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Mathematica Launches Three Major Studies of Teacher Effectiveness
Scientifically Based Research Aims to Inform Debate, Support Better Decision Making
Contact: Amy Berridge, (609) 945-3378
Princeton, NJ—December 6, 2010—Teachers are critical to transforming the American education system and boosting the performance of our nation's students, who lag behind their peers in other industrialized nations in reaching many educational milestones, such as math and reading achievement and graduation rates. In education reform, teachers often bear the greatest responsibility for student outcomes because teachers matter. Effective teachers can help boost test scores, encourage high school completion and college attendance, and improve overall achievement—particularly for our most disadvantaged students. Although many teacher preparation and training programs exist to recruit, incentivize, train, retain, and support teachers, more rigorous, unbiased evidence is needed to determine what is and isn't working for America's educators and their students.
Mathematica's cadre of education experts, including 22 with expertise in value-added methods, are working on a portfolio of new projects focused on teacher effectiveness. Together, these projects are working to clarify how teachers can help their students succeed by helping assess programs and policies that encourage teacher effectiveness, recognize and promote performance, retain high performers, and help define what makes a good teacher good.
Some highlights of Mathematica's work with the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, in this area include:
- Alternative Teacher Training: Attracting talented teachers to serve in areas of critical need is an important policy priority for our nation. Mathematica is evaluating Teacher Residency Programs (TRPs) funded through teacher quality enhancement grants. TRPs are an alternative approach to teacher training that aim to attract talented new teachers to the profession and then provide training and support by combining limited coursework with a one-year supervised "residency" similar to a student teaching practicum. In this study, the research team is assessing how TRP teachers' classroom performance compares to that of other novice teachers by examining achievement levels of students in the classrooms of TRP and non-TRP teachers. The study also compares retention rates of TRP and non-TRP novice teachers, and examines program and participant characteristics by measuring elements such as program length, required coursework and activities, characteristics of mentor teachers, and selection criteria for participants. Senior fellow Philip Gleason is the project director of this $4 million, five-year contract.
- Teacher Performance Pay: Paying teachers based on student performance is a controversial topic. The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), a federal grant program designed to support innovative approaches to reforming teacher pay, supports performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems to help attract effective teachers and principals to high-needs schools. Mathematica is conducting a rigorous national evaluation of TIF to analyze the effectiveness of these compensation programs, evaluate elements of the incentives, and offer insights on how to successfully create and implement them. The five-year, $7.9 million study is led by associate director of research and senior economist Jill Constantine and was mandated by the legislation authorizing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
- Teacher Quality: Mathematica is a national leader in using value-added measures to calculate, analyze, and interpret measures of student achievement growth in ways that are fair and useful to educators. With the Teacher Quality Distribution and Measurement Study, Mathematica will estimate the distribution of teacher quality within 30 districts across the nation, using value-added methodology. The project team will also collect information on district policies designed to attract effective teachers to high need schools, and explore the relationship of these policies and the teacher quality distribution. Senior fellow Philip Gleason leads this $8 million, 5-year project.
"These new projects tap into the deep resources of Mathematica's education researchers, who are contributing objective, respected evidence to one of our nation's most pressing needs: how to improve our education system and student outcomes," said Constantine. "Our experts are engaged in high-stakes, on-the-ground research in classrooms and schools as well as theoretical methodology that is informing education policymakers and stakeholders and having an impact on teachers and their students."
About Mathematica: Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan research firm, provides a full range of research and data collection services, including program evaluation and policy research, survey design and data collection, research assessment and interpretation, and program performance/data management, to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Ann Arbor, Mich., Cambridge, Mass., Chicago, Ill., Oakland, Calif., and Washington, D.C., has conducted some of the most important studies of health care, education, international, disability, family support, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs.