Enhancing Secondary School Instruction and Student Achievement: Replication and Extension of the My Teaching Partner-Secondary Intervention

Abstract

My Teaching Partner-Secondary (MTP-S) is a web-mediated coaching intervention, which an initial randomized trial, primarily in middle schools, found to improve teacher-student interactions and student achievement. Given the dearth of validated teacher development interventions showing consistent effects, we sought to both replicate and extend these findings with a modified version of the program in a predominantly high school population, and in a more urban, sociodemographically diverse school district. MTP-S produced substantial gains in student achievement across 86 secondary school classrooms involving 1,194 students. Gains were robust across subject areas and equivalent to moving the average student from the 50th to the 59th percentile in achievement scores. Results suggest that MTP-S can enhance student outcomes across diverse settings and implementation modalities.

Keywords: Achievement; professional development; teacher–student interactions.

Figure 1

MTP-S effects on student achievement. Mean achievement test scores for MTP-S and control group students from the most comparable prior-year course (pretest) and the current year’s focal class (posttest), adjusted for baseline demographic factors using HLM models (Table 2). Error bars reflect standard errors from HLM models.