The Linking Study

Principal Investigator: Jonathan Supovitz

CPRE at the University of Pennsylvania has received a grant from the Spencer Foundation to study how elementary school teachers use data about their mathematics instruction in conjunction with assessment data to inform their teaching and improve their students’ learning.

The study includes elementary schools in one New Jersey school district. Working in partnership with the district, we have refined an existing protocol of mathematics instructional practice and developed a process for teachers to examine and discuss instructional and student performance data. The study will randomly assign teachers to receive feedback on their mathematics practice as well as their students’ test performance or on their students’ test performance alone. Teachers will receive this feedback multiple times over the course of the study. The study will examine in what ways the instructional feedback and assessment data are useful to teachers and to what extent and how they inform decisions about practice and subsequently the learning of their students.