Reading & Understanding Research: Teacher Quality & Teacher Effectiveness in the Classroom Research on important educational issues plays an increasingly important role in influencing instructional practice, educational leadership, and education policy. This is particularly the case with research that seeks to describe and identify high quality teachers and teacher effectiveness in the classroom. In this seminar, students will be introduced to a broad range of current empirical research that examines the relationship between teacher qualifications and teacher quality; current efforts to use quantitative measures such as Value Added Models (VAMs) and student growth models to identify ?effective teachers?; and the strengths and weaknesses of existing observational strategies to evaluate classroom teaching. Students also will draw on this research to hone their skills in locating, reading and understanding empirical research, especially that which relies on quantitative methods and statistics to investigate issues related to educational practice and policy.

Students will read timely scholarly research on issues related to evaluating teacher quality. Typically, each session will focus on 1-2 articles. In addition, students will read one book on understanding and using Value Added Measures (VAMs) in teacher evaluation.

Students will write three memos that respond to hypothetical situations where they are asked to interpret and synthesize research related to teacher qualifications, quantitative measures (e.g., value-added measures or other measures of student growth and learning) for evaluating teacher performance, and standards-based measures (e.g., direct evaluations) for evaluating teacher performance.