Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project Series

The Measures of Effective Teaching Project (MET)

The MET project is based on two premises: First, to a significant extent a teacher's evaluation should depend on his/her students' achievement gains; second, any additional components of the evaluation (e.g., classroom observations) should be valid predictors of student achievement gain.

Student achievement was measured in two ways -- through existing state assessments, designed to assess student progress on the state curriculum for accountability purposes, and supplemental assessments, designed to assess higher-order conceptual understanding. The supplemental assessments used were Stanford 9 Open-Ended Reading Assessment in grades 4 through 8, Balanced Assessment in Mathematics (BAM) in grades 4 through 8, and the ACT QualityCore series for Algebra I, English 9, and Biology.

Panoramic digital video of classroom sessions were taken of participating teachers and students, teachers submitted commentary on their lessons (e.g., specifying the learning objective) and then trained raters scored the lesson based on classroom observation protocols using the following five observation protocols:

• Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), developed by Robert Pianta, University of Virginia
• Framework for Teaching, developed by Charlotte Danielson
• Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), developed by Heather Hill, Harvard University, and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan
• Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO), developed by Pam Grossman, Stanford University
• Quality Science Teaching (QST) Instrument, developed by Raymond Pecheone, Stanford University

A subset of the videos also are being scored using an observational protocol developed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS).

Close to 3,000 teacher volunteers from across the following six, predominantly urban, school districts participated in the MET project: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools, Memphis City Schools, and the New York City Department of Education. Participants teach math and English language arts (ELA) in grades 4-8, Algebra I, grade 9 English, and high school biology.

The District-Wide Files

The district wide files are comprised of one data file per district for each of the 2008-2009, 2009-2010, 2010-2011, 2011-2012, 2012-2013, and 2013-2014 school years, for a total of thirty-six data files. Each file contains information on each student in the school district including student demographic variables, such as race, age and gender, specialty student status variables such as free lunch, English language learner, and gifted and talented program participation, and student-level test rankings for math and reading. Also included are the aggregate means of those student demographic, specialty status, and test score variables for each teacher.

Two versions of the SAS code used for creating the original value-added measures for teachers in each district are also provided with the data files. The non-aggregated version of the code uses the individual math and reading test rankings for each of a teacher's students to calculate predictive score estimates. The aggregated version of the code uses the mean math and reading test rankings for all of that teacher's students to calculate estimates.

The MET project is based on two premises: First, a teacher's evaluation should depend to a significant extent on his/her students' achievement gains; second, any additional components of the evaluation (e.g., classroom observations) should be valid predictors of student achievement gain.

Student achievement was measured in two ways -- through existing state assessments, designed to assess student progress on the state curriculum for accountability purposes, and supplemental assessments, designed to assess higher-order conceptual understanding.

Panoramic digital video of classroom sessions were taken of participating teachers and students, teachers submitted commentary on their lessons (e.g., specifying the learning objective) and then trained raters scored the lesson based on classroom observation protocols using the following five observation protocols:

• Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), developed by Robert Pianta, University of Virginia
• Framework for Teaching (FFT), developed by Charlotte Danielson
• Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), developed by Heather Hill, Harvard University, and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan
• Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO), developed by Pam Grossman, Stanford University
• Quality Science Teaching (QST) Instrument, developed by Raymond Pecheone, Stanford University

A subset of the videos also are being scored using an observational protocol developed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and using the UTeach Observational Protocol (UTOP), developed by the UTeach Preparation Program.

Close to 3,000 teacher volunteers from across the following 6, predominantly urban, school districts participated in the MET project: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools, Memphis City Schools, and the New York City Department of Education. Participants teach math and English language arts (ELA) in grades 4-8, Algebra I, grade 9 English, and high school biology.

The Item-Level Observational Scores Release

This release consists of data files for the five observational protocols listed (CLASS, FFT, MQI, PLATO, and QST) and the UTOP subset. Also included are rater comment files explaining rater scores on the CLASS instrument and master coded scores for the CLASS, FFT, PLATO, MQI and QST observational measures.

The Measures of Effective Teaching Project (MET)

The MET project is based on two premises: First, a teacher's evaluation should depend to a significant extent on his/her students' achievement gains; second, any additional components of the evaluation (e.g., classroom observations) should be valid predictors of student achievement gain.

Student achievement was measured in two ways -- through existing state assessments, designed to assess student progress on the state curriculum for accountability purposes, and supplemental assessments, designed to assess higher-order conceptual understanding. The supplemental assessments used were Stanford 9 Open-Ended Reading Assessment in grades 4 through 8, Balanced Assessment in Mathematics (BAM) in grades 4 through 8, and the ACT QualityCore series for Algebra I, English 9, and Biology.

Panoramic digital video of classroom sessions were taken of participating teachers and students, teachers submitted commentary on their lessons (e.g., specifying the learning objective) and then trained raters scored the lesson based on classroom observation protocols using the following five observation protocols:

• Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), developed by Robert Pianta, University of Virginia
• Framework for Teaching, developed by Charlotte Danielson
• Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), developed by Heather Hill, Harvard University, and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan
• Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO), developed by Pam Grossman, Stanford University
• Quality Science Teaching (QST) Instrument, developed by Raymond Pecheone, Stanford University

A subset of the videos also are being scored using an observational protocol developed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and using the UTeach Observational Protocol (UTOP), developed by the UTeach Preparation Program.

Close to 3,000 teacher volunteers from across the following six, predominantly urban, school districts participated in the MET project: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools, Memphis City Schools, and the New York City Department of Education. Participants teach math and English language arts (ELA) in grades 4-8, Algebra I, grade 9 English, and high school biology.

The Study Information Release

Contained in this release are a comprehensive user guide, an observation measures report, a randomization file, a video information file, a subject ID file, a teacher demographics file, a student global ID crosswalk file, and a teacher global ID crosswalk file.

• User Guide - The user guide provides information on all data releases included in the MET longitudinal database. The report describes: (1) the educational research and policy context for the study; (2) research questions addressed by MET researchers; (3) the core study design and sub-studies; (4) the realized study sample; (5) additional information on study instruments and derived measures; and (6) the data files available for secondary analysis.
• Observation Measures Report - This report includes a description of the scoring design used for each phase and each year of the video observation measures and final reports of the scoring carried out for each measure.
• Randomization File - Year two of the MET study included a process for randomizing the classroom to which teachers were assigned. Information found in the randomization file includes district, school, section and student IDs, teacher IDs for the teacher a student was randomly assigned to, the actual teacher the student was recorded as having in May of that year, and the actual teacher the student was recorded as having in October of that year. Also included in the file are variables that indicate the grade of the student, their randomization block and exchange group and section each student was assigned to.
• Video Information File - This file contains descriptive information about the videos captured for the MET project. Variables found in the file include the ID of the video, as well as IDs for the district, school, teacher and section related to each video, the subject, grade, and year of the video and whether the file is available for users to view.
• Subject ID Crosswalk - This file contains only ID variables and is included to describe the associations between districts, schools, teachers, sections and students.
• Teacher Demographics File - This file contains descriptive information about the teachers in the MET project. Variables found in the file include the ID of the teacher, as well as IDs for the district, gender, race, years experience, and level of education.
• Student Global ID Crosswalk File - Students were given new and unique IDs in each year of data collection. This file matches those Student IDs across the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, and 2013-14 academic years.
• Teacher Global ID Crosswalk File - Teachers were given new and unique IDs in each year of data collection. This file matchers those Teachers IDs across the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, and 2013-14 academic years.