Dear Alexis K. Holmes,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments on behalf of the National Education Association on the proposed information collection for the Impact Evaluation of Teacher Residency Programs. We appreciate your perspectives on the potential contributions of the proposed study. As described below, we believe your comments are addressed by the current study plans, so we do not think any changes to the proposed data collection are needed.
Retention/longevity of residency program graduates. The study will collect district administrative data on the retention of residency graduates and other teachers.
Recruitment and induction costs. The study will collect information on recruitment and induction costs for residency graduates and other teachers from interviews with district staff.
Measures of profession-readiness/preparedness for teaching. The study will collect self-reported information on teachers’ preparedness for teaching from the teacher surveys but does not plan to collect this information from teacher appraisal systems. There are several challenges related to collecting data from teacher appraisal systems: (1) the evaluation systems differ by districts, (2) some districts have difficulty providing these data (for example, because they do not retain these data in a longitudinal data system), (3) some districts only evaluate teachers on 2- or 3- year cycles, and (4) teacher observation scores (a major component of most evaluation systems) can have limited variation; in many districts, more than 90 percent of teachers receive observation scores of “effective” or “highly effective.” Thus, we believe the collection of these data would be burdensome for districts and of limited value to the study.
Recruitment and preparation of diverse candidates. The study will collect information on the diversity of residency program candidates from interviews with residency programs nationally. In districts participating in the effectiveness study, the study will also collect teacher survey data on the demographic characteristics of residency graduates and other teachers.
Induction support. The study will collect information on the induction support that residency programs provide to graduates from interviews with residency programs nationally. In addition, in districts in the effectiveness study, the study will also collect teacher survey data on the induction support that residency graduates and other teachers received.
Addressing districts’ specific areas of need. The study will collect information on whether residency programs help schools and districts address critical shortage areas such as STEM teachers from interviews with residency programs
Differences in outcomes for graduates of undergraduate and graduate residency programs. The study’s analysis plans include subgroup analyses by key program features. If the study has a sufficient sample of residency graduates from both types of programs, it will include subgroup analyses to examine how their effectiveness differs.
Use of value-added measures. The study does not plan to use value-added measures to estimate teacher effectiveness. Instead, to isolate the effects of residency graduates on their students’ achievement, it will randomly assign students within the same school, grade, and subject to classes taught by either a residency graduate or a teacher from another preparation program. It will then compare the test scores of students assigned to residency graduates and other teachers. Random assignment helps to ensure that the residency graduates and other teachers teach similar students, under similar teaching conditions. The planned study design will thus estimate the effectiveness of residency graduates compared to other teachers with similar students in the same school, grade, and subject, holding constant other factors (including interactions with other educators) that may influence students’ achievement. In addition, unlike value-added modeling, this approach will not assign an effectiveness rating to individual teachers or schools—instead, it will simply compare the performance of different types of teachers.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Meredith Bachman
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| File Title | Mathematica Report Template |
| Author | Dawn Patterson |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-12-03 |