After years evaluating teacher professional learning programs, researchers Andrew J. Wayne, Jordan Rickles, Mengli Song, Seth Brown, and Michael S. Garet describe a study that changed their perspective. The study's takeaways about the design of teacher professional learning are important for everyone who seeks to create systems to support teaching and learning. The findings call attention to the value of streamlined, high-quality programs for improving performance outcomes for teachers and students.

This study assesses the impact of a 2-year virtual coaching program on teacher and student outcomes. The program-Feedback on Alignment and Support for Teachers (FAST)-was intended to deepen teachers' understanding of their state's standards and improve the alignment of their instruction with the standards. Relying on a multisite school-level randomized controlled trial, we assessed the impact of the FAST program in fourth-grade math and fifth-grade English language arts (ELA). We found that the program had a positive impact on the alignment of teachers' instruction with state standards for both math and ELA teachers (effect sizes = 0.70 and 0.40, respectively), although the impact was statistically significant only for math teachers. In contrast to a growing body of evidence on the benefits of instructional coaching, the program's impact on student achievement, was in the negative direction for both fourth-grade mathematics and fifth-grade ELA (effect sizes = -0.07 and -0.10, respectively), although the impact on achievement was statistically significant only for ELA. These results suggest that improving instructional alignment alone may not be sufficient for improving student achievement.

This study examined bias reduction in the eight nonequivalent comparison group designs (NECGDs) that result from combining (a) choice of a local versus non-local comparison group, and analytic use or not of (b) a pretest measure of the study outcome and (c) a rich set of other covariates. Bias was estimated as the difference in causal estimate between each NECGD and a carefully appraised randomized experiment with the same intervention, outcome, and estimand. Results indicated that bias generally declined with the number of design elements in an NECGD, that combining all three sufficed to eliminate bias but was not necessary for it, and that this pattern of results was largely replicated across five different replication factors.

This study was designed to assess the effects of states’ adoption of more rigorous standards as part of the current wave of standards-based reform on student achievement using comparative interrupted time series analyses based on state-level NAEP data from 1990 to 2017. Results show that the effects of adopting more rigorous standards on students’ mathematics achievement were generally small and not significant. The effects on students’ reading achievement were also generally small, but negative and statistically significant for Grade 4. The study also revealed that the effects of states’ adoption of more rigorous standards varied across NAEP subscales and student subgroups.

This paper uses a validity argument approach to examine the validity evidence for measures of instructional alignment based on an instrument adapted from the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC). Using the instrument, Grade 4 math and Grade 5 English language arts teachers reported the level of emphasis they gave to subject-specific topics and cognitive demands in their instruction, which provided the data for measuring instructional alignment—both overall and by topic and by cognitive demand—with state standards. We found that (a) teachers differentiated topics but not cognitive demands when reporting on the content of their instruction, (b) teachers likely overreported levels of emphasis on topics and cognitive demands, and (c) overall alignment and alignment by cognitive demand were not significantly associated with teachers’ value-added scores. Although this study examined a specific version of the SEC, we believe the findings apply more broadly to SEC-based measures of instructional alignment.

This study was designed to assess the impact of providing teachers and principals with performance feedback on instructional practice, principal leadership, and student achievement. The teacher and principal performance feedback that was the focus of the study's intervention incorporated promising features of educator performance measures identified by recent research. The impact of the 2-year intervention was assessed through a school-level randomized experiment conducted in 127 elementary and middle schools from eight districts. The study found that providing educators with performance feedback had positive impacts on teachers' classroom practice, principal leadership, and student achievement in mathematics but not in reading.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with researchers from RAND and the American Institutes for Research, speculated that there were lessons to be learned from variation among schools within the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative sites because some schools had improved more than others. They conducted a qualitative study and a survey study to investigate factors that might be associated with positive student outcomes.

RAND researchers study the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative and find associations between school improvement and staff perceptions of school leaders' behaviors, staff cohesion, and factors outside schools' control.

As the standards movement continues into its third decade, there remains a need for alignment methodologies that can be broadly applied to study instruction and policy. This article reports on a series of development efforts meant to revise the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) surveys and methods to study the implementation of new college- and career-readiness standards. The work included a meeting of content experts, a series of cognitive interviews, two validation studies, and a small pilot. We discuss both the results of the specific studies and the implications of the work for other potential users of the SEC or SEC-like tools.

Policymakers and practitioners are increasingly interested in students' deeper learning skills, or the interpersonal and intrapersonal skills students need to succeed in school, careers, and civic life. This article presents evidence about whether the concept of deeper learning-applied across a variety of approaches-has potential merit as a means for education improvement. The analysis, based on 16 high schools implementing a school-wide approach to promoting deeper learning within the context of small schools, indicates that students who attended schools focused on deeper learning reported greater opportunities for deeper learning, greater competency in some deeper learning domains, had higher rates of graduating from high school, and were more likely to enroll in 4-year colleges than similar students who attended comparison schools.

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.

This brief summarizes the final report of a six-year evaluation of the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, documenting the policies and practices each site enacted and their effects on student outcomes.

Educator performance evaluation systems are a potential tool for improving student achievement by increasing the effectiveness of the educator workforce (Stecher et al., 2016; Weisburg, Daniel, Sexton, Mulhern, & Keeling, 2009). Recent research behind these performance systems encompasses the quality of the performance measures (e.g., Kane, McCaffrey, Miller, & Staiger, 2013), the implementation of such measures in performance feedback systems (e.g., Chaplin, Gill, Thompkins, & Miller, 2014), and the impact of providing performance feedback on outcomes for teachers and students (e.g., Steinberg & Sartain, 2015; Taylor & Tyler 2012).

This study is a randomized controlled trial that assessed the impact of Early College High Schools on students’ high school graduation, college enrollment, and college degree attainment, as well as students’ high school experiences using extant data and survey data. The study included 10 Early Colleges that enrolled students in Grades 9 to 12 in 2005 through 2011 and used a lottery for admissions, and 2,458 students who participated in those admission lotteries. The study time frame covered Grade 9 through 2 years post high school for all students and 4 years post high school for the oldest student cohort. It found that Early Colleges had positive impacts on college enrollment and college completion as well as students’ high school experiences.

The foundation identified seven Intensive Partnership sites— three school districts and four charter management organizations (CMOs)—to implement reforms covering teacher evaluation, staffing, professional development, and compensation and career ladders over a six-year period.1 These reforms are intended, among other things, to improve teachers’ overall effectiveness and to ensure that low-income minority (LIM) students have access to highly effective teachers. A detailed description of the initiative is available in a RAND report, Implementation: The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching Through 2013–2014.2