This project will test the effects of an intervention to assist middle school teachers to learn to use rich, in-depth data to improve their teaching. Information about their current instruction, curriculum practices, and student assessment will be gathered, summarized, and given to teachers in a training exercise. Two forms of the intervention will be used: one is based on "continuous improvement" in which data and formative evaluation are provided to teachers. The other intervention is "school-based collaboration and networking" aimed at sharing teaching ideas, models, and strategies for improvement.
The project will apply an experimental design with treatment and control schools randomly selected from a pool of schools from the same districts. Improvements in curriculum and teaching will be assessed with multiple measures, including teacher surveys, observation, interviews, and analysis of teacher assignments, student work, and student test results. However, the true test of the effect of the interventions cannot occur until a 4th unfunded year. The project will rely on school collected assessments.
