Measuring Instructional Quality in Accountability Systems: Classroom Assignments and Student Achievement

This report describes the technical quality of a CRESST-developed measure of the quality of classroom assignments piloted in the LAUSD’s proposed new accountability system. For this study, 181 teachers were sampled from 35 schools selected at random. Participating teachers submitted three language arts assignments with samples of student work (N = 50). Results indicated a fair level of agreement among the raters who scored the assignments and a high level of internal consistency within four dimensions of assignment quality. The stability of the ratings and the number of assignments needed to yield a consistent estimate of quality differed by elementary and secondary school levels. As a group, secondary students who received higher quality assignments produced higher quality written work and scored higher on the reading and language portions of the Stanford Achievement Test, Ninth Edition, adjusted for student background and prior achievement.