Combined Measures Better at Gauging Teacher Effectiveness, Study Finds

Study probes scores, observations, surveys

Student feedback, test-score growth calculations, and observations of practice appear to pick up different but complementary information that, combined, can provide a balanced and accurate picture of teacher performance, according to research recently released from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A composite measure on teacher effectiveness drawing on all three of those measures, and tested through a random-assignment experiment, closely predicted how much a high-performing group of teachers would successfully boost their students’ standardized-test scores, concludes the series of new papers, part of the massive Measures of Effective Teaching study launched more than three years ago.

“If you select the right measures, you can provide teachers with an honest assessment of where they stand in their practice that, hopefully, will serve as the launching point for their development,” said Thomas J. Kane, a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,...