We know that instructional quality exerts a key factor in influencing student achievement. In this blog post, Angela Minnici and Jenni Fipaza argue the need to better leverage teacher expertise to improve outcomes for all students by shifting the focus away from individual teacher performance to the collective performance of ...
Lynn Holdheide, managing technical assistance consultant at AIR, and senior advisor and former director for the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, explains how teacher preparation programs are responding to the coronavirus pandemic. She also shares some innovative ways that school districts and programs are preparing teachers during uncertain times. ...
The use of transformative social emotional learning (T-SEL) programming is important and promising for teachers as students continue to face challenges related to COVID-19, institutional racism, school safety as well as other issues including housing and food insecurity. By training teachers to employ culturally relevant social-emotional practices, they ensure that ...
Accurately measuring an educator's effectiveness is a complex and difficult task. This guide can be used by states and districts to explore various evaluation methods and tools that represent the "puzzle pieces" of an evaluation system. The guide includes detailed descriptions of more than 75 educator evaluation tools that are ...
Teacher shortages are making headlines. In this blog post, AIR senior researcher Ellen Sherratt asks, Do we really know why fewer college students are interested in becoming educators?
Iris Daruwala is a senior researcher at AIR, where she works with foundations and federal, state, and local agencies on research and evaluation projects. Her work is primarily focused on understanding how educational interventions and reforms can reduce inequities among marginalized student groups and support whole child well-being. As an ...
Although teachers understand the critical importance of social-emotional learning for their students’ overall development, few educator evaluation systems explicitly address that type of learning. This brief identifies the instructional practices that promote student social-emotional learning, which in turn are critical for student academic learning; and showcases how three popular teacher ...
For years, education leaders have sought to pinpoint how teachers become effective in order to better leverage teachers’ impact on student learning and improve student outcomes. This report describes the characteristics of teacher leaders, the roles teacher leaders take in improving teacher practice, and the supports and barriers to teacher ...
The Wisconsin Reading Excellence and Demonstration of Success (READS) initiative was launched by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in 1999–2000 in an effort to positively affect student reading achievement and reduce the number of referrals to special education in READS-funded schools through the implementation of comprehensive reading programs. This ...
When teachers learn, students learn. For decades, AIR has conducted studies of teacher professional learning and helped practitioners use evidence to develop, implement, test, and scale professional learning programs.