What Can Parents Tell Us About Teacher Quality? Examining the Contributions of Parent Perspectives in Comparison to a Portfolio of Alternative Teacher Evaluation Measures

Author/s: 

Benjamin Master

Year of Publication: 
2013

Parent perspectives about their children’s K-12 teachers have received increased attention in recent years as a potential performance measure for use in teacher evaluation systems. Parent evaluations of teachers may be valuable both because they may identify and provide feedback regarding important teacher contributions that support parent involvement in schooling, and because they may inform the assessment of teacher quality more broadly. However, relatively little research has explored the types of information that parents can provide about teachers, or the extent to which their perspectives provide distinct information in comparison to other teacher evaluation measures. I examine parent perspectives about teachers alongside a rich portfolio of alternative teacher evaluation measures including student surveys, formal lesson observations, and value added measures of teachers’ student achievement gains. I find that parent perspectives offer a distinct and stable teacher performance measure over time, but one that is fairly one-dimensional. They are most closely aligned with student perspectives, but are also associated with specific components from formal lesson observation ratings, including teachers’ success in fostering a positive classroom environment and encouraging student engagement. Parent perspectives are also predictive of teachers’ math value added performance ratings in the same school year. However, they contribute little additional information for predicting value added ratings when considered in tandem with alternative measures, which suggests that their value as a proxy measure of teachers’ value added to student achievement outcomes is limited in comparison to other evaluation measures.

Education Level:

APA Citation

Master, B. (2013). What Can Parents Tell Us About Teacher Quality? Examining the Contributions of Parent Perspectives in Comparison to a Portfolio of Alternative Teacher Evaluation Measures.