Measuring Teaching: Gates Foundation

We’ve mentioned before in this blog about the importance of figuring out good measures for quality teaching.  I didn’t know that the Gates Foundation was working on this, and has a set of five instruments that they’re developing.  Bill Gates just had an op-ed in the NYTimes where he argued for just this kind of multi-faceted evaluation of teachers, and argued that public humiliation of poor-performing teachers was not going to be effective.

The MET project: installment two
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has released an update to its preliminary findings for its Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, investigating the properties of five instruments for classroom observation: Framework for Teaching (FFT), Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO), Mathematical Quality of instruction (MQI), and UTeach Teacher Observation Protocol (UTOP). Researchers assessed each instrument using two criteria: reliability and validity. All five instruments were positively associated with student achievement gains. Evaluators found that reliably characterizing a teacher’s practice required averaging scores over multiple observations. They also found that combining observation scores with evidence of student achievement gains on state tests and student feedback improved predictive power and reliability. Combining observation scores, student feedback, and student achievement gains was better than graduate degrees or years of teaching experience at predicting a teacher’s student achievement gains with another group of students on the state tests. Combining observation scores, student feedback, and student achievement gains on state tests also was better than graduate degrees or years of teaching experience in identifying teachers whose students performed well on other measures.
See the report: http://www.metproject.org/reports.php