Using student performance data to identify effective classroom practices

Many people, experiences and structures contribute to an individual student’s achieve-ment. Increasingly, the contribution of teachers has become a focal point as a number of studies have found large differences in teachers’ effec-tiveness at increasing student achievement. For example, Robert Gordon, Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger (2006) ranked teachers according to their historical ability to raise student achievement growth and found that students assigned to a top-quartile ranked teacher scored ten percentile points higher on standardized tests of achieve-ment than otherwise similar students assigned a bottom-quartile ranked teacher. Other research-ers have found similar-sized variation in teacher effects on student achievement (Jonah E. Rockoff 2004; Steven Rivkin, Eric Hanushek, and John Kain 2005; Daniel Aaronson, Lisa Barrow, and William Sander 2007).