Performance Evaluations

Using individual teacher and student-level longitudinal data from North Carolina, this research brief presents selected findings from work examining the stability of value-added model estimates of teacher effectiveness, focusing on their implication for teacher tenure policies and making high stakes personnel decisions. Findings show year-to-year correlations in teacher effects are modest, but pre-tenure estimates of teacher job performance do predict estimated post-tenure performance in both math and reading, and would therefore seem to be a reasonable metric to use as a factor in making substantive teacher selection decisions.

This paper estimates the overall extent of test measurement error and how this varies across students using New York City longitudinal data. Results reinforce the importance of accounting for measurement error, as it meaningfully increases effect size estimates associated with teacher attributes. There are important differences in teacher effectiveness that are systematically related to observed teacher attributes. Such effects are important in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies.

In debates over the best way to prepare teachers some argue that easing entry into teaching is necessary to attract strong candidates, while others argue that investing in high quality teacher preparation is most promising. Most agree that we lack a strong research basis for understanding how to prepare teachers. This paper estimates the effects of features of teachers' preparation on teachers' value-added to student test score performance in Math and English Language Arts. Results indicate variation across preparation programs in the average effectiveness of the teachers supplied to New York City schools. Preparation directly linked to practice appears to benefit first year teachers.

Testimony of CALDER Director Jane Hannaway before the D.C. City Council on the human capital initiatives of the District of Columbia's Public Schools, given January 16, 2009. Hannaway describes CALDER's work on teacher quality addressing three main findings: (1) Teachers are the most important school factor that affects student learning, and the variation in effectiveness across teachers is large; (2) The variation in teacher effectiveness is greater within schools than the variation between schools; and (3) The variation in teacher effectiveness, both within and between schools, is a management problem that begs for attention. Hannaway argues at least some of this variation is a civil rights problem that demands policy attention and urges DCPS to continue to pursue new human capital management strategies to ensure teacher quality for all students.

Teach for America (TFA) selects and places graduates from the most competitive colleges as teachers in the lowest-performing schools in the country. This paper is the first study that examines TFA effects in high school. We use rich longitudinal data from North Carolina and estimate TFA effects through cross-subject student and school fixed-effects models. We find that TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers, including those who are certified in-field. Such effects exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in math and science.