Project Update 2017

Since the last update we have completed field testing of RATE at different sites in North Carolina. We have also created and field-tested a development tool for teacher candidates and working teachers that helps supervisors and mentors use information from RATE scores to move teachers forward in their practice. Further comparisons of RATE scores with those of other instruments from the MET study continues to show RATE as equal to or better than those instruments in predicting student achievement gains. Reports on these studies will appear later this year.

 Next Steps

Our goal for this year is to continue to refine the instrument, and to test its efficacy using only audios of teaching practice, rather than videos.

More Conference Presentations on

Pushing Past the Edge with RATE: Faster, Better, and Cheaper Teacher Evaluation. Canadian Evaluation Society, St. John’s, June 6, 2016.

Linking Observations of Practice with Student Test Scores Using the Rapid Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness (RATE). ISATT, Auckland, New Zealand, July 14, 2015.

Project Update 2015

Since our last update in August, 2014 our paper “Can We Identify a Successful Teacher Better, Faster, and Cheaper? Evidence for Innovating Teacher Observation Systems” that appeared in the Journal of Teacher Education, Volume 65(5), 2014 has received considerable attention, not the least of which was a critique by Good and Lavigne, published in the same journal. Our response to that critique appeared in the following issue and can be found here.
in North Carolina
During 2015 the teacher training program at East Carolina University (ECU) contracted with us to use RATE with their teacher candidates. They were looking for a teacher evaluation tool that was easy to use and could provide ongoing information about their teacher candidates that would help them improve their preparation. They will continue to use RATE in the following year. We also followed recent graduates of the program and collected data that will enable us to compare the effectiveness of RATE with that of CLASS in predicting teachers’ ability to raise student achievement scores.
Future Work
In addition to our continued collaboration with ECU, we are working with the EPIC team at UNC Chapel Hill to study the use of RATE with early career teachers. We are also working with Claremont Graduate University to train RATErs and to conduct a series of research studies using crowdsourcing, and different video and audio presentations of lessons for rating. We also have access to the lesson videos from the Measures of Effective Teaching study and are hoping to find a way to undertake a direct comparison of RATE with the instruments used by MET researchers.
Recent Conference Presentations on
April 10, 2014: UK Evaluation Society Annual Evaluation Conference, London, England.
June, 2014: International Council on Education and Teaching World Assembly, Toronto, Canada.
October, 2014: 11th European Evaluation Society Biennial Conference, Dublin, Ireland.
October, 2014: American Evaluation Association Annual Meeting, Denver, Co.
January, 2015: Hawaii International Conference on Education, Honolulu, HI.
May, 2015: Canadian Evaluation Society, Montreal, Canada.
July, 2015:  International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching Conference, Auckland, New Zealand.
Publications about 
Gargani, J., & Strong, M. (2015). Response to “Rating Teachers Cheaper, Faster, and Better: Not So Fast.” It’s About Evidence. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(4), 395-401.
Good, T., & Lavigne, A. (2015). Rating Teachers Cheaper, Faster, and Better:
Not So Fast. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(3), 288-293.
Gargani, J., & Strong, M. (2014). Can we identify a successful teacher better, faster, and cheaper? Evidence for innovating teacher observation systems. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(5), 389-401.
Strong, M., Gargani, J., & Hacifazlioğlu, Ö. (2011). Do we know a successful teacher when we see one? Experiments in the identification of effective teachersJournal of Teacher Education, 62(4), 367-382.
Strong, M. (2011). The Highly Qualified Teacher: What is Teacher Quality and How Do We Measure it?  New York: Teachers College Press.