Teacher evaluation reform has been among the most controversial education reforms in recent years. It also is one of the costliest in terms of the time teachers and principals must spend on classroom observations. We conducted a randomized field trial at four sites to evaluate whether substituting teacher-collected videos for in-person observations could improve the value of teacher observations for teachers, administrators, or students. Relative to teachers in the control group who participated in standard in-person observations, teachers in the video-based treatment group reported that post-observation meetings were more “supportive” and they were more able to identify a specific practice they changed afterward. Treatment principals were able to shift their observation work to noninstructional times. The program also substantially increased teacher retention. Nevertheless, the intervention did not improve students’ academic achievement or self-reported classroom experiences, either in the year of the intervention or for the next cohort of students. Following from the literature on observation and feedback cycles in low-stakes settings, we hypothesize that to improve student outcomes schools may need to pair video feedback with more specific supports for desired changes in practice.
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- Teaching Higher: Educators' Perspectives on Common Core Implementation
- Effects of a Video-Based Teacher Observation Program on the De-privatization of Instruction: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
- The Best Foot Forward Project: Substituting Teacher-Collected Video for In-Person Classroom Observations
- Best Foot Forward: Video Observation Toolkit
- Exploring Explanations for the "Weak" Relationship Between Value Added and Observation-Based Measures of Teacher Performance
- Effective teaching in elementary mathematics: Identifying classroom practices that support student achievement
- Best Foot Forward Project: Research Findings from Year 1
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- Remedial Math Goes to High School: An Evaluation of the Tennessee SAILS Program
- Remedial Math Goes to High School: The Impact of the Tennessee SAILS Program
- Findings from a National Study on Research Use Among School and District Leaders (Technical Report No. 1)
- Surprising Ripple Effects: How Changing the SAT Score-Sending Policy for Low-Income Students Impacts College Access and Success
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Wake County Public School System
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Kentucky
- Research Project Overview: The Study of Pre-College Math Remediation Programs in Tennessee
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for the New York State Education Department
- SDP Key Findings Report for Colorado: Students' Progression from Ninth Grade to College, by Prior Academic Achievement
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Tennessee
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- School District Reform in Newark: Within- and Between- School Changes in Achievement Growth
- Assessing the Impact of the Newark Education Reforms
- The Track Record of Charter Schools in Massachusetts
- Let the Numbers Have Their Say: Evidence on Massachusetts' Charter Schools
- Findings from a National Study on Research Use Among School and District Leaders (Technical Report No. 1)
- DreamBox Learning Achievement Growth in the Howard County Public School System and Rocketship Education
- Achievement Network’s Investing in Innovation Expansion: Impacts on Educator Practice and Student Achievement
- Askwith Forum – Teaching Higher: Educators’ Perspectives on Common Core Implementation
- Teaching Higher: Educators' Perspectives on Common Core Implementation
- Changing the Culture of Data Use in Delaware:How State Leaders Used Analytics to Create Education Policies That Matter
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