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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said last week that if it were up to him, he'd double class size and fire the 50 percent of teachers who are in the bottom half of effectiveness ratings:  "doubl[ing] the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students." Bloomberg, in his inimitable way, breezily insulted 80,000 teachers to make a point unsubstantiated by any social-science evidence.

...In other words, you can't really interpret the meaning of any one piece of evidence if you don't have a handle on what to expect. And you can't really have a productive discussion if everyone is operating on different, unstated premises as to how it should be interpreted. This goes for not only test scores, but any other metric.

Given the experience to date with an overwhelming focus on student achievement scores as a basis for high-stakes decisions, policymakers would do well to pause and carefully examine the issues that make teacher assessment so complex before implementing an assessment plan. To facilitate such examination, this brief reviews credible research exploring: the feasibility of combining formative assessment (a basis for professional growth) and summative assessment (a basis for high-stakes decisions like dismissal); the various tools that might be used to gather evidence of teacher effectiveness; and the various stakeholders who might play a role in a teacher assessment system. It also offers a brief overview of successful exemplars.

This NEPC Policy Memo offers a list of experts who can speak to the overall knowledge base - to the weight of scholarly thought and research evidence in a given education policy area.

Consider the constant chatter that the U.S. is declining economically, socially, and globally and that schools must be drafted to stop that decline. The low scores of U.S. students on international tests is Exhibit 1. Even without getting into the shortcomings of the tests used to rank nations internationally and measure students domestically, the untoward consequences of raising the stakes on state test scores (e.g., narrowed curriculum, withholding diplomas, closing schools) are evident today. Look around to see if the U.S.'s global economic position has improved. It has not after a decade of NCLB and a burst housing bubble. But betting that a federal law would miraculously spur economic growth and a larger chunk of foreign markets is not necessarily dumb. It is a national ideological tic that American policy elites have had in "educationalizing" social, economic, and political problems (Labaree Paper-Ed_Theory_11-08 ). Hurtful habitual behavior even on a national level is, like individuals continually smoking, understandable only if we see the behavior as addictive.

It's fair to say that improved teacher evaluation is the cornerstone of most current education reform efforts. Although very few people have disagreed on the need to design and implement new evaluation systems, there has been a great deal of disagreement over how best to do so - specifically with regard to the incorporation of test-based measures of teacher productivity (i.e., value-added and other growth model estimates). The use of these measures has become a polarizing issue. Opponents tend to adamantly object to any degree of incorporation, while many proponents do not consider new evaluations meaningful unless they include test-based measures as a major element (say, at least 40-50 percent). Despite the air of certainty on both sides, this debate has mostly been proceeding based on speculation. The new evaluations are just getting up and running, and there is virtually no evidence as to their effects under actual high-stakes implementation.

There is huge pressure from all sides - the federal government, Governor Cuomo, and Mayor Bloomberg - on the UFT, the NYC teachers union, to agree to a test-based teacher evaluation and compensation system in NYC. Similar pressures are being exerted on teachers throughout the US, as a result of "Race to the Top" and the corporate reform agenda being promoted by the Gates Foundation and the other members of the Billionaire Boys Club.  In his State of the City address, Bloomberg also proposed that teachers rated highly through such a system should  get a salary increase of $20,000 a year.  Merit pay has been tried in many cities, including NYC, and has never worked to improve student outcomes.  When challenged about the evidence for such a policy, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson tweeted a link to a recent NY Times puff piece about DC's Impact system, in which a couple of teachers who had received bonuses after being rated "highly effective" were interviewed as saying that this extra pay might persuade them to stay teaching longer.    Stephanie Black is a former teacher in Washington DC.  In both 2010 and 2011 she was rated "effective" by the DCPS evaluation system.  She is now living in Chicago where she tutors math and coaches in an after school program.  Here is her story.

Monday's announcements that all three charter schools in the Believe Network would likely have their charters revoked at the end of the school year were no surprise to those who have been following recent news about these schools and the network which runs them. From security camera footage that showed Believe students were being forced to attend classes in factory space to the photo of Believe CEO Eddie Calderon-Melendez charging a New York Post photographer, evidence suggested that both the state's investigation into the Network's finances and the DOE's review of the school's management would find multiple egregious violations of the school leaders' legal responsibilities.

Most of the coverage about the Department of Education's role as a charter authorizer in recent weeks has focused on the management scandals at the Believe Network and the decision to close Peninsula Prep after three years of C's (although interestingly enough, the role of for-profit charter manager Victory Schools has mostly been left out of the Peninsula Prep story, despite quotes from current Victory executive and past DOE Charter Office head Michael Duffy in the Times coverage of the school's closing). Equally important, however, was the DOE's decision to grant a two-year renewal to the third school it had placed on the closure list this year - Opportunity Charter School, a charter founded to serve students with special education needs. The DOE's threat to close Opportunity had inspired a passionate response from the school's community, including powerful presentations of evidence from the district's own progress reports showing its success in helping students with intense special education needs achieve academically and graduate from high school at rates well above other schools in the city.

After the second year of CPS rolling out TAP, we found no evidence that the program raised student test scores. Student achievement growth as measured by average math and reading scores on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) did not differ significantly between TAP and comparable non-TAP schools.We also found that TAP did not have a detectable impact on rates of teacher retention in the school or district during the second year it was rolled out in the district. We did not find statistically significant differences between TAP and non-TAP retention rates for teachers overall or for subgroups defined by teaching assignment and years of service in CPS. 

Contrary to the canned rhetoric flying around public discourse on education finance, high-quality research like that discussed in Baker's review does not lend itself to broad, sweeping conclusions. Some things work and others don't, and so the strength and consistency of the money/results relationship varies by how it's spent, the students on whom it spent, and other factors. Sometimes effects are small, and sometimes they're larger. Nevertheless, on the whole, Baker's review shows that there is a consistently positive effect of higher spending on achievement. Moreover, interventions that cost money, such as higher teacher salaries, have a proven track record of getting results, while state-level policies to increase the adequacy and equitability of school finance have also been shown to improve the level and distribution of student performance. Finally, and most relevant to the current budget context, the common argument that we can reduce education funding without any harm to (and, some argue, actual improvement of) achievement outcomes has no basis in empirical evidence.

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is committed to providing district leaders support as they implement Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). Beginning in mid-December 2011 and running through the end of February 2012, NYSED will host a series of introductory webinars. Each webinar will introduce components of the SLO process that will help district leaders to communicate and begin the implementation process with stakeholders. The first webinar provides viewers with the following information: - the background and basics of SLOs; - the relationship between SLOs, the Common Core State Standards, Data Driven Instruction, evidence-based observations, and local measures of student achievement; and - the difference between the state/district/school/teacher's role within the SLO process.

This paper takes advantage of a unique policy change to examine how principals make decisions regarding teacher dismissal. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) signed a new collective bargaining agreement that gave principals the flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers for any reason and without the documentation and hearing process that is typically required for such dismissals. With the cooperation of the CPS, I matched information on all teachers that were eligible for dismissal with records indicating which teachers were dismissed. With this data, I estimate the relative weight that school administrators place on a variety of teacher characteristics. I find evidence that principals do consider teacher absences and value-added measures, along with several demographic characteristics, in determining which teachers to dismiss.

Unless you live under a rock (or if you don't track education policy matters through social media - same thing), you know about the "big" study about teacher effects that was conducted by Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff, disseminated through NBER and reported in multiple outlets, most notably the New York Times. This is an important study for at least a couple of reasons. First, methodologically, the study is massive and novel in some important ways. Second, from a policy perspective, even if the authors overreach in their interpretation, the study adds to the growing body of literature on teacher effectiveness and value-added measures. The more empirical evidence we have, the better; that's the nature of scientific research.

Did the New York Times sensationalize its account of an analysis of value-added measures of teacher performance it recently featured on its front page, misleading its readers about its policy implications? Have commentators such as the Times' own Nicholas Kristof and bloggers such as Ed Sector's Kevin Carey seized upon the Times' misleading narrative to confirm pre-existing policy biases, rather than do their own careful reading of what is universally acknowledged to be a rather complex study? Was Mayor Bloomberg's cynical use of the analysis and Kristof's column in his State of the City address to teacher bash and union bash, as he cited them to justify his mass closure of PLA schools and his refusal to negotiate meaningful appeals of ineffective ratings, not the logical conclusion of this misrepresentation of educational research? An email exchange I had with one of the co-authors of the study, Raj Chetty of Harvard, provides interesting evidence that the answer to all of these questions is yes.

Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores ("value-added") a good measure of their quality? This question has sparked debate largely because of disagreement about (1) whether value-added (VA) provides unbiased estimates of teachers' impacts on student achievement and (2) whether high-VA teachers improve students' long-term outcomes. We address these two issues by analyzing school district data from grades 3-8 for 2.5 million children linked to tax records on parent characteristics and adult outcomes. We find no evidence of bias in VA estimates using previously unobserved parent characteristics and a quasi-experimental research design based on changes in teaching staff. Students assigned to high-VA teachers are more likely to attend college, attend higher- ranked colleges, earn higher salaries, live in higher SES neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers. Teachers have large impacts in all grades from 4 to 8. On average, a one standard deviation improvment in teacher VA in a single grade raises earnings by about 1% at age 28. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5% with an average teacher would increase students' lifetime income by more than $250,000 for the average classroom in our sample. We conclude that good teachers create substantial economic value and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan plays school with scantrons. Those lovely lead-filled bubbles help him sort the wheat from the chaff in classrooms all over America. He and other market-based reformers claim there is now "scientific evidence" to sort the ineffective teacher from the strong.  And after the weak contributors to scantron scores are found, we can fire our way to excellence.  We will drill and drill our students and raise the bar so high, every child will walk under it.  The caring teachers who spark creativity and joy will disappear. She will be replaced by those who cower in fear of their number score.  My colleagues are already seeing the transformation. The rich conversations about teaching and learning that used to occur after observations are being replaced by timid voices asking, "What is my number?" But do not worry, as we Race to the Top, Mr. Duncan has a plan of 'best practices' in place to increase educational productivity.

Eight of the 10 school districts who are receiving School Improvement Grants could lose the money if they don't meet Saturday's deadline to provide evidence they have made the necessary changes to their evaluation systems for teachers and principals, state Education Commissioner John King said in a statement today. Millions of dollars in federal funding are in jeopardy, he said.

Finally, and just to prove that asking for evidence does not mean I am anti-charter, Joe Nocera's op-ed piece in The New York Times on the success of the partnership between The Learning Community, a charter school, and the Central Falls, Rhode Island, elementary schools. If ever there was a model for how charter schools are to work - successful with the same students the pubic schools have and sharing their results with public school partners - this is it.

Gateways to the Principalship: State Power to Improve the Quality of School Leaders proposes state policies for improving principal effectiveness and student achievement. It uses policy examples from eight "lagging" and eight "leading" states as a means of advocating for a wide range of policy actions aimed at influencing principal preparation, licensure and retention. The report, however, has several flaws that undermine its usefulness. It provides little explanation on how the state exemplars were selected or why they were considered to be leading or lagging. It makes little use of existing research. It does not report on extensive current state and professional activities on leadership standards, program accreditation and licensure requirements that address exactly these features. It recommends ending the "monopoly" of higher education in principal preparation and broadening (or lowering) the criteria for becoming a principal, but it provides no research or other evidence that such changes are warranted, will improve student achievement, or have other beneficial effects. The report's endorsement of broadly accepted, almost platitudinous reform principles, coupled with unsupported and possibly counterproductive recommendations, renders the report of little value in improving the quality of principals.