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Professional development
Can Automated Feedback Improve Teachers’ Uptake of Student Ideas? Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial In a Large-Scale Online Course
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentProviding consistent, individualized feedback to teachers is essential for improving instruction but can be prohibitively resource-intensive in most educational contexts. We develop M-Powering Teachers, an automated tool based on natural language processing to give teachers feedback on their… more →
Experimental Evidence on the Robustness of Coaching Supports in Teacher Education
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentMany novice teachers learn to teach “on-the-job,” leading to burnout and attrition among teachers and negative outcomes for students in the long term. Pre-service teacher education is tasked with optimizing teacher readiness, but there is a lack of causal evidence regarding effective ways for… more →
Teacher Preparation Programs and Graduates' Growth in Instructional Effectiveness
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentMany prior studies have examined whether there are average differences in levels of teaching effectiveness among graduates from different teacher preparation programs (TPPs); other studies have investigated which features of preparation predict graduates’ average levels of teaching effectiveness… more →
Identifying and Producing Effective Teachers
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeachers are among the most important school-provided determinants of student success. Effective teachers improve students’ test scores as well as their attendance, behavior, and earnings as adults. However, students do not enjoy equal access to effective teachers. This article reviews some of… more →
Is Engaging Online Learning Possible? A Study of an Innovative National Virtual Summer Program
We study an early effort amid the Covid-19 pandemic to develop new approaches to virtually serving students, supporting teachers, and promoting equity. This five-week, largely synchronous, summer program served 11,769 rising 4th-9thgraders. “Mentor teachers” provided PD and videos of themselves… more →
How Much Does Teacher Quality Vary Across Teacher Preparation Programs? Reanalyses from Six States
Topics: MethodsAt least sixteen US states have taken steps toward holding teacher preparation programs (TPPs) accountable for teacher value-added to student test scores. Yet it is unclear whether teacher quality differences between TPPs are large enough to make an accountability system worthwhile. Several… more →
Effectiveness Research for Teacher Education
Topics: MethodsTags: Professional developmentDespite calls for more evidence regarding the effectiveness of teacher education practices, causal research in the field remains rare. One reason is that we lack designs and measurement approaches that appropriately meet the challenges of causal inference in the context of teacher education… more →
Does Principal Professional Development Improve Schooling Outcomes? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership Induction Program
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentPrincipals shape the academic setting of schools. Yet, there is limited evidence on whether principal professional development improves schooling outcomes. Beginning in 2008-09, Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership (PIL) induction program required that newly hired principals complete targeted in-… more →
A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand, and Shortages in the U.S.
Recent media reports of teacher shortages across the country are confirmed by the analysis of several national data sets reported in this paper. Shortages are particularly severe in special education, mathematics, science, and bilingual/English learner education, and in locations with lower… more →
Taking the Long View: State Efforts to Solve Teacher Shortages by Strengthening the Profession
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentMuch is known about how to attract, develop, and retain a strong and stable teacher workforce, and states across the country are taking action to address their teacher shortages in ways that strengthen their overall teacher workforce.
Effective Teacher Professional Development
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Professional developmentTeacher professional learning is of increasing interest as one way to support the increasingly complex skills students need to succeed in the 21st century. However, many teacher professional development initiatives appear ineffective in supporting changes in teacher practices and student… more →
Deeper Learning Networks: Taking Student-Centered Learning and Equity to Scale
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceOne of the mysteries of education reform is how leaders and educators can successfully instantiate, sustain, and spread student-centered pedagogical practices from a few schools to many others. Advocates for deeper learning grapple with this mystery as they seek to transform teaching and… more →
Teacher Accountability Reforms and the Supply and Quality of New Teachers
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceIn recent years, states have sought to increase accountability for public school teachers by implementing a package of reforms centered on high-stakes evaluation systems. We examine the effect of these reforms on the supply and quality of new teachers. Leveraging variation across states and time… more →
Can Technology Transform Communication between Schools, Teachers, and Parents? Evidence from a Randomized Field Trial
Topics: Families and CommunitiesWe study the adoption and implementation of a new mobile communication app among a sample of 132 New York City public schools. The app provides a platform for sharing general announcements and news as well as engaging in personalized two-way communication with individual parents. We provide… more →
Strengthening STEM Instruction in Schools: Learning from Research
Topics: Student LearningMore than half of U.S. children fail to meet proficiency standards in mathematics and science in fourth grade. Teacher professional development and curriculum improvement are two of the primary levers that school leaders and policymakers use to improve children’s science, technology, engineering… more →
Teacher peer observation and student test scores: Evidence from a field experiment in English secondary schools
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Professional developmentThis paper reports improvements in teacher job performance, as measured by student test scores, resulting from a program of (zero-) low-stakes peer evaluation. Teachers working at the same school observed and scored each other’s teaching. Students in randomly-assigned treatment schools scored 0.… more →
STEM Instruction Improvement Programs Improve Student Outcomes
Topics: Student LearningHow should teachers spend their STEM-focused professional learning time? To answer this question, we analyzed a recent wave of rigorous new studies of STEM instructional improvement programs. We found that programs work best when focused on building knowledge teachers can use during instruction… more →
Teacher Skill Development: Evidence from Performance Ratings by Principals
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe examine the dynamic nature of teacher skill development using panel data on principals’ subjective performance ratings of teachers. Past research on teacher productivity improvement has focused primarily on one important but narrow measure of performance: teachers’ value-added to student… more →
Will Mentoring a Student Teacher Harm My Evaluation Scores? Effects of Serving as a Cooperating Teacher on Evaluation Metrics
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentGrowing evidence suggests that preservice candidates receive better coaching and are more instructionally effective when they are mentored by more instructionally effective cooperating teachers (CTs). Yet, teacher education program leaders indicate it can be difficult to recruit instructionally… more →
Can Teacher Evaluation Systems Produce High-Quality Feedback? An Administrator Training Field Experiment
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Professional developmentA core motivation for the widespread teacher evaluation reforms of the last decade was the belief that these new systems would promote teacher development through high-quality feedback. We examine this theory by studying teachers’ perceptions of evaluation feedback in Boston Public Schools and… more →