High School End-of-Course Teacher Effectiveness Validity
RCTClinical Trial
Validating teacher effectiveness measures in high school settings is complicated by departmentalized subject structures, subject-specific end-of-course exams, and elevated student mobility and attrition.
Picture this
Evaluating high school subject specialist teachers (such as biology or algebra instructors) requires testing whether prior-year specialized teaching ratings remain predictive when students are reshuffled into specialized subject classes rather than self-contained elementary classrooms.
What the evidence says
Prior-year teacher effectiveness predicted post-randomization high school achievement across stacked subjects (math, ELA, biology) with an IV coefficient of 0.828 (p < 0.01, SE = 0.292), confirming causal validity in secondary education despite a 53% student sample attrition rate.
- Who was studied
- N = 3,877 randomized 9th grade students across 149 randomization blocks in math, ELA, and biology classrooms (from an initial randomized sample of N = 8,657).
- How
- LIML IV estimation evaluating the causal effect of prior-year high school teacher ratings on student performance using ACT QualityCore standardized end-of-course assessments following random roster assignment.
What to do
Deploy standardized end-of-course subject assessments (such as ACT QualityCore) to evaluate and validate high school teacher effectiveness across departmentalized subject areas.
From the source
"In the first column, we combine the results across three subjects: math, ELA, and biology. The instrumental variables estimate of the effect of actual teacher effectiveness was .828, with a standard error of .29."
Have We Identified Effective Teachers? Validating Measures of Effective Teaching Using Random Assignment