Investigating the Relevance and Importance of High-Leverage Practices for Beginning Elementary School Teachers. Research Memorandum No. RM-16-11

The purpose of this study is to explore the validity evidence supporting the high-leverage practices (HLPs) of the ETS® National Observational Teaching Exam (NOTE) assessment series, a kindergarten through 6th grade teacher licensure assessment. HLPs include "tasks and activities that are essential for skillful beginning teachers to understand, take responsibility for, and be prepared to carry out in order to enact their core instructional responsibilities" (Ball & Forzani, 2009, p. 504). We accumulated relevance, importance, and frequency judgments of 20 HLPs from 569 practitioners in the field (385 teachers and 184 college faculty) verifying the necessity of these competencies for elementary school teachers first entering the teaching profession. Implications for the performance components of the NOTE assessment series are discussed. High-Leverage Practices (HLPs) are appended.