Accelerating the field’s capacity to learn in and through practice is one key to transforming promising ideas in education into tools, interventions, and professional development initiatives that achieve effectiveness reliably at scale. This paper explains why this type of learning requires a different kind of measurement—measurement that is distinct from the measures commonly used by schools for accountability or by researchers for theory development. The paper presents a theoretical framework for practical measurement and illustrates it using a case study of an effort to address the failure rates of community college developmental math students. The paper outlines how a practical theory and set of practical measures were created to assess the causes of “productive persistence”—the set of non-cognitive factors thought to powerfully affect community college developmental math student success. The paper then explains how researchers and practitioners used these measures for practical purposes—specifically, to assess changes, predict which students were at-risk for course failure, and set priorities for improvement work. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions, including the need for improved behavioral measures and psychometrics tailored for practical measurement.
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Full-text Report (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching)
Yeager, D., Bryk, A., Muhich, J., Hausman, H., & Morales, L. (2013). Practical Measurement. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Measurement for Improvement in Education