Like most people who have struggled with weight, there was a time when I decided to deal with the problem by simply refusing to get on the scale.

I know I am not alone in this behavior. But eventually, other evidence (outgrowing a favorite pair of jeans, a bad blood pressure reading) usually brings people back to the recognition that, however unpleasant they may be, regular weigh-ins proContinue Reading »

On Tuesday the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project released its third and final series of reports. The media has reported the main findings: that we can measure and predict effective teaching. And, because the MET Project randomly assigned students to teachers, we can say that there is causality in this relationship, that teachers with high value-added scores in one year caused studentContinue Reading »

Last Friday, we saw again how messaging matters as much as substance with the release of two controversial reports. First, The New York Times published an article on a new National Bureau of Economic Research study on the long-term effects of high value-added teachers on their students. As I wrote last week, the results were exciting: in the most in-depth research of its kind, the authors demonContinue Reading »

Guest Post written by Craig D. Jerald of Break the Curve Consulting.

On Friday the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released the latest findings from its $45 million Measure of Effective Teaching (MET) Project. MET researchers concluded that teachers should be evaluated using “multiple measures” of teaching effectiveness, including student surveys, value-added estimates baContinue Reading »

Isn’t Friday supposed to be “take out the trash” day in the news cycle?  Instead, today has been chock full of major education news stories.  Here are the highlights:

A new study by Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff found that elementary and middle school teachers who raised their students’ standardized test scores seem to have long-term positive effects on their studentContinue Reading »

> 1/2

The ratio of minority teachers who work in high-poverty, high-minority urban public schools, compared to just 1/5 of white teachers, according to a University of Pennsylvania study.  Poor working conditions are cited for driving out all types of teachers from many of these schools. (h/t Linking and thinking on education)

$550 Million

The amount of funds appropriatContinue Reading »