This conceptual paper discusses 'unseen observation' as an alternative model of classroom observation to support teachers' professional learning. The paper starts with a critical synopsis of how observation has been appropriated principally as a performance management tool for monitoring teacher effectiveness in the UK. It argues that the…

The teaching quality evaluation of college teachers is an important indicator of school evaluation, performance assessment and teacher promotion. However, the existing evaluation methods are only limited to the formal evaluation of teaching behavior, and have not achieved objective, reasonable and scientific evaluation results. The purpose of this…

Contemporary teacher evaluation policies are built upon multiple-measure systems including, primarily, teacher-level value-added and observational estimates. However, researchers have not yet investigated how using these indicators to evaluate teachers might distort validity, especially when one indicator seemingly trumps, or is trusted over the…

With the aim to provide teachers with more specific, frequent, and actionable feedback about their teaching, we explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to estimate "Instructional Support" domain scores of the CLassroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), a widely used observation protocol. We design a machine learning…

This document describes PPfT school-wide value-added measure by showing how to gain access to your SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) account, stepping through the school growth measures, and discussing how growth is scored in PPfT appraisal.

Recent lawsuits reveal common mistakes plaguing current teacher evaluation systems. Drawing on arguments in court documents for prominent cases, the authors find that evaluation systems using value-added measures (VAM) suffer from a) inconsistent and unreliable teacher ratings, b) bias toward and against teachers of certain types of students, c)…

In this paper, we focus on the design of assessments of mathematics teachers' knowledge by emphasizing the importance of identifying the purpose for the assessment, defining the specific construct to be measured, and considering the affordances of particular psychometric models on the development of assessments as well as how they are able to…

This publication summarizes the key discussion from experts in the field of measuring student growth during a convening held February 2015. Experts heard about two emerging approaches to measuring growth: Portfolios of student work samples and unit value-added models that provide teachers with timely and actionable feedback that they can use to…

Although the importance of professional development for improved student learning is widely recognized and many studies have been devoted to enhancing its effectiveness, the specific mechanism underlying teacher learning and how it translates into actual classroom practices are not well understood. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap in…

Researchers and policymakers in the US and beyond increasingly seek to identify teaching qualities that are associated with academic achievement gains for K-12 students through effectiveness studies. Yet teaching quality varies with academic content and social contexts, involves multiple participants, and requires a range of skills, knowledge, and…

In "Houston Federation of Teachers (Plaintiff) v. Houston Independent School District (Defendant)," plaintiffs contested how teachers were being evaluated using a value-added model (VAM) as part of the districts' teacher accountability system. The VAM at issue was the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), with potential…

Training school leaders in the key areas of policy and state laws, basic statistical literacy, assessment types and purposes, and value-added models is particularly important because ideas shaping teacher performance evaluation are being considered at the national, state, and local levels. The authors argue that providing school leaders with this…

The majority of states include value-added models (VAMs) or some other measure of student academic growth as a component of their teacher evaluation systems. However, there is considerable disagreement among researchers about whether states and school districts should use student growth measures to make high-stakes personnel decisions. Many…

People who emphasize teaching quality and the central importance of teachers are right to do so. Where some go wrong is in thinking that teacher quality is an innate characteristic. The effectiveness of a teacher is not some inherent competence, as the phrase "teacher quality" suggests. Teacher effectiveness is contextual. Why has the…

This paper proposes a cloud multi-criteria group decision-making model for teacher evaluation in higher education which is involving subjectivity, imprecision and fuzziness. First, selecting the appropriate evaluation index depending on the evaluation objectives, indicating a clear structural relationship between the evaluation index and…