What is the virtual coaching program tested in this study?

Feedback on Alignment and Support for Teachers (FAST) is a virtual coaching program designed to help teachers better align their instruction to state standards and foster student learning. Key components of this 2-year program include collaborative meetings with grade-level teams, individual coaching sessions, instructional logs and video recordings of teachers’ own instruction, and models of aligned instruction provided by an online library of instructional resources. During the collaborative meetings and coaching sessions, teachers and coaches use the logs, video recordings, and models of aligned instruction to discuss ways of improving alignment of their instruction to state standards. Teachers were expected to complete 5 collaborative meetings, 5 individual coaching sessions, 5 video recordings of their instruction, and 5 instructional logs per year.

 How did we assess the impact of the virtual coaching program?

 We assessed the impact of the FAST program on teachers’ instructional alignment and students’ achievement through a multisite school-level randomized controlled trial, which took place in 56 elementary schools spanning five districts and three states. We randomly assigned 29 of the 56 schools to the treatment group and 27 to the control group. The study focused on Grade 4 math and Grade 5 English language arts (ELA) and used the respective state test scores as student achievement outcomes. We used an instructional survey to measure teachers’ instructional alignment. Teacher attendance, FAST coaching logs, teachers’ instructional logs, and video recordings of teachers’ instruction were collected to describe the implementation of the FAST program.

 What did we find?

Davide Azzolini, Sonia Marzadro, Enrico Rettore, Katja Engelhardt, Benjamin Hertz, Patricia Wastiau

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Does providing teachers with personalized support help them complete online training courses?

Yes, but not for all and not everywhere. The TeachUP policy experimentation found large effects of personalized support on course completion in nine European Union Member States among professional (i.e., in-service) teachers (+10.6 percentage points), but not among student teachers. Moreover, no effects are found in Turkey. More studies are needed to investigate the contextual and learner characteristics that drive the heterogeneous effects.

Lam D. Pham

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Motivation and Context

Evidence suggests that school turnaround can be effective, but why are some models successful, while others fall short? This paper tests whether changes in particular schoolwide practices help explain the effect of turnaround reforms on student outcomes. I study these mechanisms using the Innovation Zone (iZone) model of reform in Shelby County Schools district (serving Memphis, TN) because previous research suggests that the Memphis iZone reforms increased student achievement. Specifically, I examined four mechanisms that potentially explain the positive iZone effects: (1) the recruitment of effective teachers, (2) increased opportunities for teacher collaboration, (3) a more positive learning environment, and (4) increased opportunities for teacher professional development.

Diego Catalán Molina, Tenelle Porter, Catherine Oberle, Misha Haghighat, Afiya Fredericks, Kristen Budd, Sylvia Roberts, Lisa Blackwell, and Kali H. Trzesniewski

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How much students benefit from a school intervention depends on how well the intervention is delivered

When a new curriculum is introduced at a school, the quality of its implementation will vary across teachers. Does this matter? In this study, teachers varied widely in how well they implemented a 20-lesson social and emotional blended-learning curriculum. Teachers who delivered the program at higher quality, for example, encouraged student reflection and participation and provided feedback to students on how to improve skills. Teachers who delivered the program at higher quality had students with higher levels of motivation (growth mindset, effort beliefs, and learning goals) at the end of the program compared to teachers who delivered at lower quality.

Matthew P. Steinberg and Haisheng Yang

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Is principal induction effective at raising student achievement?

Yes, according to a study of Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership (PIL) induction program. In schools where principals completed the PIL induction program, teachers became more effective, resulting in modest improvements in student achievement of approximately 1-2 weeks of additional schooling. These benefits were concentrated in schools that served the most economically disadvantaged and minority students in urban districts.

Keith Smolkowski, Hill Walker, Brion Marquez, Derek Kosty, Claudia Vincent, Carey Black, Gulcan Cil, & Lisa A. Strycker

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Can Social Skills Instruction be Efficient and Effective?

Yes. A rigorous study shows that the We Have Skills program efficiently and effectively taught the academically related social skills needed for early elementary students to succeed in school. We Have Skills appealed to children, and teachers quickly mastered and readily implemented the program in their classrooms.

Jake Anders, Francesca Foliano, Matt Bursnall, Richard Dorsett, Nathan Hudson, Johnny Runge, and Stefan Speckesser

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What is formative assessment?

'Formative assessment', often used interchangeably with the term 'assessment for learning' and in contrast to 'summative assessment', refers to assessment activities undertaken by teachers – or students themselves – to obtain evidence which is then used to adapt teaching and learning methods to meet student needs and improve learning outcomes.

James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald

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Overview

We use statewide data from Massachusetts to investigate the school role in teacher evaluation. Schools classify most teachers as proficient but differ substantially in how frequently they assign other ratings. We show these patterns are driven by differences in the application of standards across schools, not by differences in the distribution of teacher quality.

David Liebowitz, Lorna Porter & Dylan Bragg

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Discussions about teacher evaluation often focus on how evaluations can inform high-stakes job decisions. However, when designing teacher evaluation frameworks, policy makers and system leaders also explicitly seek to promote the development of teachers’ pedagogical skills. One clear emphasis in most measures of teacher practice is that teachers develop a safe and supportive classroom learning environment. Thus, as intended, introducing more intensive teacher evaluation practices could decrease the rate at which teachers send students to the office for misbehavior. This might happen if, through the cycle of observations and feedback, teachers’ classroom management skills improve and they are better equipped to minimize student misbehavior.  In contrast, unintentionally, higher-stakes teacher evaluation policies could increase the rate at which teachers send students to the office for misbehavior. For example, if teachers are stressed about how orderly their classroom seems during an unannounced observation, they might send more students out of class in the hopes that fewer disruptions occur during an evaluative visit. They might also send disruptive students out if they perceive that doing so will maximize the learning environment for their other students.

In this study, we tested whether higher-accountability teacher evaluation polices, implemented in response to the 2009 Race to the Top competition, affected how teachers responded to classroom misbehavior in the form of Office Disciplinary Referrals (ODRs). We examined this question using a sample of 2,564 schools, all of which were attempting to implement the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) framework throughout the 12 years of our sample.

Summary by: Jonathan Seiden

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What was this study about?

When children are absent from early childhood education (ECE) at centers and preschools they are unable to fully realize the positive effects ECE can have on their lives. Younger children and those from families with lower income are more at risk for absenteeism and may benefit most from ECE. Therefore, efforts to reduce absenteeism could have greater-than-average benefits for these students.

Mengli Song, Andrew J. Wayne, Michael S. Garet, Seth Brown, and Jordan Rickles

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What is the intervention tested in this study?

The 2-year intervention consisted of three components that were designed to provide educators with performance feedback on classroom practice (four times per year), student growth (once per year), and principal leadership (twice per year), respectively. The intervention targeted principals and teachers of reading and mathematics in grades 4–8, whose participation in the intervention was voluntary with no consequences for tenure or employment.

Ben Clarke, Christian Doabler, Keith Smolkowski, Evangeline Kurtz Nelson, Hank Fien, Scott K. Baker, Derek Kosty

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Early intervention can reduce the achievement gap in mathematics

More than half of elementary school students in the United States score below proficient in mathematics in fourth grade. To address this problem, educators can provide early intervention on whole number skills (e.g., counting by ones; adding two numbers to make 10; decomposing numbers). Early intervention may be integral to children’s long-term success with mathematical thinking because difficulty at school entry typically persists into later elementary grades. Persistent frustration and hardship in learning mathematics are associated with a mathematics learning disability (MLD). Students with MLD are most vulnerable to lifelong difficulty managing daily tasks that involve numbers (e.g., money management). Students with or at risk for MLD will likely benefit from intervention as early as possible to reduce adverse long-term impacts.

Cory Koedel, Jiaxi Li, Matthew G. Springer, & Li Tan

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Do Rating Differences in Reformed Teacher Evaluation Systems Cause Teachers to Alter Their Professional Improvement Behaviors?

According to our analysis of Tennessee’s reformed teacher evaluation model, the answer is no.

Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, & Roddy Theobald

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Every year there are more than 125,000 student teachers who complete apprenticeships in K-12 public schools. These apprenticeships occur in the classrooms of inservice teachers, known as mentor or cooperating teachers. Does hosting teacher candidates affect student test performance, either during the apprenticeship or in the classrooms of mentor teachers after they host a student teacher?  There is a good deal of speculation about this, but no published quantitative exploration of the impacts on students in the classrooms where student teaching has taken place.