Projects
NCTE is conducting multiple studies regarding teacher effectiveness. At the core of NCTE’s research is the Developing Measures of Effective Mathematics Teaching study, the goal of which is to identify effective practices for teaching elementary mathematics, as well as measurable characteristics of teachers who are identified as being more effective in mathematics instruction. This work is being led by Thomas J. Kane, Principal Investigator, Heather Hill, Co-Principal Investigator, and Douglas Staiger, Co-Principal Investigator. In addition, Dr. Staiger is leading a study entitled, Determining Why Teacher Effects "Fade Out" and Professor John Tyler of Brown University is leading a study entitled, Do Teacher Evaluation Systems Improve Teacher Effectiveness: Evidence from Cincinnati. Short abstracts of these studies, and links to more detailed information, can be found below.
In addition to a focused agenda of research on teacher effectiveness, NCTE will also host national conferences to convene a researchers, policymakers, and district and school leaders to present the latest research on measuring teacher effectiveness and effective teaching practices, and maintain a website with research and resources on the topic. Further, since measuring teacher effectiveness is now an important part of national education policy, NCTE plans to states and large districts as they embark on developing critical teacher evaluation systems.
Developing Measures of Effective Mathematics TeachingDeveloping Measures of Effective Mathematics Teaching is the core study of NCTE. The goal of this research is to identify effective practices for teaching elementary mathematics, as well as measurable characteristics of teachers who are identified as being more effective in mathematics instruction. NCTE will then transform these results into a suite of instruments and training materials ("tools") intended for use by school principals, content specialists, peer observers and researchers to identify effective teaching practices and to plan and target teacher training to improve instruction. The initial year of the study served as a planning period, and three years of data collection began in fall 2010. Data will be collected from several sources, including multiple classroom observations, student assessment data, and teacher surveys to accurately capture how teachers impact student achievement.
Determining Why Teacher Effects "Fade Out"Recent studies have found that the difference between being assigned an effective and ineffective teacher is largest in the short term (e.g., on end-of-year test scores) but tends to be more muted in the longer term (e.g., on test scores two years later) (e.g., Jacob, Lefgren, and Sims, 2008; Kane and Staiger, 2008). This supplemental study will provide an evidence baseline that will guide additional tests of the fade-out hypothesis that will be done using the primary data collected by our project in future years (e.g., videos, student surveys, supplemental assessments).
Do teacher evaluation systems improve teacher effectiveness: Evidence from CincinnatiThis project seeks to answer the question: Does the process of participating in teacher evaluation help teachers improve their effectiveness as measured by student test score growth? Recent research on the importance of teachers in promoting academic achievement has helped fuel an increased interest in and emphasis on teacher evaluation. Additional research has shown the wide variation in the ability of different teachers to promote achievement and the difficulty of administration in identifying the most and least effective teachers. In response, federal and state governmental agencies are encouraging school districts to develop new systems for evaluating teachers. In this study we will examine the empirical evidence on this question using data from the Cincinnati Public Schools for 1999- 2000 through 2008-2009. Given that the components of Cincinnati’s teacher evaluation system are characteristic of early proposals for the kinds of systems districts and states are being encouraged to adopt, information from this study is both timely and relevant.
