Relationships between Schoolwide Instructional Observation Scores and Student Achievement and Growth in Low-Performing Schools

Complete report The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) recognizes that a key lever to turning around low-performing schools is the quality of instruction. DESE uses Teachstone’s Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) tool to assess the schoolwide quality of teacher and student interactions in three domains: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. DESE and REL Northeast & Islands partnered to examine the relationships between schoolwide instructional observation scores and schoolwide student academic achievement and growth. Findings show — Only instructional observation scores in the classroom organization domain were positively associated with schoolwide student achievement in English language arts. There were also no significant relationships found between scores in any domain and math achievement. These findings may be in part because student achievement is influenced by factors that precede current instructional quality. Instructional observation scores in all three domains were positively associated with student growth in English language arts and math. On a 7-point scale, a 1 point increase in a school’s overall instructional observation score in the combined domains was associated with an increase in schoolwide academic growth of 4.4 percentile points in English language arts and 5.1 percentile points in math. This suggests that the CLASS tool may be useful as a schoolwide measure of instructional quality as DESE and the schools consider their continuous improvement efforts.