Policy Implications of a Teacher Evaluation System: The Relationship of Classroom Observations, Levels of Feedback, and Students Achievement Outcomes

The purpose of this study was two-fold: (a) to determine the relationship between the number of classroom observations and teacher VAM scores and (b) to identify the relationship between the types of feedback provided to teachers and student achievement outcomes as measured by VAM scores. De-identified data for the sample set of teachers in a large urban school district was gathered for the 2013-2014 year from iObservation by administrators observing teachers using the domains of the Marzano instructional model. The number of observations were compared to VAM scores to determine if teachers with a greater number of observations received higher VAM ratings. The comments recorded and submitted as feedback were also reviewed. Data were analyzed to identify relationships between the types of feedback provided to teachers and student achievement outcomes as measured by VAM scores. No significant relationship existed between VAM scores and number of observations or percentage of comments for teachers at any grade level. In addition, no significant relationship existed between predominant feedback for teachers and VAM scores. The information in this study was valuable for understanding the relationships that exist among instructional practice scores, value-added measures, and learning gains to drive conversations with teachers regarding rigorous instruction. Observations and feedback should be a tool for improvement of instruction, but the data confirmed this process continues to be compliance based with inflated scores that do not match the level of performance of students. Changing this is strongly linked to the provision of feedback associated with improving instruction and holding teachers accountable in meeting the standards outlined in the feedback. Observers are in need of professional development on how to provide effective feedback in the areas of instruction that will make the biggest impact on student achievement. Continuing to put time and effort into implementing and monitoring evaluation systems without further training and emphasis on feedback will result in the same lack of impact on student achievement outcomes and may even undermine the role of observers in providing support to teachers

Global properties of the Skyrme-force-induced nuclear symmetry energy

Large scale calculations are performed to establish the global mass dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy, $a_{sym}(A)$, which in turn depends on two basic ingredients: the mean-level spacing, $\epsilon(A)$, and the effective strength of the isovector mean-potential, $\kappa(A)$. Surprisingly, our results reveal that in modern parameterizations including SLy4, SkO, SkXc, and SkP these two basic ingredients of $a_{sym}$ are almost equal after rescaling them linearly by the isoscalar and the isovector effective masses, respectively. This result points toward a new fundamental property of the nuclear interaction that remains to be resolved. In addition, our analysis determines the ratio of the surface-to-volume contributions to $a_{sym}$ to be $\sim$1.6, consistent with hydrodynamical estimates for the static dipole polarizability as well as the neutron-skin.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl