| This study was designed to determine the accuracy with which educational administrators could judge a teacher's preinstructional materials and classroom performance. The standards of accuracy used in this investigation were those scores taken from the normed and validated measurement instruments developed by the Georgia Teacher Assessment Project. The Georgia Project materials, including the preinstructional materials and a videotaped sequence of an intermediate language arts lesson, and the corresponding evaluation instruments were used to gather data. Five hundred twenty-nine subjects released their scores for research analysis. These subjects were from eight geographical regions across the country, were in the positions of superintendent, principal, supervisor or other certified central office jobs, and had varying amounts of training in the teacher appraisal process ranging from none at all to quite extensive.;To determine the appraiser's ability to utilize the preinstructional materials to make more accurate judgments of performance, an exercise in teacher assessment was simulated. A posttest only control group research design was utilized with subjects placed in one of four groups. These were: (1) read a research journal article and then rate taped classroom instruction; (2) read the lesson plan and rate the tape; (3) read the plans and rate them with a high inference measurement instrument and then rate the videotaped classroom performance; and finally, (4) read and rate the teacher's plans on a low inference instrument and then rate the teacher's taped instruction. The data gathered from this procedure were subjected to examination by an analysis of variance with .05 level of significance required for rejection.;The findings revealed that the study of preinstructional materials, and the use of high or low inference measurement instruments, did not contribute to significantly more accurate ratings of teacher performance. It was determined, however, using a Pearson product moment correlation, that raters who more accurately rated preinstructional materials also more accurately rated teacher performance.;A Chi-square analysis was conducted to ascertain if accuracy of rating was found to be dependent upon the appraiser's job position, geographic origin, or extent of training in teacher assessment. The findings of this examination did not determine that accuracy was dependent on region, job position, or extent of training. |
