STATE OF OPPORTUNITY. Can Kids in Michigan Get Ahead?
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This special reporting project wrapped up in May 2017. Read more.

Outtakes: Why one education expert believes video may be best tool to improve teacher performance

flickr/jsawkins

Yesterday we had a story about teacher evaluations, and how the process might be changed to make evaluations less about punishing bad teachers and more about giving feedback so all teachers can have ideas for how to improve.

For that story, I interviewed Thomas Kane, a researcher at Harvard who's been one of the driving forces behind the teacher evaluation movement in the U.S. – though he hasn’t been entirely pleased with how evaluations have been implemented in most places.

As part of his research, Kane led a $45 million study called Measures of Effective Teaching. The study looked at not just how to set up good evaluation measures, but how to use that information to drive teacher improvement.

In our piece yesterday, we included a clip from Kane where he talks about using video to improve the teaching practice. Today I wanted to bring you more context on that clip, because after years of research, Kane doesn’t just believe video is one tool to improve teaching. He believes it might be the best tool. Click above for an outake from our interview.  

Dustin Dwyer is a reporter on the State of Opportunity project, based in Grand Rapids. Previously, he worked as an online journalist for Changing Gears, as a freelance reporter and as Michigan Radio's West Michigan Reporter. Before he joined Michigan Radio, Dustin interned at NPR's Talk of the Nation, wrote freelance stories for The Jackson Citizen-Patriot and completed a Reporting & Writing Fellowship at the Poynter Institute.
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