Measuring Teacher Effectiveness Research and Commentary

RAND researchers are nationally recognized for having examined and evaluated methods of measuring teacher effectiveness, as well as the critical relationship between teacher effectiveness and student achievement.

Below, you can explore the Measuring Teacher Effectiveness Fact Sheet Series, as well as the latest blog posts, multimedia, research briefs, and full reports.

Blog Posts

  • Teacher leading a conflict resolution session with school children

    Learning How to Measure Social and Emotional Learning

    Jan 11, 2018

    Educators and policymakers are increasingly focusing on non-academic competencies, known as social and emotional learning. To support growth in these areas, teachers need assessments that can help them understand how well students are learning these skills, and what instructional approaches work best.

  • A teacher discussing a mathematics problem with her student

    What Emerging Research Says About the Promise of Personalized Learning

    Aug 16, 2017

    Personalized learning could lead to improved student outcomes. But those implementing this approach should temper their expectations for how big these benefits will be—and be patient while the benefits emerge. It's also important to consider the challenges of implementation.

  • Professor and university students in a lecture hall

    Before We Measure Teaching Quality, We Should Know What It Is

    Nov 29, 2016

    The lack of an evidence base on teaching quality and its impact in higher education points to a need for more research, made more pressing by the imminent roll-out of the Teaching Excellence Framework, which intends to assess and monitor teaching quality at UK higher education institutions.

  • Malcolm Gladwell, V. Darleen Opfer, and Laura Hamilton at RAND's Politics Aside event in Santa Monica, November 12, 2016

    The Challenges of Measuring Effective Teaching

    Nov 16, 2016

    While educators, policymakers, and parents may agree on the need for more effective teachers, they often use different criteria to judge whether schools are doing their job. Parents have varied priorities for what they want in teachers and in schools.

  • Second-grade students in Baltimore County, Maryland, work with an instructor through a personalized learning initiative called Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow (STAT)

    Personalized Learning: The Latest Buzz in Classroom Instruction

    Aug 22, 2016

    Students in personalized learning classrooms made greater gains in math and reading than their peers in other schools. But there are barriers to fully personalized learning, including rigid state standards and time demands on teachers.

  • Teacher using a tablet in a classroom while students work on desktop computers

    Inspiring Better Teacher Planning and Instruction or Just Adding Noise?

    Jul 20, 2016

    Teachers can and should have the freedom to select and develop at least some of their own instructional resources. But whether sites like Amazon Inspire will actually save teachers time and help them find high-quality resources is up for debate.

Multimedia

Research Briefs and Periodicals

Featured Publications

Reports

  • Raising the Bar for Teacher Preparation: Early Signals on How Louisiana's Education Policy Strategies Are Working Across the State 2019

    Since 2012, Louisiana has been developing policies to improve student outcomes in the areas of early childhood education, K–12 academics, graduation pathways, and teacher preparation. This report, part of a four-part series on the implementation of these reforms, focuses on Louisiana's strategies for K–12 teacher preparation.

  • Validation Study of the TNTP Core Teaching Rubric 2018

    The TNTP Core Teaching Rubric uses assessments of student behavior, rather than teacher actions, to rate a teacher's instructional practices. In this report, RAND researchers assess whether the TNTP Core Teaching Rubric produces scores that are representative of teachers' overall instructional practices and whether raters' content expertise influence scores on TNTP Core. The report includes recommendations to improve the use of TNTP Core.

  • Improving Teaching Effectiveness: Final Report: The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching Through 2015–2016 2018

    The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative was a multiyear effort to dramatically improve student outcomes by increasing students' access to effective teaching. Researchers from the RAND Corporation and the American Institutes for Research conducted a six-year evaluation of the initiative, documenting the policies and practices each site enacted and their effects on student outcomes. This is the final evaluation report.

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