Scott Naftel

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

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Supply and Demand of Minority Teachers in Texas: Problems and Prospects

Teacher supply and demand issues are of critical importance as our society enters the 21st century. Over the next decade, there will be an increasing demand for new teachers––about two million––due in part to a dramatic increase in enrollments and high attrition rates as an aging teacher workforce becomes eligible for retirement. Where these teachers will come from and where they will teach is important to understand as our society faces increasing racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Amid this diversity is a continuing concern that some racial-ethnic groups are disproportionately placed at risk. Thus, this article focuses on the supply and demand patterns of minority teachers, with special attention to teachers of students in high-risk districts. We analyze data on teachers from Texas between 1979 and 1996. We provide a variety of descriptive results––both univariate and multivariate––showing that while Texas has been successful in attracting minority teachers, it has a long way to go in attaining the goal of the Texas State Board of Education: to have a teacher workforce that reflects the racial-ethnic composition of the state.

Using State School Accountability Data to Evaluate Federal Programs: A Long Uphill Road

Evaluations of federal programs designed to improve student achievement generally depend on data gathered by the states for school accountability purposes, rather than data specifically designed for program evaluation. In addition, these data are available at the school level but not at the student level. This article first discusses issues related to the quality of school-level data collected as part of state accountability systems, including the reliability and validity of school-level test scores as a measure of the value added by schools to student learning. It then outlines various ways in which school-level data can be usefully analyzed and illustrates the challenges inherent in doing so, including the challenges of aggregating data across states to find an overall program effect. The final section discusses the implications of the arguments presented here for measuring changes in school performance and linking these effects to a specific program. Ultimately, our ability to measure changes in outcomes and link them back to the intervention depends on three factors: (a) identifying a set of activities attributable to the program, (b) measuring the quality of implementation of these activities, and (c) obtaining a valid and reliable measure of the desired outcome. The article makes it clear that none of these is easy to come by.

What Supports Do Teachers Need to Help Students Meet Common Core State Standards for Mathematics? Findings from the American Teacher and American School Leader Panels

Mathematics teachers across the United States have been working to adjust their instruction in response to states’ adoption of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M) or other standards adapted from CCSS-M. In this report, we document the extent to which U.S. teachers are expected to address new mathematics standards in their instruction, teachers’ familiarity with these standards, the professional development (PD) opportunities that teachers report receiving, and the PD opportunities they feel they need to help them implement standards effectively. Our findings draw on RAND’s American Teacher Panel (ATP) and American School Leader Panel (ASLP). The ATP and ASLP are new survey tools that take the pulse of the nation’s educators on key issues of education policy and practice through periodic surveys of a representative sample of teachers and principals across the United States. Through these unique panels, RAND collects accurate, longitudinal data regarding educators’ perspectives on and implementation of major federal, state, and district policies put in place over the past several years, including those related to standards, assessment, and evaluation. C O R P O R A T I O N

What Are Teachers' and School Leaders' Major Concerns About New K--12 State Tests? Findings from the American Teacher and American School Leader Panels

Many states have recently made major changes to their K–12 student testing programs. The media have reported growing dissatisfaction with the amount of testing happening in schools and the use of tests for high-stakes decisionmaking about schools, principals, and teachers.1 However, there is little systematically gathered information on the perspectives of U.S. educators who have firsthand knowledge about testing and its effects on teaching and learning. In this report, we share U.S. principals’ and teachers’ main concerns about testing, drawing upon new survey tools for understanding educators’ perspectives on the implementation of major education policies: RAND’s American Teacher Panel (ATP) and American School Leader Panel (ASLP). The ATP and ASLP take the pulse of the nation’s educators on key issues of educational policy and practice through periodic surveys of a representative sample of teachers and principals across the United States.2 This report focuses on educator perspectives about state testing programs; upcoming reports will also address teacher capacity and the supports provided to teachers to implement standards and assessments. C O R P O R A T I O N