As parents, communities, educators, and policymakers continue to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning in America, many have turned to recently released results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP measures what students know and what they can do in several tested subjects, including reading,…

Observation protocol scores are commonly used as status measures to support inferences about teacher practices. When multiple observations are collected for the same teacher over the course of a year, some portion of a teacher's score on each occasion may be attributable to the rater, lesson, and the time of year of the observation. All three of…

This is the fourth report from an evaluation of the Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI). This report addresses the implementation of principal evaluation and related support as of 2015, viewing implementation in the context of districts' aims, constraints, and capacity. Principal evaluation is part of the Wallace Principal Pipeline Initiative…

Recent policies intended to improve teacher quality have focused on the preparation that teachers receive before entering the classroom. A short-lived federal rule would have required every state to assess and rank teacher-preparation programs by their graduates' impact on student learning. Though the federal rule was repealed, last year some 21…

This is the fifth report from an evaluation of the Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI), in which six large urban school districts have received support for strengthening novice principals' capabilities through specific strategies. Data for the evaluation were collected from late 2011 through spring 2015, using interviews with district…

We conducted a theory-based analysis of the underlying structure of the Tripod student perception survey instrument using the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) database (N = 1,049 middle school math class sections; N = 25,423 students). Multilevel item factor analyses suggested that an alternative bifactor structure best fit the Tripod items,…

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…

The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) and Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program grants have encouraged and supported grantees to develop coherent and comprehensive human capital management systems (HCMS). The goal of such systems is to recruit, select, place, induct, develop, pay, and retain educators with the competencies they need to realize…

As states and districts implement more rigorous teacher evaluation systems, measures of teacher performance are increasingly being used to support instruction and inform retention decisions. Classroom observations take a central role in these systems, accounting for the majority of teacher ratings upon which accountability decisions are based.…

School leadership is second only to teaching among school influences on student success, according to research. So what can a school district do to produce a large and steady supply of top-notch school principals--and support their effective supervision? This Wallace Update describes two related Wallace Foundation initiatives seeking answers to…

Community colleges that are exploring ways to dramatically improve outcomes for their students frequently seek a better understanding of the relationship between two "branded" approaches receiving significant publicity: Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) and guided pathways. ASAP was created by the City University of New York…

City Year is a learning organization committed to the rigorous evaluation of its "Whole School Whole Child" model, which trains and deploys teams of AmeriCorps members to low-performing, urban schools to empower more students to reach their full potential. A third-party study by Policy Studies Associates (PSA) examined the impact of…

Researchers have found that middle school students undergo developmental changes that require unique educational structures and support. As a result, experts have suggested a number of specific strategies for organizing middle schools in order to best meet students' needs. This Information Capsule summarizes middle school redesign initiatives that…