The Gates Foundation released its Measures of Effective Teaching Project Releases Final Research Report yesterday, and many of us are still trying to digest it.

Here’s a very beginning list of posts about it, and I’ll be adding more and more (please let me know about ones I’m missing):

Gates Releases Final Report On “Effective Teaching” was my post about it yesterday, which includes many links to articles about it from the mainstream media that give simple summaries.

Gates Still Doesn’t Get It! Trapped in a World of Circular Reasoning & Flawed Frameworks is from Bruce Baker.

The 50 million dollar lie is by Gary Rubinstein, and the title summarizes his conclusions.

Gary has written a good follow-up post, too.

And here are two tweets from David B. Cohen:

You might also be interested in The Best Posts On The Gates’ Funded Measures Of Effective Teaching Report, which is a collection of commentaries on their report from a year ago, including my own.

The Best Posts On Students Evaluating Classes (And Teachers) (look near the end of that post) also includes some posts specifically related to the report’s emphasis on using student surveys in the formal teacher evaluation process.

And, since a big conclusion of the report is that Value Added Measurements work, you might want to check out The Best Resources For Learning About The “Value-Added” Approach Towards Teacher Evaluation.

Coincidentally, an hour after the Gates report was released, Nate Silver made his first public comments on VAM.

Gates’ Teacher Effectiveness Study: Surprised? is by Renee Moore.

Gates Foundation Wastes More Money Pushing VAM is from The National Education Policy Center.

Weighing and Weighting the Evidence: the Measures of Effective Teaching Project is by Barnett Berry.

Rick Hess posted a very articulate analysis of the Gates Foundation MET study on teacher effectiveness. It’s definitely worth reading the entire post, but here’s an excerpt:

But I do think it’s a mistake to imagine that ability to move reading and math scores is universally a compelling proxy for being a “good” teacher. And when we calibrate all of our other instruments based on their ability to predict value-added gains on reading and math assessments, we build our entire edifice of teacher quality on what strikes me as a narrow and potentially rickety foundation. When we see policymakers mandate teacher evaluation systems that rely almost wholly on observation and value-added, and feel comfortable in doing so because of the MET findings, I fear we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.

MET has made an enormously valuable contribution. Even when the results are mundane, they’re useful. After all, the finding that nothing predicts value-added scores nearly as well as value-added scores shouldn’t unduly surprise, nor should the sparse evidence on the value of observational protocols (much like professional development, I think observation has long been more impressive in concept than practice.) But, more than anything, I hope that we resist the temptation to narrow our conception of good teaching to a handful of things we can conveniently measure, and instead make smart use of the MET findings while also seeking ways to more robustly gauge teacher performance.

Think Twice: Measures of Effective Teaching is from The Great Lakes Center.

The Gates Foundation Leapt, Now MET Looks is by John Thompson.

Researchers Critique Final ‘Measures of Effective Teaching’ Findings is from Education Week.

The key to evaluating teachers: Ask kids what they think is an interesting interview with Tom Kane, head of the Gates Foundation MET project. And Kevin Drum from Mother Jones has an even more interesting follow-up to it.

‘Effective Teaching’ Study Seen as Influential, and Faulty is from Education Week.

Why Didn’t the Gates Foundation Study the Policy Issues Regarding Value-Added Teacher Evaluations? is by John Thompson.

A Small Request for My Friends at Gates is by Rick Hess.

Re-Evaluating the Gates MET Study is by John Thompson.

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