Responding to federal and state prompting, school districts across the country are implementing new teacher evaluation systems that aim to increase the rigor of evaluation ratings, better differentiate effective teaching, and support personnel and staff development initiatives that promote teacher effectiveness and ultimately improve student…

Alternative student growth measures for teacher evaluation: Implementation experiences of early-adopting districts: State requirements to include student achievement growth in teacher evaluations are prompting the development of alternative ways to measure growth in grades and subjects not covered by state assessments. These alternative growth…

School districts and states across the Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic Region and the country as a whole have been modifying their teacher evaluation systems to identify more effective and less effective teachers and provide better feedback to improve instructional practice. The new systems typically include components related to…

Online charter schools--also known as virtual charters or cyber charters--are publicly funded schools of choice that eschew physical school buildings and use technology to deliver education to students in their own homes. These schools typically provide students with computers, software, and network-based resources, while also providing access to…

Since their inception, charter schools have been a lighting rod for controversy, with much of the debate revolving around their effectiveness in improving student achievement. Previous research has shown mixed results for student achievement; this could be the consequence of different policy environments or varying methodological approaches with…

States are increasingly interested in including measures of student achievement growth, or "value- added," in evaluating teachers. Annual state assessments, however, which are the typical measure of student growth, usually cover only reading and math teachers and only in grades 4-8. These state assessments thus cannot …

States and school districts are exploring alternatives to state tests for measuring teachers' contributions to student learning. One approach applies statistical value-added methods to alternative student assessments such as commercially available tests and end-of course tests. The evidence suggests that these methods can reliably distinguish…

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania plans to develop a new statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals in its public schools by school year 2013-2014. To inform the development of this evaluation system, the Team Pennsylvania Foundation (Team PA) undertook the first phase of the Pennsylvania Teacher and Principal Evaluation…

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania plans to develop a new statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals in its public schools by school year 2013-2014. To inform the development of this evaluation system, the Team Pennsylvania Foundation (Team PA) undertook the first phase of the Pennsylvania Teacher and Principal Evaluation…

At the request of Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers (PFT), Mathematica has developed value-added models (VAMs) that aim to estimate the contributions of individual teachers, teams of teachers, and schools to the achievement growth of their students. The authors' work in estimating value-added in Pittsburgh…

This report summarizes research findings and implementation practices for teacher and principal value-added models (VAMs), as a first step in the Team Pennsylvania Foundation's (Team PA) pilot project to inform the development of a full, statewide model evaluation system. We have selected 21 studies that represent key issues and findings in the…

Most studies focus on the effects of charter attendance on short-term student achievement (test scores), using either data sets that follow students over time or random assignment via school admission lotteries to control for differences between students in charter and traditional public schools. Beyond measuring achievement effects, however,…