We use statewide data from Massachusetts to investigate teacher performance evaluations as a measure of teaching effectiveness. Schools tend to classify most of their teachers as proficient, but we document substantial variation across schools in the extent to which ratings differentiate teachers. Using event study and teacher fixed effects…

There is growing interest in using measures of teacher applicant quality to improve hiring decisions, but the statistical properties of such measures are poorly understood. We present evidence on structured ratings solicited from teacher applicants' references. We find that the reference ratings capture only one underlying dimension of applicant…

This paper examines how different measures of teacher quality are related to students' long-run educational trajectories. We estimate teachers' "test-based" and "nontest" value-added (the latter based on contributions to student absences, suspensions, grade progression, and grades) and assess how these predict various student…

States are responsible for setting and evaluating the standards that teacher preparation programs (TPPs) must meet for accreditation. Despite the considerable investment that states make in this process, no prior research has linked the ratings of TPPs generated by program reviews to inservice teacher performance. In this paper, we describe…

The clinical teaching experience is one of the most important components of teacher preparation. Prior observational research has found that more effective mentors and schools with better professional climates are associated with better preparation for teacher candidates. We test these findings using an experimental assignment of teacher…

Most research about how to improve the teacher workforce has focused on interventions designed to improve incumbent teachers, far less attention has been directed toward teacher hiring processes and whether districts can make better hiring decisions. Using data from Spokane Public Schools and Washington state, we describe the findings from a study…

Purpose: A burgeoning literature investigates the importance of student teaching placements for teacher candidate development, but an important perspective that is largely missing from the existing literature is that of the school districts that host student teachers. In this paper, we describe the student teaching process from the perspective of…

We exploit within-teacher variation in the years that teachers host an apprentice ("student teacher") in Washington State to estimate the causal effect of these apprenticeships on student achievement, both during the apprenticeship and afterwards. The average causal effect of hosting a student teacher on student performance in the year…

Policies that require the use of information about student achievement to evaluate teacher performance are becoming increasingly common across the United States, but there is some question as to how or whether to use student test-based teacher evaluations when student assessments change. We bring empirical evidence to bear on this issue.…

It is common knowledge that teacher quality is a key in-school factor affecting student achievement. While the quality of teaching clearly matters for how much students learn, this quality is challenging to measure. Evaluating teacher quality based on the level of their students' end-of-year test scores has been one method of assessing…

Over the past decade, states and districts have updated teacher evaluation systems in response to federal incentives, such as waivers to No Child Left Behind and grants from Race to the Top. The use of multiple measures, however, raises an important issue for policymakers and practitioners: to what extent should different measures of a teacher's…

The past decade has seen a tremendous amount of research on the use of value-added modeling to assess individual teachers, and a significant number of states and districts are now using, or plan to use, value added as a component of a teacher's summative performance evaluation. In this article, I explore the various mechanisms through which the…

Improving teacher evaluation is one of the most pressing but also contested areas of educational policy. Value-added measures have received much of the attention in new evaluation systems, but they can only be used to evaluate a fraction of teachers. Classroom observations are almost universally used to assess teachers, yet their statistical…

In this policy brief we argue that there is little debate about the statistical properties of value-added model (VAM) estimates of teacher performance, yet, despite this, there is little consensus about what the evidence about VAMs implies for their practical utility as part of high-stakes performance evaluation systems. A review of the evidence…

Using administrative longitudinal data from five states, we study how value-added measures of teacher performance are affected by changes in state standards and assessments. We first document the stability of teachers' value-added rankings during transitions to new standard and assessment regimes and compare our findings to stability during stable…