Can Video Technology Improve Teacher Evaluations? An Experimental Study

Thomas J. Kane (), David Blazar (), Hunter Gehlbach (), Miriam Greenberg (), David M. Quinn () and Daniel Thal ()
Additional contact information
Thomas J. Kane: Harvard Graduate School of Education Cambridge, MA 02138
David Blazar: College of Education University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742
Hunter Gehlbach: School of Education Johns Hopkins University 2800 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218
Miriam Greenberg: Center for Education Policy Research Harvard Graduate School of Education Cambridge, MA 02138
David M. Quinn: Rossier School of Education University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089
Daniel Thal: Mathematica Cambridge, MA 02139

Education Finance and Policy, 2020, vol. 15, issue 3, 397-427

Abstract: Teacher evaluation reform has been among the most controversial education reforms in recent years. It also is one of the costliest in terms of the time teachers and principals must spend on classroom observations. We conducted a randomized field trial at four sites to evaluate whether substituting teacher-collected videos for in-person observations could improve the value of teacher observations for teachers, administrators, or students. Relative to teachers in the control group who participated in standard in-person observations, teachers in the video-based treatment group reported that post-observation meetings were more “supportive” and they were more able to identify a specific practice they changed afterward. Treatment principals were able to shift their observation work to noninstructional times. The program also substantially increased teacher retention. Nevertheless, the intervention did not improve students’ academic achievement or self-reported classroom experiences, either in the year of the intervention or for the next cohort of students. Following from the literature on observation and feedback cycles in low-stakes settings, we hypothesize that to improve student outcomes schools may need to pair video feedback with more specific supports for desired changes in practice.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/edfp_a_00289 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:edfpol:v:15:y:2020:i:3:p:397-427

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1557-3060

Access Statistics for this article

Education Finance and Policy is currently edited by Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Randall Reback

More articles in Education Finance and Policy from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().