The recent increased attention to teacher evaluation has raised questions about the relationship between evaluation and student outcomes. This research and policy brief lays out an informal framework for using evaluation results to target professional growth opportunities for teachers within an aligned system of evaluation, leading to higher levels of ...
In this blog post, David Osher, AIR vice president and international expert on school climate, social emotional learning, and student support, shares an interesting perspective about making a difference through school climate.
How well do classroom observation scores help us understand how much a teacher has added to his or her students’ achievement? As Rachel Garrett describes in this blog post, new research raises questions about the wisdom of basing high-stakes, summative teacher evaluations chiefly on classroom observations. ...
Teacher shortages are widely reported across the United States. But is there more to the story? Research sheds light on the widely-debated questions of shortages, their causes, severity, and ways to respond.
Are teachers working in charter schools more effective in improving student outcomes compared to teachers working in traditional public schools? In this blog post, Umut Özek, a principal researcher at AIR, describes a new study in which he and his fellow authors examined the disparities in teacher effectiveness between charter ...
A new research brief released by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences documents states’ capacity to support school turnaround as of spring 2012 and spring 2013. The brief, the result of a collaboration between experts at AIR and Mathematica Policy Research, found that at least three-quarters of ...
Forty years ago, President Gerald Ford signed the Education of All Handicapped Children’s Act, now known as IDEA: the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Three waves of legislative reform since then have continued to strengthen access and emphasize academic success for all students. In this blog post, AIR expert Louis ...
The Indiana Department of Education requested the Great Lakes Comprehensive Center's support as it designed and implemented the planning process to develop a comprehensive strategic plan, and staff commitment to its success, to effectively address the education challenges the state faces.
Implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) presented policymakers and stakeholders with opportunities to improve outcomes for schools and students as well as teachers and leaders. AIR worked with districts and states to help them navigate the most current information, key topics, and research-based resources for planning and implementing ESSA ...
The purpose of this paper is to 1) present a multi-methods approach of evaluating comprehensive school reform models, 2) describe the Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center’s standards for evaluating CSR effectiveness; and 3) provide pilot data and results from one comprehensive school reform model provider. ...