Premises, Presentation And Predetermination In The Gates MET Study
The National Education Policy Center today released a scathing review of last month’s preliminary report from the Gates Foundation-funded Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project. The critique was written by Jesse Rothstein, a highly-respected Berkeley economist and author of an elegant and oft-cited paper demonstrating how non-random classroom assignment biases value-added estimates (also see the follow-up analysis).
Very quickly on the project: Over two school years (this year and last), MET researchers, working in six large districts—Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Dallas, Denver, Hillsborough County (FL), Memphis, New York City, and Pittsburgh—have been gathering an unprecedented collection of data on teachers and students, grades 4-8. Using a variety of assessments, videotapes of classroom instruction, and surveys (student surveys are featured in the preliminary report), the project is attempting to address some of the heretofore under-addressed issues in the measurement of teacher quality (especially non-random classroom assignment and how different classroom
