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Data Collection Framework
Before the communities involved in the Teacher Quality
initiative could set about improving conditions for teachers,
they needed some baseline information on the current
quality of teachers.
PEN developed the following framework for collecting
data to help LEFs gather and analyze relevant information.
This framework takes five different "views" of
teacher quality within an area.
Sites may think of data gathered for Views One through
Three as helping them determine what needs to
be changed and data gathered for Views Four
and Five as helping them consider possible avenues
of change.
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1.
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The Big Picture:
What are the characteristics of teachers in the
area as a whole?
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2.
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Distribution:
How are these characteristics distributed to different
kinds of schools?
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3.
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Flow: What
are the characteristics of teachers entering and
leaving the system?
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4.
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Structure and
Process: How do policies and practices affect
the other three views?
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5.
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Community:
What impact do actors beyond the schools (such
as higher education institutions, the business
community, community organizations, and parents)
have on teaching quality?
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Within each view, the framework lays out a set of guiding questions that each
site should seek to answer about its own district(s). In order to do so comprehensively,
the framework also lays out a list of possible indicators that sites might
seek to measure in responding to the guiding questions. Indicators listed
in bold type are those that all sites are expected to gather. (Additional
information about these common measures follows the presentation of the five
views.)
Indicators not in bold are not required, but sites may
wish to examine them if data are available and the information
would contribute to the LEF's implementation plan and/or
be of interest to the community.
All the required indicators are located in Views One, Two,
and Three. Together,
these views provide a descriptive picture of the area's
teachers, how they are distributed across schools, and
what sorts of changes are taking place over time. In
some sense, gathering data for the first three views
allows sites to perform a needs assessment regarding
teachers in their districts.
Views Four and Five,
by contrast, move from description to explanation—examining
the policies and practices that influence View One, Two,
and Three indicators. Though the information gathered
for Views Four and Five is vital to any change effort,
sites should regard Views Four and Five as a second phase
of data-gathering to be completed after assembling the
more descriptive views
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