News & Events
Today, the Strategic Data Project (SDP) announced the selection of twenty new partners who will host the fifth cohort of the SDP Fellowship. SDP Fellows will be employees of the agency who support efforts to build capacity for rigorous analytics and research methods to inform management and policy decisions. Selected partners have all demonstrated a strong commitment to the SDP mission of transforming the use of data in education to improve student achievement.
CEPR affiliates are to present at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting 2013 from April 27–May 1 in San Francisco, CA. The theme of the event this year is “Education and Poverty: Theory, Research, Policy, and Praxis.” CEPR presenters include researchers; steering committee members; and SDP Fellows, Alumni, and Faculty Advisors. The sessions will be an opportunity to learn more about some CEPR research, as well as research done outside of the center by its affiliates. View the list below to see the sessions that include the CEPR network.
SDP findings about educator recruitment, placement, development, evaluation and retention in the state of Delaware were previewed on April 19, 2013. The results will help the state shape policy and practice to better attract, retain, evaluate, and develop the educators in Delaware. Coverage of these findings includes Newszap.com, Newsworks, Delaware Online, WDDE (Delaware's NPR News Station), and Delmarva Public Radio.
SDP released findings today for the Delaware Department of Education, which have policy and practice implications for Delaware public school staffing. Preliminary results from a two-year research engagement include:
- Newest teachers are more likely to be assigned to the least prepared students
- There is significant variation in Delaware teachers’ impact on student test scores
- Teachers’ impact on student test scores increases most in the first few years of teaching
- A significant share of new teachers leave teaching in Delaware within four years
- High poverty schools in Delaware have higher rates of teacher turnover
The Delaware Department of Education hosted a presentation by the SDP to share this and more information with policymakers, education leaders, and other key partners. Governor Jack Markell also joined to discuss the results and how the data informs new work underway to strengthen teacher preparation in the state.
Trends in progress towards graduation and college readiness for students were highlighted in the SDP College-Readiness Diagnostic for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The report was released in conjunction with a research symposium, co-hosted by SDP, Los Angeles Education Research Institute (LAERI), LAUSD, and Cal State University, Los A ngeles. Coverage of the findings inculdes EdSource, Daily News, and Daily Breeze.
Findings released today by researchers at the Strategic Data Project (SDP) highlight trends in progress towards graduation and college readiness for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Using an analysis of data accumulated on the class of 2011 that includes student’s grades, credit accumulation, and exit exam results, SDP researchers uncovered a number of important findings about student success in high school.
Key SDP findings include: identifying a large gap between the number of students graduating and the number who are deemed college ready through completion of their A-G requirements—such that only one-third of 2011 graduates had completed the requirements necessary for admission to college within the University of California and California State systems. Other key finding show ninth-grade performance in coursework, particularly earning enough credits to be on-track for graduation, was strongly related to on-time graduation. In addition, the LAUSD average 59% four-year graduation rate was found to range widely by individual high school and by ethnicity, even when comparing students of similar eighth-grade English performance.
In the New York Times article, "Atlanta Cheating Scandal Reignites Debate Over Tests' Role," NCTE Principal Investigator Tom Kane comments on the role of education testing amid the Atlanta school cheating scandal. Kane asserts that abandoning testing would "be equivalent to saying ‘O.K., because there are some players that cheated in Major League Baseball, we should stop keeping score, because that only encourages people to take steroidsn.’” Kane supports including student test scores as just one of multiple measures used in teacher evaluation. The article provides an overview of the debate around high stakes testing for evaluation purposes.
The Baltimore Sun featured an article about the forum, "Delivering the Promise of Preparation: A Call to Action," which included a panel comprised of CEPR Executive Director Jon Fullerton, Maryland State Superintendent Lillian Lowery, and Howard County Superintendent Renee Foose. The forum, which was held in partnership with the African American Community Roundtable, discussed the achievement gap between minority students and their white counterparts at the Howard County Public School System (HCPSS). HCPSS is an SDP partner site, and hosts two SDP Fellows.
Reinventing Teacher Evaluation: Bureaucratic Intrusion or Vital Educational Infrastructure?
CEPR Faculty Director Tom Kane will speak at the Penn Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) at the University of Pennseylvania as part of the lecture series held for the Pre-Doctoral Training Program in Interdisciplinary Methods for Fied-Based Research in Education, sponosred by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). He will discuss finidings from the MET project and the importance of providing regular, reliable feedback to teachers.
In its article, "A Teach for America Fight," The Los Angeles Times cited the findings from the SDP Diagnostic for Los Angeles Unified School District, which found that Teach for America teachers had a modestly great effect on their students' performance than did other novice teachers.
CEPR Faculty Director Tom Kane spoke with Dylan Matthews of The Washington Post about the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project and importance of using multiple measures for teacher evaluation in the blog post, "The key to evaluating teachers: Ask kids what they think." Kane points out that the random-assignment study differs from others because it combines data from three different sources, from classroom observation, student achievement gains, and a student survey, to identify which teachers caused greater learning.
Tom Kane "Measures of Effective Teaching" lecture at Clark University
On Wednesday, January 30, CEPR Faculty Director Tom Kane spoke at Clark University for the annual Dr. Lee Gurel '48 Lecture. His lecture, "Measures of Effective Teaching," focused on the questions: How do we tell who the great teachers are and how can we produce more of them and more effective teaching? Watch the video recording via the website below.
Capstone reports capture a portion of the work SDP Fellows have led in their agencies, and demonstrate of the impact they made through the use of data and analysis. Through the reports, you can learn about the SDP Fellows’ ability to contribute meaningfully to reform in K–12 education, along with how they have developed into specialists in the human capital or college-going success fields. The collaboration between the fellows and staff is also illuminated, where you can see the unique resources and support SDP has to offer their Fellows. The capstone reports serve as guidebooks to other agencies, future SDP Fellows, and researchers who seek to do similar work. The fellows’ experiences and recommendations also provide insight to their agencies of how to sustain their work moving forward. The following two capstone reports by SDP Fellow Alumni Nathan Kuder and Lindsay Daugherty are included because they provide an excellent example of SDP’s impact in the field of data-use in education.
CEPR Faculty Director Tom Kane recently led the Measures of Effective Teaching project, a $52 million study sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In January 2013, the project published three new reports. The teachers who were identified as more effective during the first year of the project—using student achievement gains, classroom observations, and student surveys—produced greater student achievement following random assignment. This is the first large-scale study to demonstrate that it is possible to use teacher evaluations to identify great teachers. The three-year study also found that teacher evaluations which combine student achievement gains, classroom observations, and student evaluations, provided the best combination of predictive power and reliability.
MET Project Reports:
Download Full Report\
Have We Identified Effective Teachers? Validating Measures of Effective Teaching Using Random Assignment
This report presents an in-depth discussion of the technical methods,findings, and implications of the MET project’s random assignment study of teaching effectiveness measures.
Download Full Report
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A Composite Estimator of Effective Teaching
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For a complete list of MET project reports, see: http://www.metproject.org/reports.php
Media Coverage:
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