This is the first book to gather and address what we have learned about the impacts and challenges of data-intensive teacher evaluation systems--a defining characteristic of the current education policy landscape. Expert researchers and practitioners speak to what we know (and what remains to be known) about evaluation measures themselves, the…

Formative assessment is a classroom practice that has received much attention in recent years for its established potential at increasing student learning. A frequent analytic approach for determining the quality of formative assessment practices is to develop a coding scheme and determine frequencies with which the codes are observed; however,…

A key question facing teacher evaluation systems is how to combine multiple measures of complex constructs into composite indicators of performance. We use data from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study to investigate the measurement properties of composite indicators obtained under various conjunctive, disjunctive (or complementary),…

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of teacher evaluation scores that are derived from an observation tool, adapted from Danielson's Framework for Teaching, designed to assess 22 teaching components from four teaching domains. The study analyzed principals' observations of 713 elementary, middle, and high school teachers in…

The first step in the Validity and Reliability Study summarizes the history and purpose of California's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS), reviews findings from other QRIS evaluation studies, and describes the approach to validating the system in California. The majority of this report focuses on providing context for the California…

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…

Research Findings: This study examined the validity and reliability of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; R. C. Pianta, K. M. La Paro, & B. K. Hamre, 2008) in Finnish kindergartens. A pair of trained observers used the CLASS to observe 49 kindergarten teachers (47 female, 2 male) on two different days. Questionnaires measuring…

Research Findings: An effective quality rating system will lead to quality assurance and improvement of early childhood education programs. Many studies have been conducted to examine the validity of quality rating instruments in Western countries, but few have been done in China. The present study investigated the effectiveness of the Beijing…

Researchers have raised a number of questions about whether student achievement data can be used fairly or accurately for purposes of teacher evaluation. Others have noted that achievement data alone cannot provide teachers with the information they need to improve their practice. Recognizing these limitations, the federal government and many…

This paper reports the results of the validity studies done on the Five P's (Parent/Professional Preschool Performance Profile), an assessment tool for parents and teachers developed by the Variety Preschooler's Workshop (Syosset, New York) to rate young handicapped children functioning between birth and 5 years of age on their observed…

This paper examines teacher assessment in light of contemporary cognitive science and anthropological research on teaching. Attention is given to why some teacher tests are inappropriate for assessing competence and the need for development of an effective, comprehensive assessment system that acknowledges the inadequacy of current test…

The evaluation of a behavioral screening procedure for the detection of both conduct disordered and withdrawn children was implemented in two phases among children enrolled in a rural Head Start program. The first phase focused on preliminary identification, through teacher rankings and classroom observation, of a population of the most withdrawn…

Evaluated is the validity of the behavioral categories held in common among three classroom observation systems. The validity model employed was that reported by Campbell and Fiske (1959) which requires that both convergent and discriminant validity be demonstrated. These procedures were applied to data obtained from the videotapes of 62 teacher…

This paper summarizes the Alabama Career Incentive Program, a statewide effort to evaluate more than 30,000 teachers including specialists in guidance, speech therapy, and so on. The evaluation was based on 10 classroom competencies and five outside-the-class professional competencies. A low-inference instrument measured competencies by using…

Reviews medical and psychoeducational assessment models, illustrating need to expand assessment procedure database resulting from the measurement errors in traditional assessment practices. Introduces assessment model emphasizing collection of classroom-based information over time and evaluating data more critically. Suggests model facilitates…