An increasing number of parents are opting-out their children from high-stakes. Accountability systems in education have used students' test scores to measure student learning, teacher effectiveness, and school district performance. Students who are opted-out of high-stakes tests are not being evaluated by the state tests, making their level of…

There is a longstanding debate over how to evaluate teachers. Various models of teacher evaluation tools including observations, teaching artifacts, or frequent walkthroughs, provide evidence of daily classroom performance. Although there are questions on the most efficient means by which to complete evaluations, most agree evaluative tools must…

Engineering design is being increasingly included in elementary education, typically to provide students with opportunities to apply science and mathematics concepts while developing their engineering practices. An important question is how to prepare teachers who can help students develop more informed engineering practices during classroom…

When employees expect evaluation and performance incentives will continue (or begin) in the future, the potential future rewards create an incentive to invest in relevant skills today. Because skills benefit job performance, the effects of evaluation can persist after the rewards end or even anticipate the start of rewards. I provide empirical…

In 2012, New Jersey implemented a broad change to the teacher evaluation system with the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TEACHNJ) Act which identified the Marzano Causal Teacher evaluation system as one of the prescribe models for districts to adopt. This system provides a more differentiated teacher…

Valid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of fourth- and fifth-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel text-as-data methods to develop automated measures of teaching to complement classroom observations…

In 2012, New York education officials and the state's teachers union announced one of the nation's most aggressive programs for teacher and principal evaluation--the Annual Professional Performance Review system (APPR)--which required that 40% of an educator's evaluation be based on student growth, using a combination of the state assessment and…

Educator performance evaluation systems are a potential tool for improving student achievement by increasing the effectiveness of the educator workforce. For example, recent research suggests that giving more frequent, specific feedback on classroom practice may lead to improvements in teacher performance and student achievement. This report is…

Educator performance evaluation systems are a potential tool for improving student achievement by increasing the effectiveness of the educator workforce. For example, recent research suggests that giving more frequent, specific feedback on classroom practice may lead to improvements in teacher performance and student achievement. This report is…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine if there was a correlation between the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) rating of teachers and the frequency of technology use in the classroom. Furthermore, the study identified the types of Internet-based applications used in primary classrooms and teachers' perception…

Student assessment nonparticipation (or opt out) has increased substantially in K-12 schools in states across the country. This increase in opt out has the potential to impact achievement and growth (or value-added) measures used for educator and institutional accountability. In this simulation study, we investigated the extent to which…

Despite policy efforts to encourage multiple measures of performance in newly developing teacher evaluation systems, practical constraints often result in evaluations based predominantly on formal classroom observations. Yet there is limited knowledge of how these observational measures relate to student achievement. This article leverages the…

High-quality measures of instructional practice are essential for research and evaluation of innovative instructional policies and programs. However, existing measures have generally proven inadequate because of cost and validity issues. This paper addresses two potential drawbacks of survey self-report measures: variation in teachers'…

The purpose of this study was to develop a "Water strider" Inquiry Learning Program for improved inquiry learning, and to analyze the validity of the "Water strider." The Inquiry Learning Program's goal was to create an application for finding out an on-site applicability for the "Water strider" Inquiry Learning…

Prior research has shown that the agreement between teacher and student ratings of instructional quality is, at best, moderate, and the associations between measures of instructional quality and outcomes such as standardized achievement are typically small and somewhat mixed across both perspectives. One explanation for these low-to-moderate…