Instability in Education Systems, Randomized Controlled Trials, and Children's Achievement

教师在学校的流动性是这个项目的重点。宾夕法尼亚大学和21世纪STEM教育合作伙伴关系的研究人员正在开发一套指标体系，以衡量学校系统人员配备变化的幅度和影响，他们称之为环境位置不稳定性。研究人员正在构建在正在进行的多站点STEM实验研究背景下工作的学区案例研究。他们正在绘制美国100个最大学区的教师位置变化数据的可访问性图，与大城市学校委员会合作，确定这些数据的潜在模型，以更好地理解这种现象。作为研究的第四个组成部分，他们正在对已发表的随机试验报告进行审查，并与作者进行访谈，以检查那些研究中不一定报告的教师不稳定。这项研究的结果为坎贝尔合作协议提供了信息，以便对证据进行系统审查。教师流动的原因包括调任到所教的年级或科目、晋升或降职到非教学职位、临时任用以及离校。学校经常被认为是非常不稳定的环境，员工和学生的大量流动是一个长期存在的问题。然而，这是一个问题的程度还没有得到很好的描述，而且不存在这种不稳定的指标系统。本研究提供了这样一个指标体系，具有很大的研究和评价潜力。教师职位的不稳定性影响了教育干预措施的实施。它影响了研究和评估的敏感性，以检测干预措施在实验研究中的影响。此外，教师流动对学校、地区、州和联邦各级的政策决定都有影响。

The mobility of teachers in schools is the focus of this project. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education are developing a system of indicators to measure the magnitude and impact of changes in school system staffing, a construct they call Ambient Positional Instability. The researchers are constructing case studies of school districts working within the context of an ongoing multi-site STEM experimental study. They are mapping the accessibility of teacher positional change data in 100 of the largest school districts in the United States, working with the Council of Great City Schools, to identify potential models of that data to better understand the phenomena. As a fourth component of the study, they are conducting a review of published reports on randomized trials and interviews with the authors to examine teacher instability that is not necessarily reported in those studies. The findings from this study inform a Campbell collaboration protocol for systemic review of the evidence.Teacher mobility is caused by reassignments to grades or subjects taught, promotions or demotions to non-teaching positions, and temporary appointments, as well as school leaving. Schools are frequently indicated as being very volatile environments with much turnover of staff and students a perennial problem. Yet the extent to which this is a problem has not been well characterized, and a system of indicators of this instability does not exist. This study provides such an indicator system and much potential use for both research and evaluation purposes. The instability in teacher positions has implications for the implementation of educational interventions. It affects the sensitivity of research and evaluation to detect the impact of interventions in experimental studies. In addition, teacher mobility has implications for policy decisions at the school, district, state and federal levels.