News
- October 30, 2013
- October 28, 2013
Policymakers and reform advocates alike have rallied around introducing a set of national content standards, suggesting that this will jump start the stagnating achievement of U.S. students. As history clearly indicates, simply calling for students to know more is not the same as students actually knowing more. The largest problem is that the discussions of common core suck all of the air out of the room, distracting attention from any serious efforts to reform our schools.
- October 25, 2013
The number and variety of parties providing higher education services have exploded in recent years. With a wide array of new and often online options, college seekers need no longer assume that they will enroll on an ivy-trimmed physical campus. Nor can they assume that their private college is a tax-exempt organization. This panel will explore what this newly entrepreneurial higher education means for students, parents, academic professionals, and the legacy of higher education as a public good.
- October 21, 2013
Study Finds D.C.'s Controversial Teacher- Evaluation System Is Working. The IMPACT system—started by Michelle Rhee when she was chancellor of Washington's public schools— has caused more low-performing teachers to leave the school system and seems to have improved the performance of both strong and weak teachers, according to a study by Thomas Dee of Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and James Wyckoff of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.
- October 21, 2013, CNN
New research show a controversial teacher evaluation system may actually work. In 2009, then chancellor of DC public schools, Michelle Rhee, implemented the "impact" system in a drastic move to save a failing school system.
- October 21, 2013
Despite the glowing hyperbole in the media, Mercedes Schneider says there is nothing new in the results. The study is dated, there is missing data, the effects of the cheating scandal remain unknown, and the investigation of the cheating was turned over to an accounting firm with no experience in investigating cheating. Mercedes is not impressed.
- October 21, 2013
THE TIMING couldn’t have been more propitious as Kaya Henderson delivered her first formal address since becoming D.C. school chancellor three years ago.
- October 21, 2013
A new study by researchers at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and the Stanford Graduate School of Education found that a controversial teacher evaluation system introduced in the District of Columbia Public Schools has been a success.
- October 20, 2013
In October 2013, researchers Thomas Dee of Stanford University and James Wyckoff of the University of Virginia published (or by someone was somehow made public) a working paper on limited aspects of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) teacher evaluation system, IMPACT, which was introduced in 2009– during the time that
- October 18, 2013, Talk 910
Thomas Dee talks to Gil Gross of Talk 910 KKSF AM on his recent study about incentives, selection and teacher performance in Washington DC.
- October 18, 2013
So, it turns out that Michelle Rhee knew what she was doing. Stanford’s Tom Dee and the University of Virginia’s Jim Wyckoff have just published an important study on Washington D.C.’s controversial teacher-evaluation system. They find that the IMPACT system launched by former chancellor Michelle Rhee appears to boost teacher effectiveness and also makes it more likely that low-performing teachers will depart. Deservedly, he study got a lot of attention yesterday, including in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
- October 17, 2013
New study counters earlier research showing performance pay is ineffective, and suggests that under certain conditions incentives influence behavior.
IMPACT, the controversial teacher-evaluation system recently introduced in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), appears to have caused hundreds of teachers in the district to improve their performance markedly while also encouraging some low-performing teachers to voluntarily leave the district’s classrooms, according to a new study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the University of Virginia Curry School of Education. IMPACT is a performance-assessment system linking high-powered incentives and teacher evaluations.
- October 17, 2013
The education research of recent years has pointed overwhelmingly to the importance of teachers. Perhaps more than anything else – quality of principal, size of school, size of class – the strength or weakness of classroom teachers influences how much students learn and even how they fare later in life.
- October 17, 2013, EdSource
A study released Wednesday of the controversial teacher evaluation system that Rhee initiated when she was chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools has found that both its threats of dismissal and big pay incentives worked as intended. Within its first three years, the system led to increases in the retention and the performance of effective teachers while encouraging ineffective teachers either to quit or improve.
- October 17, 2013
A controversial teacher-evaluation system put in place by former District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has done what it was supposed to do, according to new findings: It makes low-performing teachers leave the school system and improves the skills of those who stick around.
- October 17, 2013, Politico
When Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of the D.C. public schools, announced a radical plan to rate teachers’ effectiveness on a numerical scale, then fire the worst and give the best huge pay hikes, even her staff wondered whether it could possibly work.
A study out Thursday concludes that it did — but skeptics remain unconvinced.