Credentials

Credentials of the Research Team

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the TLES study is being conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and partners that are providing the teacher and leader evaluation components: the Danielson Group, Teachscape, Teachstone, and Discovery Education Assessment.

About Our Organizations

American Institutes for Research (AIR) is an independent not-for-profit organization with offices across the globe and
a 50-year history of conducting applied research and providing technical assistance in the areas of education, health, workforce, and international development. To conduct projects of the scale and significance of the TLES study, we build projects teams that draw upon the expertise of staff from multiple disciplines and AIR programs. Our wide-range of expertise includes large-scale experiments that use random assignment of schools, such as the Middle School Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Impact Study and the Impact of Two professional Development Interventions on Early Reading Instruction and Achievement. AIR is also a leading provider of technical assistance on educator effectiveness and hosts the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. AIR’s Assessment Program uses student growth models to evaluate teacher effectiveness and provide high-quality, timely reports to teachers and principals for school districts and states across the U.S.

The Danielson Group is composed of consultants personally trained by Charlotte Danielson to assist educators in implementing the Framework for Teaching. The group currently consists of approximately 30 individuals, located in regions across the country. All members of The Danielson Group have been teachers and administrators and are solidly grounded in the skills needed for both classroom observation and professional conversations.

Teachscape will be working together with The Danielson Group to assist educators in implementing the Framework for Teaching. Teachscape develops and delivers high-quality educational technology products, services, and tools to support the evaluation and improvement of teaching practices. Teachscape’s clients include more than 5,000 schools in more than 38 states and abroad with whom they work to develop leadership and instructional capacity.

Teachstone was established to improve the quality and impact of education through the dissemination of empirically based teaching and learning tools that improve outcomes for teachers and students. In support of this mission, Teachstone focuses on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and related professional development programs. Teachstone provides training, technical assistance, quality assurance, and data management to support the use of CLASS on a large scale.

Discovery Education Assessment (Discovery) has more than 200 employees. Discovery currently serves more than 4,500 schools across the nation, including several large school districts around the country (e.g., Memphis City Schools and D.C. Public Schools) and more than 70 percent of Tennessee schools. In the 2010–11 school year, Discovery provided the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) to more than 1,700 schools in more than 200 districts.

Senior TLES Study Team Leaders

Dr. Michael Garet (Principal Investigator), Vice President in AIR’s Education, Human Development, and Workforce Program, is nationally recognized for his research on teacher quality. Dr. Garet directed IES’s Middle School Mathematics Professional Development (PD) Impact Study and a parallel study in early reading. He is currently serving as Co-Principal Investigator for a large-scale evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) Intensive Partnership Sites, an initiative focused on the collection and use of information on the performance of teachers and school leaders.

Dr. Andrew Wayne (Project Director), AIR Principal Research Analyst, has contributed to a number of projects related to teacher quality, including projects on teacher pre-service education, hiring, induction, professional development, and advanced certification. He currently directs ED’s Approaches to Measuring Teacher Quality and Effective PD project, which focuses on state and district efforts to implement improved measures of teacher quality and use them in human resource policies. Dr. Wayne’s work has been published in such journals as Educational Leadership, Educational Researcher, and Review of Educational Research.

Task Leaders

Dr. Rebecca Herman (Co-Task Leader, District Outreach), AIR Managing Research Analyst, specializes in conducting and evaluating research on school improvement, as well as translating research to practice. Dr. Herman is currently the Principal Investigator of ED‘s Impact Evaluation of Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIGs) and Project Director of the implementation sub-study of the RTT-SIG Impact Study.

Dr. Anja Kurki (Co-Task Leader, District Outreach), AIR Senior Research Analyst, has overseen large-scale collection of classroom observations and student- and teacher-level data on several randomized controlled trials (RCTs) funded by IES and the other divisions of ED. Dr. Kurki has extensive experience in outreach, managing large-scale data collections, and conducting complex statistical analyses.

Ms. Fran Stancavage (Task Leader, Implementation Team), AIR Managing Research Scientist, has extensive experience and expertise in student assessment, management and implementation of large-scale studies. Ms. Stancavage has worked extensively with both student assessment data and classroom observations. She directed instrument development and data collection for the 12-district Middle School Mathematics PD Impact Study, which used measures of teacher knowledge, teacher practice, and student achievement.

Ms. Mariann Lemke (Task Leader, Measuring Student Growth), AIR Principal Research Analyst, has more than a decade of experience managing large-scale survey and assessment projects in education at the federal and district levels. At AIR, Ms. Lemke oversees assessment and evaluation tasks for district, state, and federal clients. She currently directs a project for Baltimore City Public Schools to develop value-added models and acts as a task leader on a federal study of the equitable distribution of effective teachers. She is leading stakeholder engagement and communications support for the state of Florida in its work to measure teacher performance using information from student growth models.

Dr. David Manzeske (Task Leader, Instruments and Data Collection), AIR Senior Research Analayst, specializes in research methodology; quantitative analysis; and instrument design, development, and validation. He has evaluated a wide range of programs related to educator effectiveness, performance-based compensation strategies, and school leadership, including the Evaluation of the Iowa Enhanced Teacher Compensation Pilot Program and the Mississippi DOE Evaluation of the LEADS School Leadership Program.

Dr. Jinok Kim (Task Leader, Analysis and Reporting), AIR Senior Research Analyst, is a quantitative expert in statistical techniques in education, sampling, and study design. Previously, Dr. Kim worked as a senior researcher at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).

Team Members to Contact With Questions

Project Director: Dr. Andrew Wayne awayne@air.org | 202.403.5483

Co-Directors of Outreach: Dr. Anja Kurki akurki@air.org | 202.403.5153 Dr. Rebecca Herman rherman@air.org | 202.403.5449

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