Teacher evaluation reform has been among the most controversial education reforms in recent years. It also is one of the costliest in terms of the time teachers and principals must spend on classroom observations. We conducted a randomized field trial at four sites to evaluate whether substituting teacher-collected videos for in-person observations could improve the value of teacher observations for teachers, administrators, or students. Relative to teachers in the control group who participated in standard in-person observations, teachers in the video-based treatment group reported that post-observation meetings were more “supportive” and they were more able to identify a specific practice they changed afterward. Treatment principals were able to shift their observation work to noninstructional times. The program also substantially increased teacher retention. Nevertheless, the intervention did not improve students’ academic achievement or self-reported classroom experiences, either in the year of the intervention or for the next cohort of students. Following from the literature on observation and feedback cycles in low-stakes settings, we hypothesize that to improve student outcomes schools may need to pair video feedback with more specific supports for desired changes in practice.

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视频技术可以改善教师的评价吗？实验研究

近年来，教师评价改革一直是最具争议的教育改革之一。这也是老师和校长必须花在课堂观察上的最昂贵的时间之一。我们在四个地点进行了一项随机的现场试验，以评估用教师收集的视频进行现场观察是否可以提高教师观察对教师，管理人员或学生的价值。相对于对照组的教师，他们参加了标准的亲自观察，基于视频的治疗组的教师报告说，观察后会议更具“支持性”，并且他们更有能力确定出他们后来改变的具体做法。治疗负责人能够将他们的观察工作转移到非教学时间。该计划还大大增加了教师的保留率。但是，无论是在干预年份还是在下一批学生中，干预措施都没有提高学生的学业成绩或自我报告的课堂体验。根据有关低风险环境中的观察和反馈周期的文献，我们假设为了提高学生的学习成绩，学校可能需要将视频反馈与更具体的支持配对，以实现所需的实践改变。