Instructional Coaching Personnel and Program Scalability

David Blazar (), Doug McNamara () and Genine Blue ()
Additional contact information
David Blazar: Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership University of Maryland College Park College Park, MD 20740
Doug McNamara: Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership University of Maryland College Park College Park, MD 20740
Genine Blue: TNTP New York, NY 10018

Education Finance and Policy, 2024, vol. 19, issue 3, 492-523

Abstract: Instructional coaching is an attractive alternative to one-size-fits-all teacher training and development in part because it is purposefully differentiated: Programming is aligned to individual teachers’ needs and implemented by an individual coach. But, how much of the benefit of coaching as an instructional improvement model depends on the specific coach with whom a teacher works? Collaborating with a national teacher training and development organization, TNTP, we find substantial variability in effectiveness across coaches in terms of changes in preservice teachers’ instructional practice (roughly 0.25 to 0.3 standard deviation from our preferred sample and models). The magnitude of coach effectiveness heterogeneity is quite similar to average coaching program effects on teaching practice identified in other research. Through a set of alternative model specifications and permutation tests, we rule out the possibility that our estimates of coach effectiveness heterogeneity are driven by nonrandom sorting of coaches to teachers, at least on observable characteristics available in our data, as well as the possibility that these estimates are simply statistical noise. These findings suggest that identifying, recruiting, and supporting highly skilled coaches will be key to scaling instructional coaching programs.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00407
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

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:19:y:2024:i:3:p:492-523

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 ().