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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SDP Partner Diagnostic
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Wake County Public School System
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Kentucky
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for the New York State Education Department
- SDP Human Capital Diagnostic for Colorado
- SDP Key Findings Report for Colorado: Mathematics Teacher Placement Patterns
- SDP Key Findings Report for Colorado: Students' Progression from Ninth Grade to College, by Prior Academic Achievement
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Tennessee
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Cleveland Metropolitan School District
- SDP Educator Diagnostic for Delaware Department of Education
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Practitioner Resource
- Remedial Math Goes to High School: The Impact of the Tennessee SAILS Program
- Assessing the Impact of the Newark Education Reforms
- Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI)
- Developing Common Core Classrooms Through Rubric-Based Coaching
- 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
- Teaching Higher: Educators' Perspectives on Common Core Implementation
- Best Foot Forward: Video Observation Toolkit
- Research Project Overview: The Study of Pre-College Math Remediation Programs in Tennessee
- NCTE Student Assessments
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- SDP Summer Melt Handbook: A Guide to Investigating and Responding to Summer Melt
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- NCTE Student Assessments
- Technical Report: Creation and Dissemination of Upper-Elementary Mathematics Assessment Modules
- SDP Toolkit for Effective Data Use
- Approximate measurement invariance in cross-classified rater-mediated assessments
- Year-to-Year Stability in Measures of Teachers and Teaching
- Teachers' Knowledge of Students: Defining a Domain
- Teacher Characteristics and Student Learning: Toward a More Comprehensive Examination of the Association
- SDP Human Capital Diagnostic for Fulton County Schools
- Attending to General and Content-Specific Dimensions of Teaching: Exploring Factors Across Two Observation Instruments
- NCTE Newsletter - Fall 2014 [AUDIO]
Postsecondary Access & Success
- 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 Improvement & Redesign
- SDP Strategic Use of Data Rubric
- Promise and Paradox: Measuring Students' Non-cognitive Skills and the Impact of Schooling
- SDP Toolkit for Effective Data Use
- Student Achievement in Massachusetts' Charter Schools
- Identifying Effective Classroom Practices Using Student Achievement Data
- Does Practice-Based Teacher Preparation Increase Student Achievement? Early Evidence from the Boston Teacher Residency
- Informing the Debate: Comparing Boston's Charter, Pilot, and Traditional Schools
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