The Understanding Teaching Quality study:  http://www.utqstudy.org/about.html

The Measures of Effective Teaching study:  http://www.metproject.org/

A .pdf file for a set of references for related work.

The presentation abstract and Dr. Bell's bio follow:

Assessing Teaching Quality:  Toward a Professional View of Teaching?

Research now supports what those most deeply involved with education have always “known”: teachers matter. Multiple value-added studies, for example, have found considerable variation in teacher effects, with some teachers adding a great deal to students’ academic learning in a given year and others adding much less. Other studies have shown that these effects persist and predict students’ future outcomes. Given this research, federal and state policy makers are currently creating policies through the ESEA reauthorization and the Race to the Top that are likely to change the assessment of teaching for a long time to come.  This talk will describe the current policy press, state and district responses, and the instruments and methods being considered or pilot tested across the country.  The talk will also consider the implications of these developments for teacher preparation institutions and the teaching profession more generally.

Dr. Courtney Bell is a Research Scientist in ETS’s Understanding Teaching Quality Center.  She completed her doctorate at Michigan State University in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy after earning her B.A. in Chemistry at Dartmouth College.  Courtney’s dissertation study, funded through a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, won the AERA Division L Dissertation of the Year award.  Prior to joining ETS in 2007, Bell was an assistant professor of educational policy at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. A former high school science teacher, Courtney’s work looks across actors in the educational system to better understand the intersections of policy and practice.  Her current studies use mixed-methods to analyze teacher learning and the measurement of teaching.  She is currently Co-PI on two large validity studies of instruments designed to measure teaching.  These studies are funded by the Gates, W.T. Grant and Spencer Foundations. Courtney has published in scholarly journals including Equity and Excellence in Education, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Journal of Education, Journal of Education Policy, and the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education and is co-editor of the forthcoming AERA Handbook of Research on Teaching.