Efforts to improve teacher feedback

Efforts to improve teacher feedback
By Justin Hill, Johns Hopkins University
Administrators within the Boston Public School (BPS) system received a semester-long training totalling 15 hours of content focused on improving the quality and frequency of teacher feedback from the fall of 2013 through the spring of 2015. BPS worked in conjunction with Matthew Kraft and Alvin Christian, who recently published the results of the randomized field experiment conducted to help evaluate the effectiveness of the training. The researchers utilized random assignment and staggered training dates to compare outcomes for administrators trained during the fall or spring of the 2013-2014 school year (treatment group) and those trained during the fall or spring of the 2014-2015 school year (control group).
While a survey of the administrators attending the training revealed favorable reviews of the content and an intent to implement the content in practice, surveys of teachers receiving the feedback indicated only about ¼ of teachers felt that administrator feedback positively affected their instruction. Comparisons of teacher surveys from the treatment and control groups revealed null effects on feedback quality, number of observations, number of meetings, and student achievement. The only marginally significant improvement noted was a decrease of 1.30 days in the time between a teacher observation and the follow-up meeting. However, a significant negative effect was noted on teacher self-efficacy for classroom management (ES = - 0.20) and a marginally significant negative effect was noted on teacher self-efficacy for instructional strategies (ES = - 0.19).
             
Given the null and negative effects resulting from the training, the researchers provide possible explanations. The researchers suggest that overloaded schedules, which on average required administrators to perform between 50 and 60 formal observations per year, may be partially responsible for a lack of implementation of the techniques promoted in the training. They also find that the perceived effectiveness of the feedback appears to be dependent upon the administrator, with teachers reporting higher quality feedback (ES = + 0.19) from more experienced administrators (6-8 years of experience) than less experienced administrators (0-2 years of experience) and higher quality feedback from racially matched administrators (ES = +0.30 for African-Americans; ES = +0.29 for Hispanics; ES = +0.35 for Asians). The findings of this study may help to inform future efforts to improve teacher effectiveness both within BPS and other districts.

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