Publications & Resources

Developing Indicators of Classroom Practice to Monitor and Support School Reform

Dec 1999

Pamela R. Aschbacher

This report describes the development of indicators of classroom practice for monitoring and improving the quality of school reforms. The work entailed development of a rubric to rate key facets of classroom practice based on assignments and samples of student work. This approach was used to describe the intellectual challenge of class assignments, the alignment of tasks with learning goals and grading criteria, clarity of criteria for success, and provision of informative feedback to students. It also compared teacher judgments of student work with external rater judgments using a school district’s standards-based rubric. The study demonstrated use of this methodology within an evaluation of a complex urban reform initiative. Inferences from the data were analyzed for their technical quality and usefulness. Overall, the technical quality of the approach was reasonable, but anchor papers have been selected and the rubric refined to improve future generalizability. The indicators show promise for use in school or district self-evaluation efforts, not only in monitoring progress but in identifying areas for administrative attention, professional development, and teacher reflection.

Aschbacher, P. R. (1999). Developing indicators of classroom practice to monitor and support school reform (CSE Report 513). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).