Leadership Matters - June 2013

MET project reveals important teacher evaluation research

Dr. Richard Voltz IASA Associate Director/ Professional Development

The Effective Teaching (MET) Project has three major findings: 1) student achievement gains are the direct result of more effective instruction; 2) trained evaluators using a research based evaluation instrument (Danielson Frameworks for Teaching) does result in proper summative practice teacher evaluation; and 3) student perception surveys are effective in determining effective teaching. The most important finding of the (MET) is that research validated the Measures of

theory that teaching ability affects student achievement taking into account that students have various learning characteristics. The student academic achievement scores of the most effective teachers were significantly higher than the student scores of the least effective teachers. In addition, the student scores of the least effective teachers actually decreased. This study showed that more effective teachers are truly better than other teachers at improving student learning, not that they simply have better students. The study collected data and produced estimates of teaching effectiveness for each teacher. The study then adjusted the estimates to account for student differences in prior test scores, demographics, and other traits. The study then randomly assigned a classroom of students to each participating teacher. The adjusted measures did identify teachers who produced higher (and lower) average student achievement gains following random assignment. The data showed that we can identify groups of teachers who are more effective in helping students learn. Moreover, the magnitude of the achievement gains that teachers generated was consistent with expectations. The more effective teachers not only caused students to perform better on state tests, but they also caused students to score higher on other, more

cognitively challenging assessments in math and English. The study pointed out that “Teaching is too complex for any single measure of performance to capture it accurately. Identifying great teachers requires multiple measures.” The MET project identified three composites that reliably predicted student academic growth. They were 1) state assessments, 2) classroom observations, and 3) student surveys. The project went on to say that significantly placing a lot of weight on one measure such as state assessments will lead to unintended consequences. In the case of weighting state assessments as more than 50% results in teachers teaching to the assessment and leaving out of the curriculum other important education goals such as higher order thinking and creativity. The study concluded “Heavily weighting a single measure may incentivize teachers to focus too narrowly on a single aspect of effective teaching and neglect its other important aspects....If the goal is for students to meet a broader set of learning objectives than are measured by a state’s tests, then too-heavily weighting that test could make it harder to identify teachers who are producing other valued outcomes.” The project studied four ways to weight the measures. They are shown in the table above. (Continued on page 11)

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