Panel: Evidence on Personnel Evaluations in K-12 Schools
(Education)

Thursday, November 3, 2016: 1:15 PM-2:45 PM
Columbia 3 (Washington Hilton)

*Names in bold indicate Presenter

Panel Organizers:  Cory Koedel, University of Missouri
Panel Chairs:  Seth Gershenson, American University
Discussants:  Kata Mihaly, RAND Corporation and Scott Imberman, Michigan State University

State and local education agencies across the United States are working to develop rigorous personnel evaluation systems that are designed to provide better and more-differentiated information about teacher and principal performance. The improved information from these systems can be used to influence retention and promotion decisions and to guide educators’ formal and informal professional development activities, among other things. But while numerous studies show that the use of improved performance metrics to guide decision-making in public education has the potential to significantly raise achievement and promote better later-life outcomes for students, in practice there are many concerns with implementation. For instance, there are well-documented challenges associated with measuring educator performance accurately. Moreover, using evaluation information in a high-stakes system may come with unintended consequences; e.g., adverse effects on educator morale (and perhaps effort) and a lower general appeal of the teaching profession (which could affect recruitment). Ultimately, we have much to learn about how emerging educator evaluation systems affect worker performance and student outcomes in the field. The four papers to be presented in this session will examine the effects of new, more rigorous educator evaluation systems along a variety of dimensions and across multiple locales. In particular, papers in the panel will consider the effects of new systems on selective attrition and teacher improvement, and correspondingly, student achievement. The quality of the performance measures in these systems for teachers and principals will also receive significant attention. Collectively, the research presented in this session will provide a glimpse into what we’ve learned thus far about the on-the-ground effects of new personnel evaluation systems in K-12 schools.

The Effect of Rigorous Teacher Evaluation on Workforce Quality
Cory Koedel, University of Missouri, Julie Berry Cullen, University of California, San Diego and Eric Parsons, University of Missouri, Columbia



Learning Job Skills from Colleagues at Work: Evidence from a Field Experiment Using Teacher Performance Data
John Papay1, Eric Taylor2, John Tyler1 and Mary Laski1, (1)Brown University, (2)Harvard University



Getting Better? Estimating the Impact of Participation in a Multiple Measure Teacher Evaluation System on Teacher Quality
Katharine O. Strunk, Edward Cremata and Julie A. Marsh, University of Southern California



Supervisor Ratings As Measures of Principal Performance: Evidence from the TEAM Evaluation System in Tennessee
Jason Grissom, Richard S. L. Blissett and Hajime Mitani, Vanderbilt University




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