Carrie Semmelroth

Special Education Teacher Evaluation: Why It Matters, What Makes It Challenging, and How to Address These Challenges.

There is currently little consensus on how special education teachers should be evaluated. The lack of consensus may be due to several reasons. Special education teachers work under a variety of complex conditions, with a very heterogeneous population, and support student progress toward a very individualized set of goals. In addition, special education is marked by historical rates of attrition, with a lack of highly qualified teachers entering the field, and a number of special education teachers completing alternate certification programs, leading to a combined effect that impacts overall professional quality. In this article, we first review the challenges associated with evaluating special education teachers, describe and analyze current approaches, and present a conceptual framework for an approach to special education teacher evaluation. We then provide an overview of the Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers (RESET) tool as a possible alternative to measure special education teacher effectiveness. Given the current zeitgeist of teacher evaluation systems that fail to address the unique circumstances related to special education teachers, it is hoped that the information in this article will contribute to the small but growing body of research on special education teacher evaluation and effectiveness.

Measuring Rater Reliability on a Special Education Observation Tool

This study used generalizability theory to measure reliability on the Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers (RESET) observation tool designed to evaluate special education teacher effectiveness. At the time of this study, the RESET tool included three evidence-based instructional practices (direct, explicit instruction; whole-group instruction; and discrete trial teaching) as the basis for special education teacher evaluation. Five raters participated in two sessions to evaluate special education classroom instruction collected from two school years, via the Teachscape 360-degree video system. Data collected from raters were analyzed in a two-facet “partially” nested design where occasions (o) were nested within teachers (t), o:t, and crossed with raters (r), {o:t} x r. Results from this study are in alignment with similar studies that found multiple observations and multiple raters are critical for ensuring acceptable levels of measurement score reliability. Considerations for the feasibility of practice should be observed in future reliability and validity studies on the RESET tool, and further work is needed to address the lack of research on rater reliability issues within special education teacher evaluation.

The Technical Properties of Science Content Maze Passages for Middle School Students.

The use of Curriculum-Based Measures is rapidly expanding to the middle school level, where maze passages are frequently used to monitor progress in reading. At secondary grade levels, the focus of reading is on reading to learn, especially in the content areas. Therefore, we were interested in developing maze passages based on grade-level science texts to determine whether maze passages constructed from expository texts would have sufficient reliability and validity to serve as reading and science benchmarking tools. Participants included 367 seventh-grade students from three states. Students completed eight maze passages over three testing periods, a reading measure at two testing periods, and 182 students completed a science state assessment. Alternate form reliability of the science maze passages ranged from .56 to .80. Concurrent and predictive correlation coefficients with other measures ranged from .63 to .67. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

The Predictive Validity of the Early Warning System Tool.

The Early Warning System is a tool developed by the National High School Center to collect data on indicators including attendance, grade point average, course failures, and credits earned. These indicators have been found to be highly predictive of a student’s likelihood of dropping out of high school in large, urban areas. The Early Warning System tool was studied in two suburban schools. With the exception of attendance data, findings suggest that the indicators and suggested threshold for risk determination are predictive in suburban contexts.

Introduction to AEI’s Special Issue on Special Education Teacher Evaluations

The purpose of this introductory article is to provide an overview to the special issue on special education teacher evaluation. This special issue features five articles that collectively present a comprehensive review of the current state of understanding about the issues concerning devising and implementing special education teacher evaluation systems. Within this special issue are articles that provide a discussion of some of the primary challenges associated with evaluating special education teachers; an overview of the issues associated with using observation tools to measure special education teachers; and three studies that each feature a unique approach to special education teacher evaluation via opportunities to learn (My Instructional Learning Opportunities Guidance System; Classroom Observations of Student-Teacher Interactions–Mathematics) and evidence-based instructional practices (Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers). Because of the current gap in special education teacher evaluation research, we hope that this special issue will contribute to the field, and advance existing research.