Principals Often Shy Away From Giving 'True' Teacher Evaluations
Grisson and Loeb make the case that getting principals to stop inflating evaluations and "give 'truer' ratings" would allow for struggling teachers to get more accurate feedback and pave the path for those who don't improve to leave the profession. They do caution that these changes won't happen without the sort of training that allows principals to "conduct high-quality evaluations that are consistent with district goals and to have constructive feedback conversations."
AERA: Early Results in California's CORE Districts Give Lessons for ESSA
In a separate study, Heather Hough, Demetra Kalogrides, and Susanna Loeb of Stanford found 5 percent of the differences in schools' math growth in elementary school and 6 percent of the differences in math growth in middle schools, as well as 11 percent of the differences in high schools' graduation rates, could be explained by differences in their school climate and student-reported social skills. That was the case even after controlling for school demographics and quality indicators, like teacher quality. Combining the results of the student social-skills surveys and school climate surveys accounted for 21 percent of the difference in math scores for the lowest-performing 5 percent of low-performing schools.
Descriptive analysis in education: A guide for researchers
Whether the goal is to identify and describe trends and variation in populations, create new measures of key phenomena, or describe samples in studies aimed at identifying causal effects, description plays a critical role in the scientific process in general and education research in particular. Descriptive analysis identifies patterns in data to answer questions about who, what, where, when, and to what extent. This guide describes how to more effectively approach, conduct, and communicate quantitative descriptive analysis. The primary audience for this guide includes members of the research community who conduct and publish both descriptive and causal studies, although it could also be useful for policymakers and practitioners who are consumers of research findings. The guide contains chapters that discuss the important role descriptive analysis plays; how to approach descriptive analysis; how to conduct descriptive analysis; and how to communicate descriptive analysis findings.
Early-Education Research: Transitional-Kindergarten Evaluation in San Francisco
Through the Stanford-SFUSD partnership I had the opportunity to use the district's data to evaluate the TK program. I leveraged the age eligibility requirements to compare the outcomes of students who attended TK to students who attended San Francisco's universal prekindergarten program. TK differs from the universal prekindergarten program in that it is folded into the larger K-12 system, employs teachers that are more highly educated and compensated, and offers a more academically focused curriculum established by SFUSD.
Congratulations to Susanna Loeb! Winner of #AEFP2017 Outstanding Service Award
THANK YOU from @aefpweb and congratulations to @SusannaLoeb @StanfordCEPA . Winner of #AEFP2017 Outstanding Service Award. pic.twitter.com/JMd8n1MGxy
— AEFP (@aefpweb) March 18, 2017
Continued Support for Improving the Lowest-Performing Schools
The release of a new report on the effects of School Improvement Grants (SIG), part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act aimed at improving the nation’s lowest performing schools, called into question the viability of improving low-performing schools at scale. The report stated that, “Implementing a SIG-funded model had no impact on math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment.”
CEPA faculty and alumni score high marks on the 2017 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings
The 2017 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings were released this week and CEPA faculty and alumni* scores high marks on the list. Of the 200 education scholars ranked, 12 faculty and alumni* made the list: Eric Hanushek, Michael W. Kirst, Sean Reardon, Martin Carnoy, Susanna Loeb, Caroline Hoxby, Thomas Dee, Katharine Strunk*, Edward H. Haertel, Daphna Bassok*, Jason Grissom*, Eric Bettinger.
School Leadership and Teacher Collaboration
I thought of the Shanghai teachers' experiences recently when I read about a new study that looked at the effects of teacher teams. The study, by researchers at the University of Washington, Stanford University, and Vanderbilt University, found that when an effective teacher joins a teacher team, students of all of the teachers in the team improve their mathematics scores. In addition, the study found that when an ineffective teacher joins the team, the other teachers' students' performance does not go down. In other words, teacher collaboration benefits all teachers, and all of their students.
An Effective Teacher Can Improve Student Learning Across the Grade, Study Finds
When an effective teacher joins a grade-level teaching team, students' learning across the board improves as other teachers in the grade improve. Researchers from the University of Washington, Stanford University, and Vanderbilt University examined teacher "spillover" effects using over a decade of administrative data on math teachers in grades 3 to 8 and their students' standardized test scores in the Miami school district.