Trends in Classroom Observation Scores

Observations and ratings of classroom teaching and interactions collected over time are susceptible to trends in both the quality of instruction and rater behavior. These trends have potential implications for inferences about teaching and for study design. We use scores on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System–Secondary (CLASS-S) protocol from 458 middle school teachers over a 2-year period to study changes over time in (a) the average quality of teaching for the population of teachers, (b) the average severity of the population of raters, and (c) the severity of individual raters. To obtain these estimates and assess them in the context of other factors that contribute to the variability in scores, we develop an augmented G study model that is broadly applicable for modeling sources of variability in classroom observation ratings data collected over time. In our data, we found that trends in teaching quality were small. Rater drift was very large during raters’ initial days of observation and persisted throughout nearly 2 years of scoring. Raters did not converge to a common level of severity; using our model we estimate that variability among raters actually increases over the course of the study. Variance decompositions based on the model find that trends are a modest source of variance relative to overall rater effects, rater errors on specific lessons, and residual error. The discussion provides possible explanations for trends and rater divergence as well as implications for designs collecting ratings over time.