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 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
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- 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
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- SDP Human Capital Diagnostic for Los Angeles Unified School District
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- SDP Human Capital Diagnostic for the New York State Education Department
- SDP Human Capital Diagnostic for Denver Public Schools
- SDP Human Capital Diagnostic for Colorado
- SDP Key Findings Report for Colorado: Mathematics Teacher Placement Patterns
- SDP Educator Diagnostic for Delaware Department of Education
- Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?
Postsecondary Access & Success
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Cleveland Metropolitan School District
- SDP Course-Grades Diagnostic for Denver Public Schools
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Albuquerque Public Schools
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Massachusetts
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Delaware
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for Colorado
- SDP Toolkit for Effective Data Use
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- SDP College-Readiness Diagnostic for Los Angeles Unified School District
- SDP College-Going Diagnostic for The School District of Philadelphia
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- 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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