and teachers by eliminating any association between school - and teacher - level measures of test - score growth and student characteristics.

Performance metrics tied directly to student test - score growth are appealing because although schools and teachers differ dramatically in their effects on student achievement, researchers have had great difficulty linking these performance differences to characteristics that are easily observed and measured.

These characteristics include, in addition to a variety of measures of student achievement as of 1996, the percentages of students in the school that are eligible for free school meals, those who are nonwhite, and those with special educational needs; the pupil - teacher ratio and the number of students enrolled; whether the school is all girls, all boys, a religious school, or in London; and several measures of the qualifications of the teaching staff.

This allows them to measure family characteristics (such as parental income) not typically controlled for when teacher value - added is estimated.

First, we find that VA measures accurately predict teachers» impacts on test scores once we control for the student characteristics that are typically accounted for when creating VA measures.

One concern is that VA measures will incorrectly reward or penalize teachers for the mix of students they get if students are assigned to teachers based on characteristics that VA analysis typically ignores.

We identify a number of background characteristics (e.g., undergraduate GPA) as well as screening measures (e.g., applicant performance on a mock teaching lesson) that strongly predict teacher effectiveness.

Existing empirical evidence, however, does not find a strong role for measured characteristics of teachers — such as teacher experience, education, and test scores of teachers — in the determination of academic achievement of students.

This lack of a strong role for measured characteristics motivates interest in unmeasured characteristics of teachers that have a causal effect on academic achievement.

These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value - added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001 - 2002 through 2008 - 2009.

The measures of teacher quality that are used by most public school systems to screen candidates and determine compensation — certification, experience, and education level — have been well researched, but there is little definitive empirical evidence that these characteristics, defined in general terms, are associated with higher student achievement.

In any case, our analysis below controls for each of these measures of teachers» qualifications in order to rule out the possibility that teachers» observed characteristics drive the estimated effects of grading standards on student outcomes.

The teacher and principal surveys measured perceptions of both district leadership practices and district conditions or characteristics.

Other teacher attributes: Recent studies suggest that measures of teachers» academic skills, such as SAT or ACT scores, tests of verbal ability, or the selectivity of the colleges they attended, may predict their effectiveness more accurately than the characteristics discussed above.

Again, the teacher and principal surveys measured perceptions of both district leadership practices and district conditions or characteristics.

We find it important to note that researchers, who often represent opposing views about the characteristics that define effective teaching, do agree on the dangers of using the VAM student growth model to measure teacher effectiveness.

Value - added measures have caught the interest of policymakers because, unlike many of the uses of test scores in current accountability systems, it purports to «level the playing field» so that value - added measures of teachers» effectiveness do not depend on characteristics of the students.

As examples, studies that use student test performance to measure teachers» effectiveness — adjusted for prior achievement and background characteristics — demonstrate that, on average, teachers add more to their students» learning during their second year of teaching than they do in their first year, and more in their third year than in their second.

Flawed as they are, value - added measures appear to be better predictors of student achievement than the teacher characteristics that we currently use for high - stakes employment and compensation decisions.

Because value - added measures adjust for the characteristics of students in a given classroom, they are less biased measures of teacher performance than are unadjusted test score measures, and they may be less biased even than some observational measures.

While a fair amount of evidence suggests that value - added measures adequately adjust for differences in the background characteristics of students in each teacher's classroom — much better than do most other measures — value - added measures are imprecise.

The organization takes a holistic approach to selection, rather than «using a blunt instrument like cut scores on Praxis or content exams, which can dramatically impact diversity in a negative way,» says Anne Mahle, who currently serves as senior vice president for public partnerships but led recruitment for many years.149 Although the average GPA of corps members is 3.42, TFA maintains a relatively low cutoff requirement of 2.5 and instead places greater emphasis on candidate evaluations designed to measure characteristics that TFA's research has shown its most effective teachers share.

After removing bias, the next step is to ensure that teacher recommendations are picking up student characteristics not captured by other measures but are important to student learning.

In this brief, we discuss what is and is not known about how well value - added measures level the playing field for teachers by controlling for student characteristics.

Sophisticated value - added modeling — using student assessment data, adjusted for some student and school characteristics, to determine how much growth in student performance occurred with a particular teacher — is relatively untested as a high - stakes measure, as demonstrated by the controversy that arose when the Los Angeles Times released value - added assessment data by teacher (see http://projects.latimes.com/value-added/).

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.

Value - added measures are said to be confounded if they are subject to change because of students» socio - economic backgrounds or other student - level characteristics, and also if teachers who are equally effective have persistently different value - added scores because of the types of students they teach.

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.

Appendix C is a survey instrument that teacher - powered schools can use to measure the extent to which they are emulating the cultural characteristics of high - performing organizations.

However, additional characteristics of a high - quality program include nutritious meals and snacks, a strong foundation in language development, early literacy, and math, and teachers who frequently measure children's progress.

When quality is discussed, it is typically measured by two dimensions: (1) process variables (e.g., the nature of children's interactions with adult caregivers) and (2) structural variables (e.g., the characteristics that can be regulated by policy and that create beneficial conditions for children's development, including adult: child ratios, group size, and teacher training).1, 2 In discussions of quality, curriculum — or the content of what is taught to children — has not been the focal point until recently.