ACT’s QualityCore^® Is Part of National Study Measuring Teacher Effectiveness

What makes a teacher successful in the classroom? A new research study involving ACT’s QualityCore seeks to find the answers.

The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project—funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—will help educators and policymakers identify and support teaching excellence by improving the quality of information available about teacher practice.

The MET project will take place over the 2009–10 and 2010–11 school years in math and English classes for grades four through eight, high school biology or its equivalent in grade nine, English in grade nine, and Algebra I at the high school level. The first year is focused on teacher recruitment and data collection. Work in year two will validate promising measures.

“We are excited to be a part of this national study,” said Jon Erickson, senior vice president of educational services, ACT Education Division. “Teachers should know the expectations for good teaching and what they can do to improve their practice. The data will help determine ways in which effective teaching can be measured fairly and consistently.”

While there is growing consensus that effective teaching is essential to large-scale education reform, educators do not agree about the way in which it should be identified and measured. Many believe that current measures rely too much on student performance on assessments and too little on the full range of what teachers do in the classroom or the contexts in which they teach.

The MET project takes a different approach. Researchers will study multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, including student test scores, student and teacher surveys, and videotaped observations of teachers in the classroom. They will also evaluate the results of QualityCore end-of-course assessments, which will be administered to ninth-grade students at participating schools. Students will take the English 9, Biology, and Algebra I QualityCore end-of-course assessments this spring and again in spring 2011.

QualityCore is a research-based curriculum program designed to raise the quality and intensity of 12 high school core courses. The program’s components—based on research and designed in partnership with some of the nation’s leading educators—offer a comprehensive, aligned instructional approach to building student skills and knowledge.

The components include rigorous course standards, instructional resources, a formative item pool, end-of-course assessments, progress monitoring, and professional development.

QualityCore is directly aligned to ACT’s College and Career Readiness System, which measures whether students are on target for becoming college and career ready in English, math, science, and social studies. Its resources and standards are designed to prepare all students to meet or exceed benchmarks and graduate from high school ready for college or workplace training without remediation.

Approximately 3,000 teachers in nearly 400 schools are participating in the MET study. The districts participating include Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Public Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County (Florida) Public Schools, Memphis Public Schools, New York City Public Schools, and Pittsburgh Public Schools.

“The data collected will serve to inform education reform nationwide,” said Erickson. “The findings of the project—as well as the tools developed through it—will be made available to the public.”

A new study measuring teacher effectiveness will look at how teachers’ work in the classroom impacts student performance.