Panel
		Welcome, guest

Home Keynote   Audio Introduction   Paper Discussion Poster Hall   Enter Hall   Presenters Panel   Teacher Leadership   Sustainability and Funding Discussants Reflect Resources Who's Here   Instant Message Center   Registrants   Participating Projects Info Center   About the conference   Get Help   Feedback   Schedule   Downloads   FAQs

Panel: Sustainability and Funding Read Posts This message is in reply to: Use Student Achievement to Evaluate this conference? - Mark St. John Posted by: Joni Falk Posted on: May 23, 2001 at 3:42 PM Message: I knew someone was going to pick up on this, and the reason that it does not make sense to use student outcome measures to evaluate the success of this conference is because there are so many other, more direct, variables that affect student achievement. There is a long chain of events that connects this conference and the students being served. This is precisely the caution that is being expressed about measuring successful PD in terms of student outcomes. In MA Gaudett (1999) found that 86% of the variance on the MCAS (MA's high stakes tests) was attributable to demographic variables. That leaves only 14% to the schools. And PD, or improved curricula, would only account for a small part of that remaining 14%. So I think the caution of being careful about making a direct link between an input such as PD and an output such as Student Outcomes is warranted. I think that everyone is in agreement that improving student outcomes needs to be kept in mind, but it is not a great way to measure PD, or this conference, I think.