Abby Robyn

Standards-Based Accountability under No Child Left Behind: Experiences of Teachers and Administrators in Three States. MG-589-NSF.

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Studying Large-Scale Reforms of Instructional Practice: An Example from Mathematics and Science

A number of challenges are encountered when evaluating a large-scale, multisite educational reform aimed at changing classroom practice. The challenges include substantial variability in implementation with little information on actual practice, lack of common, appropriate outcome measures, and the need to synthesize evaluation results across multiple study sites. This article describes an approach to addressing these challenges in the context of a study of the relationships between student achievement and instructional practices in the National Science Foundation’s Systemic Initiatives (SI) program. We gathered data from eleven SI sites and investigated relationships at the site level and pooled across sites using a planned meta-analytic approach. We found small but consistent positive relationships between teachers’ reported use of standards-based instruction and student achievement. The article also describes the ways in which we addressed the challenges discussed, as well as a number of additional obstacles that need to be addressed to improve future evaluations of large-scale reforms.

Using Structured Classroom Vignettes to Measure Instructional Practices in Mathematics

Large-scale educational studies frequently require accurate descriptions of classroom practices to judge implementation and impact. However, it can be difficult to obtain these descriptions in a timely, efficient manner. To address this problem, the authors developed a vignette-based measure of one aspect of mathematics instructional practice, reform-oriented instruction. Teachers read contextualized descriptions of teaching practices that varied in terms of reform-oriented instruction, and rated the degree to which the options corresponded to their own likely behaviors. Responses from 80 fourth-grade teachers yielded fairly consistent responses across two parallel vignettes and moderate correlations with other scales of reform-oriented instruction derived from classroom observations, surveys, and logs. The results suggested that the vignettes measure important aspects of reform-oriented instruction that are not captured by other measurement methods. Based on this work, it appears that vignettes can be a useful tool for research on instructional practice, but cognitive interviews with participating teachers provided insight into possible improvements to the items.

Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching Enhanced How Teachers Are Evaluated But Had Little Effect on Student Outcomes

Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) Schools Green Dot Public Schools Alliance College-Ready Public Schools Aspire Public Schools The initiative involved three school districts and four charter management organizations (CMOs). The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, designed and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort aimed at increasing students’ access to effective teaching and, as a result, improving student outcomes. It focused particularly on high school graduation and college attendance among low-income minority (LIM) students.

Taking Stock: The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching Through 2013--2014

This brief summarizes a RAND Corporation evaluation of the implementation of key reform elements of the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching in three public school districts and four charter management organizations.