Grade-Level Variation in Observational Measures of Teacher Effectiveness

• In Event: Designing Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems: New Guidance for Educators and Policy Makers Emerging From the Measures of Effective Teaching Study

Abstract

States are rapidly developing new teacher evaluation systems built around measures of student achievement growth and observations using research-based protocol. An important consideration for states and districts is whether equally effective teaching receives the same score on the observation protocol regardless of the classroom context. Of particular concern are potential differences in the functioning of the protocol for teachers at different grade levels since there are clear differences in expectations for classroom interactions as students mature and there is evidence that teaching practice differs across grade levels. Using data from the Measure of Effective Teaching (MET) Project, we tested for grade-level differences in the average scores on three researched-based observation protocols for grade 4 to 8 math and English language arts (ELA) teachers. We find large differences between scores among teachers in different grade levels that could not be explained by differences in the teacher characteristics, student characteristics, or raters.

Authors

• Kata Mihaly, RAND Corporation

• Daniel F. McCaffrey, ETS