Publications & Resources

Overview of the Instructional Quality Assessment

Jan 2006

Brian Junker, Yanna Weisberg, Lindsay Clare Matsumura, Amy Crosson, Mikyung Kim Wolf, Allison Levison and Lauren Resnick

Educators, policy-makers, and researchers need to be able to assess the efficacy of specific interventions in schools and school districts. It is essential to open up the educational process so that each major factor influencing student achievement can be examined. Instructional practice is certainly a central factor: if student achievement is not improving, is it because instructional practice is not changing, or because changes in instructional practice are not affecting achievement?

A tool is needed to provide snapshots of instructional practice itself, before and after implementing new professional development or other interventions, and at other regular intervals to help monitor and focus efforts to improve instructional practice. In this paper we review our research program building and piloting the Instructional Quality Assessment (IQA), a formal toolkit for rating instructional quality based primarily on classroom observation and student assignments. In the first part of the paper we review the need for, and some other efforts to provide, direct assessments of instructional practice. In the second part of this paper we briefly summarize the development of the IQA in reading comprehension and in mathematics at the elementary school level. In the third part of the paper we report on a large pilot study of the IQA, conducted in Spring 2003 in two moderately large urban school Districts. We conclude with some ideas about future work and future directions for the IQA.

Junker, B., Weisberg, Y., Matsumura, L. C., Crosson, A., Wolf, M. K., Levison, A., & Resnick, L. (2006). Overview of the instructional quality assessment (CSE Report 671). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).