Teachers’ assignments and student work: Opening a window on classroom practice

摘要

This report describes 4 years of research by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) on developing indicators of classroom practice that have the potential to be used in large-scale settings and that draw attention to important aspects of standards-based learning and instruction. CRESSTs method was based on the collection of teachers' assignments with student work. The assignments were then rated and results were summarized to create indicators of classroom practice. Results to date indicate an acceptable level of interrater reliability across study years. It likely would be necessary to collect as many as three or four assignments from teacher to obtain a stable estimate of quality. Additionally, this method was reliable when teachers created their own assignments, but not when teachers submitted assignments created by outside sources. The quality of classroom assignments was associated with the quality of observed instruction, as well as the quality of students' written work. Students who were exposed to teachers who created more cognitively challenging assignments and who had cleared grading criteria also made greater gains on the Stanford Test of Achievement, Ninth Edition (Stanford 9). The quality of teachers' assignments submitted at each of the study years, however, tended to be of basic quality only. Teachers' reactions to the data collection and implications for the use of this method in collaborative professional development sessions also are discussed. (Contains 5 figures, 1 table, and 73 references.) (Author/SLD)