Eight Lessons Learned From Piloting the Rapid Cycle Evaluation Coach

For the last 18 months, the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, in partnership with the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the Department, has been working with Mathematica Policy Research and SRI International to build the Rapid Cycle Evaluation Coach (the RCE Coach). The RCE Read more

Characteristics of Public Elementary and Secondary School Principals in the United States

A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics summarizes the characteristics of public elementary and secondary school principals in the United States. The report provides descriptive statistics and basic information from the 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey Public School Principal Data File. Main findings include: There were about Read more

Two New Studies show Principals Reluctant to give Low Ratings on Teacher Evaluations

A study of 100 principals from Miami-Dade County Public Schools finds that while teacher effectiveness varies substantially, principals’ evaluations of teachers often fail to differentiate performance among teachers. In this study, researchers Jason A. Grissom and Susanna Loeb offer new evidence on principals’ subjective evaluations of their teachers’ effectiveness using Read more

Retaining Minority Teachers in Schools where Most of their Colleagues are White

Minorities continue to be largely underrepresented among elementary and secondary teachers relative to the racial and ethnic composition of the nation’s student body, and tend to be concentrated in urban, high-minority schools. This means that many nonwhite or Hispanic students who attend schools with few minority teachers lack valuable role Read more