A Team-Based Model of Classroom Assignment
Sara Kraemer, Suzanne Rhodes, Clarissa Steele, and Robert H. Meyer
Value-Added Research Center
Wisconsin Center for Education Research
University of Wisconsin - Madison
American Education Finance and Policy 37th Annual Conference
March 15-17, 2012
Abstract
One of the core threats to validity in value-added modeling is the non-random assignment of
students to teachers. However, little research exists that describes the school-level processes of
classrooms assignment. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative study of eight K-5 schools in a
mid-size urban school district to identify and describe classroom assignment processes, the characteristics
of students and teachers used inform classroom assignment, and the key decision-makers for classroom
assignment. The study consisted of observations of classroom assignment meetings, interviews with
teachers, and focus groups with teachers. We analyzed classroom assignment practices from a team
modeling perspective (Salas, Stagl, Burke, & Goodwin, 2007), and constructed a preliminary framework
of how grade-level teams operate to create various classroom assignment compositions. Results revealed
that classroom assignment is a complex, team-based process that relies on a range of artifacts, data
sources, and perspectives that comprise both individual teacher and team-level cognition about the
various facets of student performance. Further, many schools engage in “balancing” practices in attempt
to ensure that characteristics of students are evenly distributed across classrooms within grades. Within
the balancing structure, schools may also “match” particular students to specific teachers (or other
students) based on individual characteristics or interactions. This research also informs a larger mixed
methods study, in which we are developing surveys to gather data on classroom assignment practices in
schools at scale (Steele, Kraemer, & Meyer, 2012).
1. Introduction and Background
As district and school based accountability efforts continue to expand in dimensionality and
breadth, there is increasing scrutiny of the validity of measures for high-stakes use. In particular, the
validity concerns sharpen as evaluation systems focus on the classroom-level, which places an increasing
focus on the educators in the classroom. Value-added metrics are usually a substantial component of the
measures used to assess educator performance at the classroom-level.
The composition of students within the classroom is a key validity concern for classroom-level
value-added metrics. Value-added models (VAMs) implicitly assume that teachers have the same kind of
students across classrooms. However, students may be assigned to specific classrooms or teacher based
upon individual characteristics or circumstances. For example, teachers considered skilled in teaching
with visual tools may be “matched” to students who tend to be visual learners, or students who are known
to create problems together may be intentionally assigned to different classrooms. From a VAM
perspective, these specific classroom and teacher assignments may mean that systematic differences exist
in students’ potential outcomes across teachers. Further, VAMs assume that students’ growth trajectories
will remain the same across years, but students as individuals often experience changes that influence
their learning. As a result, classroom value-added ratings may be affected by individual characteristics
that are unrelated to teacher quality or student performance. One of the most significant criticisms of
high-stakes accountability reform is the inaccurate attribution of impacts on student performance to
teachers.
Prior research has indicated that systematic assignment of students to teachers may cause student
outcomes to vary. Rothstein (2009), using a single year of data, conducted research that showed that
future teaching assignments have predictive power over current student performance in VAMs even
though future teachers cannot have causal effects on current teacher performance. The results suggested
that the value-added approach does not resolve problems caused by student-teacher assignment bias.
Koedel and Betts (2011) extended Rothstein’s analysis by testing the reliability of VAMs using multiple
years of data for each teacher and a different dataset. Like Rothstein’s analysis, their results indicated that
VAMs that focus on single-year teacher effects will generally produce biased estimates of value added.
However, when they used a detailed VAM and restricted the analysis to teachers who taught multiple
classrooms, they found no assignment bias in the estimated teacher effects. Neither analysis uncovered a
well-defined set of conditions that describe how the school environment or other input factors affect the
attribution of student growth to teachers or classrooms. These input factors are termed “unobservables” in
VAMs. Some other research has explored the influence of specific unobservables in the assignment of
specific students to specific teachers, such parental requests for teachers (Jacob & Lefgren, 2007). They
found that parents prefer teachers whom principals describe as good at promoting student satisfaction,
though they do also value teacher ability to raise academic achievement.
At the same time, little is known about the nature of classroom assignment at the school level,
though some research has focused on a single aspect of the assignment process, such as parental requests,
or one particular role within the schools, such as the principal’s role in classroom assignment (Monk,
1987). Kraemer, Worth and Meyer (2011) conducted exploratory field studies of K-8 classroom
assignment in three, large urban school districts. They found that classroom assignment processes in
schools are rich and complex, team-based (i.e., teachers, principals, instructional staff), and rely heavily
on the use of data coupled with experiential knowledge. The findings of this study emphasized that
classroom assignment decisions rarely involve a single actor, and instead involve a team or multiple
teams to determine the classroom rosters for the following year.
Thus, the impetus for this study was to investigate further how school-level teams conduct classroom
assignment in schools. However, a review of the educational administration literature revealed that theory
and research in school-staff teams lags far behind the current team models in organizational theory
(Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2007). Therefore, this study looked to team performance models from the
field of human factors engineering to provide an analytical framework describe the classroom assignment
process. The research questions were driven by a team performance perspective.
2. Research Questions
1. How do school teams organize classroom assignment processes?
2. What are the characteristics of school teams that perform classroom assignment?
3. What are the outputs (results) of the classroom assignment process?
3. Conceptual Framework
This study adapted an integrative, multi-level theoretical framework of team performance from
Salas and colleagues (2007). See Figure 1 for a representation of the framework. At a broad level, the
framework highlights the role of team inputs, process, and outputs of teamwork. The moderating roles of
individual cognition (i.e., expectations about roles and requirements); team cognition (i.e., shared
cognition or mental models); team leadership and coaching; and organization and environment on the
relationships among team inputs and processes are also emphasized.
This framework served as a categorization system that was used identify and describe the various
factors and mechanisms that contribute to teamwork in the classroom assignment process. The
framework, therefore,was descriptive in this study. The framework was not used for explanatory or
predictive study purposes.
Figure 1. Team performance model (adapted from Salas et al., 2007)
Moderating Variables
Expectations, roles, and
requirements
Input variables
Individual characteristics
Attitudes
Cognitive ability
Cultural factors
Expertise
Motivation
Personality
Task characteristics
Task complexity
Task interdependence
Task organization
Task type
Team characteristics
Cohesiveness
Team climate
Team diversity
Team size
Team structure
Team type
Work structure
Communication structure
Team norms
Work assignment
Shared Cognition/Mental
Models
Team Leaderhip/
Coaching
Process (Teamwork)
Cyclic, dynamic,
recursive process
Adaptation (team-level)
Output (Performance)
Back-up behavior (team-level)
Coordination mechanisms (team-level)
Communication
Mutual performance monitoring
Mutual trust
Interpersonal (individual-level)
Team orientation (individual-level)
Moderating Variable
Organization and
Environment
Individual Outcomes
Team Performance
Outcomes
Classroom design
Matching/Splitting
Team teaching
4. Methods
This study adopted an exploratory approach and used a field-based, qualitative design. The study
site was a large, Midwestern school district. The study was conducted during the April-June 2011, which
is when most elementary schools complete their classroom assignments for the following year. Teachers
in 8 K-5 elementary schools participated in focus groups, interviews, and observations about classroom
assignment.
The school sampling frame consisted of a comparison of value-added and attainment scores. We
defined performance at the school level via value-added analysis (VA). MPS uses attainment scores on
the state test to designate schools as high- or low-performing. To address this difference, we used a
comparison of VA and attainment measures to select eight schools across four performance levels high
VA/high attainment, high VA/low attainment, low VA/high attainment, and low VA/low attainment. Two
schools were sampled from each of the four categories of performance
Focus groups and individual interviews with teachers were semi-structured and consisted of the
research questions followed by a set of probes. Teachers participated in 9 focus groups (2 focus groups
were conducted in one school), the size of the focus groups ranged from 2-8 people. Eight teachers and 2
principals participated in individual interviews. The focus groups and interviews were conducted in
closed, private classrooms after school hours. The focus group and interviews were audio-recorded with
participants’ permission. When teachers declined audio-recorded, hand-written notes were taken in lieu of
the recording. Six observations of assignment meetings were collected at 5 schools (3 schools declined
observation and 1 school had 2 separate classroom assignment meetings. The observation sessions were
audio-recorded with participants’ permission, and hand-written notes were also collected by observers.
After data collection, the audio-recordings and hand-written notes of the interviews, focus groups, and
observations were electronically transcribed.
A qualitative content analysis on the data set using QSR NVivo 8 , a qualitative analysis software
package, to organize the themes and code responses. The transcribed documents from the interviews and
focus groups were loaded into NVivo and the analyst coded the documents into themes and categories.
The thematic coding structure consisted of an a priori skeleton structure based on the input, process,
output, and moderating variable categories of the team performance framework. One researcher coded the
responses and the other performed inter-rater reliability tests by coding transcripts and making cross-case
analyses of the categories and coding created by another researcher. The differences in coding consisted
of clarifications in definitions within the coding structure.
5. Results
The results are organized into four main groups that reflect the different components of the team
performance framework (Salas, et al., 2007): (a) input variables, (b) moderating variables, (c) process
characteristics, and (d) performance outcomes. The numbers of comments were aggregated at the
category and subcategory levels.
5.1 Input Variables
Our results included four categories of input variables, with total of 730 comments. See Table 1
for a summary in the input variables of team performance.
Table 1
Number of Comments on Input Variables
Sub-categories of
input variable
characteristics
Individual
Characteristics
Attitudes (57)
Cognitive ability (11)
Cultural factors (7)
Total number of
comments
Expertise (78)
Motivation (20)
Personality (8)
181
Input Variables
Task Characteristics
Team
Characteristics
Task complexity (29)
Cohesiveness (34)
Task interdependence
(159)
Task organization (44)
Team climate (19)
Task type (28)
--
Team size (24)
Team structure (103)
Team type (3)
189
260
Team diversity (6)
Work Structure
Communication
structure (75)
Team norms (11)
Work assignment
(14)
--
100
5.1.1 Individual Characteristics
The first category, individual characteristics (181 comments), included personal traits of teachers,
as they relate to working together as a team to perform classroom assignments. The most frequently
mentioned individual characteristic was expertise (78 comments), which was defined as detailed
knowledge about a specific domain (classroom assignment in this context) and the ability of the expert to
represent and understand problems that occur in that domain. Expertise was considered a valuable
resource when teachers were in schools for multiple years, had a sense of the inner workings of the
schools, and observed patterns of student behavior and performance across grades and classrooms.
The second most frequently cited characteristic was attitudes (57 comments), defined as the
manner, disposition, feeling, position, etc..., with regard to a person, the team as a whole, or task
undertaken during the classroom assignment meeting(s). Teachers spoke of a range of attitudes that
influence their assignment process, which included feeling personally responsible for the quality of the
classroom assignments, tired or exhausted, or even frustrated. Once teacher explained:
“It's a very personal process, because it's also the time of the year we're exhausted; we're
super frustrated with a lot of our kids, […] when they're consuming your every thought,
these difficult kids, […] then you come to a placement [assignment] meeting, talking
about placing more difficult children. I don't want to have to worry about them next year,
just being replaced, so that- it really does consume your thoughts because so much time
and effort is placed into this. […] when is the time when I can focus on student learning
all day long?"And the reality is, it doesn't happen.”
5.1.2 Task Characteristics
The task characteristics category had 260 comments. These comments referred to the specific
components of the classroom assignment tasks. The most frequently cited subcategory of task
characteristics was task interdependence (159 comments), which referred to how much team members
rely on each other to perform their tasks effectively, based on the design of their jobs, and was determined
in large part from the requirements and constraints inherent in the task. Most of the tasks that occurred in
the classroom assignment process were sequential in nature: one teacher or group made a decision that
informed or was dependent upon the next set or sets of decisions made by another teacher or team about
the placement of a child in a classroom. These sequential decisions may happen in time intervals of a few
seconds or minutes (like in a classroom assignment meeting) or several days or even weeks (teams may
meet in preparation for an all-school meeting about classroom assignment). Some of the tasks were
pooled, meaning teachers make separate, interdependent contributions and team performance is the sum
of their contributions. For example, some “specials” teachers (e.g., music, library, physical education)
may make recommendations about placement of a child or children; their recommendations are usually
made based upon their individual experience and not influenced by the decisions of other teachers.
Specials teachers are thought to have a unique view of students, since they teach students in unique
settings.
The subcategory task type (28 comments) referred to the various kinds of tasks that school-level
teams perform for classroom assignment. Steiner (1972) (defines task typology as how team members
contribute to the task: additive, disjunctive, or conjunctive. Additive tasks are divided into minimal or
discrete units, such as tasks that are easily accomplished by any team member, and performance is
dependent upon the summated effort of the whole team. Additive tasks described the classroom
assignment that is more “random,” as in, no special placement or consideration was given to which
classroom a child should be placed into. Disjunctive tasks cannot be divided into smaller tasks and can be
described as a judgment task or decision-making task. These tasks include the instances when teachers
have to base a placement decision upon a combination of their assessment of the child’s needs as well as
any performance data. Conjunctive tasks described conditions in which the team's performance is
dependent on the weakest member of the group. One teacher described how working with another teacher
resulted in a less than optimal placement of students in a classroom.
“I'm on third grade. She's on fourth grade. [...] we're placing kids into fourth and fifth
grades together, those teams came together and we haven't had that before where we had
such a huge class.... and I think that's even more important for this particular placement
because we're going to four and five next year and we don't have that this year. Those
teachers are going to have enough new stuff going on. We particularly want to be careful
on how the kids are placed. And it was done particularly poorly.”
Task organization (44 comments) referred to how teachers perform their work, tasks, and duties
within the classroom assignment process (e.g., sequencing, pacing, interactions). For example, many
schools used categories of task constructs to order their work, both cognitively and physically. Some
schools used poster charts to order the “what” of their work (e.g., new kids, number of classrooms, key
attributes of students), the “how” of their work (e.g., agenda, individual team member roles, process
description), and the “why” (e.g., meet process goals, create balanced classrooms, place students in
classrooms).
Task complexity (29 comments) referred to the degree to which the task varies from simplicity to
complexity. Complexity increases with the number of students and teachers to be assigned to classrooms,
the number of attributes used to categorize student performance (e.g., academic performance, behavior,
demographic traits), the type of classroom organization (e.g., split, looped, multigrade, bilingual),
teaching configurations (e.g., team teaching, pull-out, simultaneous teaching).
5.1.3 Team characteristics
Team characteristics (189 comments) referred to the type of team, team structure, team size,
power structure, performance arrangements, team diversity, and degree of cohesiveness. Within this
category, team structure was the most frequently cited subcategory (103 comments). Team structure
referred to the various ways that teams may organize or group themselves to conduct classroom
assignment. Schools organized themselves by grade-level teams, multigrade teams, and teacher teams
with principal involvement and input in the process.
The degree of cohesiveness (34 comments) was the dynamic process that reflected the tendency
of the team to stick together and remain united in their pursuit of their objectives, as well as the
satisfaction of member affective needs. There was also a range of cohesiveness represented in the teacher
teams. Some teams spoke of very tight connections with their colleagues, especially those teachers who
team taught together. Somewhere in the middle were the schools that respected each other professionally,
but did have a personal connection with others beyond the grade level. Other teams cited a fundamentally
broken process that lacked a sense of unity or mutual helpfulness.
Team size (24 comments) was also a factor of the characteristic of a team. Teams can range from
dyads to as many as 20-25 people. Large team meetings reflect the placement of multigrade teams, the
“sending” teachers and the “receiving” teachers. The specials teachers (e.g., music, library, physical
education) may also participate.
Team climate (19 comments) was based upon the overall interaction patterns of the entire team.
Positive statements about climate included how schools build trust and respect over the years and how
schools do not take their interactions for granted. Schools also reported a spotty climate, a mix of
interactions that are both positive and negative.
Team diversity (6 comments) referred to the diversity of team composition, which included
differing types of personality, culture, ability, and expertise. Team type refers to a taxonomy developed
by Sundstrom and colleagues (2000) including production and service teams, management teams, project
teams, action and performing teams, and advisory teams. Classroom assignment teams would fall in the
project team category, where the team comes together over a period of time to complete a project with a
goal—place students in a classroom with a teacher for the upcoming academic school year.
5.1.4 Work structure
Work structure (100 total comments) included work assignment, team norms, and communication
structure. Work structure is critical to teamwork because teams, as open systems, consist of both a formal
work structure and a unique but interdependent social structure. Together, the socio- and technical
systems serve to shape both what cues team members attend to and how they react to those cues.
Communication structure (75 comments) described what they thought about the assessment of a
child’s performance, their needs, type of learning environments available to them and how they orient this
information for the purposes of assignment. Communications structures are both formal (e.g.,
assessments, scores, parental requests) and informal (e.g., discussions, thoughts, anecdotes).
Team norms were social standards that describe what behaviors should and should not be
performed in any social setting (11 comments). These could also include formal and informal norms.
Formal norms were shaped by explicit rules or agendas given prior to or during the assignment meetings.
Informal norms were shaped by the comments or conversations people had with one another during the
meeting (i.e., “It’s Dominique’s turn; we can’t keep changing the rules”).
Work assignment (14 comments) was the manner in which task components are distributed
among team members. Work assignment was also closely related to task interdependency because it
determines which team member does what when, and how each individual component of the task is
integrated so that the team works effectively. Team members can be assigned the same task components
or different task components depending upon the nature of the task. Work assignment was determined by
different people; in some schools the principal assigned some or all of the work, while other teams were
self-directed and self-organized.
5.2 Moderating Variables
Moderating variables may have contributory or contingent effect on the relationships between
input variables and team work processes. There are four categories moderating variables in this
framework (1) organization and environment; roles, (2) responsibilities, and requirements; (3) shared
cognition or mental models; and (4) team leadership and coaching. These four categories comprise team
member cognition. Thus, team member expectations, established and changed by team inputs, ongoing
teamwork, and team leadership and the organizational environment, moderate the relationships between
inputs and processes. See Table 2 for a summary of comments on moderating variables.
Table 2
Summary of Comments on Moderating Variables
Subcategories of
moderating
variable
characteristics
Total number of
comments
Organization and
environment
Building space (16)
Parental influence
(15)
School culture (26)
Teacher labor issues
(71)
128
Moderating Variables
Roles, responsibilities, Shared cognition/
and requirements
Mental models
Principal (80)
Student attributes
(1585)
Teachers (152)
Teacher attributes
(172)
---
Team leadership
and coaching
Principal leadership
(35)
Teacher leadership
(46)
--
232
81
1757
5.2.1 Organization and Environment
The organization and environment (128 comments) category is characterized by a cue stream that
is also interpreted by team members, thereby contributing to both individual and shared cognition. The
organization and environment can include both the physical space (school building) as well as
relationships to people, groups (e.g., business community, local governing groups), other organizations
(e.g., teachers unions) or external influences (e.g., district policies, federal mandates, teacher workforce
issues).
The building space (16 comments) for classroom assignment was usually a large classroom. The
teachers and other educational leaders would gather together in a classroom, and how the ways in which
they would position themselves to conduct the classroom assignment varied. Some schools used the wall
space to hang large pieces of poster paper to visualize the classrooms. The teachers, as one group, would
either sit or stand near the posters and discuss the ordering and assigning of students to classrooms. Some
schools did not use posters for their large group discussion; instead they would sit around a large table
and discuss the rosters. An assigned note-taker would capture the decisions made about the student
assignments. Other schools broke up into smaller teams (3-5 people) and worked together to put together
a single grade or classroom’s roster list. These schools may sit around a table and use pieces of paper to
visualize the classrooms. After the subteams were finished, they would gather at the end of the meeting as
a large group to review their decisions.
Parental influence (15 comments) referred to the degree parents had the power to influence the
placement their child in classrooms or with particular teachers. Parental influence varies from school to
school, and may be dependent upon the demographic of the area as well as the policies the school has
instituted regarding parental influence. For example, in one school that served affluent and educated
families, parental influence was actively managed both during the classroom assignment process as well
as throughout the school year. One principal said:
“I try to balance out all those factors before enrollment day, before we tell who the
teacher is going to be. And then because placement is such a big issue at our school with
parents, that I've got this other process that's called 'Reconsideration,' 'Class Placement
Reconsideration,' because, you know, I would do nothing else, but listen to parents
scream and cry and yell on that enrollment day.”
This principal underscored parents’ lack of awareness of the complexity and nuance of the
classroom assignment process. She thought this lack of awareness contributed to the sometimes
confrontational or demanding nature of parental requests:
“Because they think it's so easy, they think it’s so easy and... [they say] it's just about my
child. It's like, why can't you move my child from this environment to this environment,
you've got room, this teacher has fewer kids than this. And, there really is just a lack of
understanding regarding the complexity of the process and it would be nice to […] have
them learn a little bit about that.”
Teachers echoed the need to have the parental influenced actively managed by school
policy and enforced by the principal. For example, one teacher said:
“There are parents that request, "Oh, take my child from that teacher, because this and
that, and she's too this and she's too that”, but (principal) says, "No, she's going to stay
there, and that is the way it is." I like [that] because we had a principal that used to move
the children around, and that was so bad for the kids, and for the teachers.”
School culture (26 comments) refered to the climate and feel of the school, which may be
embodied or actualized in a myriad of ways. This could include the extent to which people engage in data
driven, expectations-based culture; the degree of parental involvement; whether or not there is a studentachievement focus; or the extent to which teachers collaborate or practice collegiality (both within the
classroom assignment process and other areas of teamwork). Some of teachers’ responses included:





“Kindergarten is more collaborative than other grades in the school.”
“It's pretty collaborative and that's something that we really value here.”
“It also depends on the principal in the building. I think every principal is different
too. Every principal is going to honor it differently. Some principals are more top
down. Others are more receptive to what the working professionals underneath them
are doing.”
“My relationship with [Principal] is good. I feel like [Principal] values our input, you
know, I can say that pretty well.”
Because, they [the students] belong to you. And there's a sense of ownership and a
sense of belonging that you try to create from day 1.”
Teacher labor issues (72 comments) included certification issues, losing teachers due to low
enrollment and/or budget cuts, re-hiring teachers, teacher allocation for special education students,
tentative teaching assignments, teacher mobility, teacher seniority, teacher stability, teacher shortages,
teacher turnover, and the influence of teacher unions.
5.2.2 Roles, Responsibilities, and Requirements
Roles, responsibilities, and requirements (232 total comments) moderate the role between team
inputs and teamwork processes. Team inputs are actively interpreted by team members who, via this
ongoing process, form stable yet malleable expectations regarding the nature of their obligations. Team
members with accurate expectations are more likely to know which team processes to engage in and when
given activities should occur.
The role of the principal (80 comments) varied from school to school, as did the degree of their
participation. Some principals led and participated in the classroom assignment process; these principals
set the parameters for the group interaction and contributed content and substance to the conversation and
decision-making process. Other schools engaged in a teacher-led process, with principals as participants
or observers. The third approach was a hybrid model, where both the teachers and principals engaged in
leading, participating, and moderating the classroom assignment process.
The roles of teachers (153 comments) were stratified into four groups: ESL or ELL teachers and
bilingual resource specialists, receiving teachers, special education teachers, and specials teachers. The
teachers who served bilingual students were primarily responsible for placing the ESL or ELL students
(47 comments). They usually met separately before the classroom assignment meeting to discuss and
place their students in the following year’s classrooms.
Receiving teachers (25 comments) are those teachers who will teach the students that are placed
in the classrooms the following year. Their role is to review, verify, and discuss (if necessary) the
placement of the incoming students.
Special education teachers (31 comments) place their students in the following year’s classrooms.
Some considerations for special education teachers may include whether or not they have a regular
education teaching partner, and/or if there are split classrooms (this school district used split classrooms
as their primary classroom design).
Lastly, the role of specials teachers (49 comments) provided specific, targeted, and unique input
to the classroom assignment process. The specials teachers (e.g., music, library, physical education, art)
interacted with students in ways that were different than regular education classrooms. For example, they
may see mixed classrooms within a grade for their classes, and therefore witness student interactions that
are not visible to other teachers. They also see kids in different contexts. For example, the fitness
education teachers may observe how well kids handle leadership roles in the context of team sports. Or,
the librarian may see problematic behaviors among students that are not in the same classroom as one
another. These unique interactions help refine the placement of students in classrooms. Specials teachers
usually provide their input at the end of the classroom assignment meeting, after the rosters have been
completed by the ESL/ELL, special education, and regular education teachers.
5.2.3 Shared Cognition/Mental models
Shared cognition and shared mental models serve to form templates which are drawn upon by
team members during teamwork (1585 comments). Shared templates imply processing objectives which
constitute the social reality team members share (Salas, et al., 2007).
Shared cognition/mental models was partitioned into two characteristics: student attributes and
teacher attributes. Attributes refer to the individual characteristics that are used to inform where students
and teachers are placed, and with whom. Teachers and principals use these attributes to form mental
models of the students or their colleagues, and they rely on this shared understanding to inform, prioritize,
and structure what they deem as important for effective classroom interactions.
Student attributes (total comments 1,585), included10 subtypes. Student attributes described
teachers’ and principals’ shared mental models about the characteristics and performance of students.
They used these attributes to differentiate, prioritize, and inform the decision making. See Table 3 for a
summary of comments about student attributes.
Table 3
Summary of Comments About Student Attributes
Subtypes of
student attributes
Academic
performance
Demographics
Geographic area or
neighborhood
High teacher time
Learning style
Parent or family
member influence
Peer relationships
Definitions
Academic performance of an individual student or subset of students.
Academic performance can be described or defined a myriad of ways (by
teachers, school staff, principal) – can be “objective” (e.g., test scores,
assessments) or “subjective” (e.g., teachers’ or principals’ opinion about a
student(s) overall academic performance. May include ability level in
content areas, achievement level, elective courses, gifted or high-level
placement, performance undefined or varies, repeats course or grade,
Student characteristics that describe their general personhood. Examples
may include: ethnicity, family members, gender, language, elementary
school of origin (for middle school, specifically).
Refers to placing a child based on where they live at home.
Instances when a student requires a lot of teacher time, relative to peers in
the class. Usually due to behavior or academic needs.
The manner in which a child learns best.
Refers to the burden on teachers to interact with students' parents or family
members, as it relates to the learning or performance of that particular
student.
Refers to relationships that students have with one another based either on
friendships or a shared characteristics.
Number of
comments
288
247
6
61
8
83
129
Subtypes of
student attributes
Social, behavior,
and physical
characteristics
Special status
students
Student mobility
Definitions
May include disruptive behavior and social problems, personality, physically
intimidating student, separating students. Not a special education student.
Number of
comments
434
A student with special education and/or ESL/ELL designation(s).
200
Degree and frequency to which a student is mobile: between groups
within/across classrooms, between schools. Also taking into account
mobility rates for returning students.
129
There were 172 comments about teacher attributes. These attributes informed the placement
decisions for teachers in classrooms, or matches with specific students. See Table 4 for a summary of
teacher attributes.
Table 4
Summary of Comments About Teacher Attributes
Subtypes of
teacher attributes
Academic teaching
skills
Demographics
Individual traits
and teaching style
Prior experience
with family or
siblings
Definitions
Teachers’ ability and skill to teach various ages, differentiated instruction,
high or low performing students, produces high test scores, special education
needs, any student well, at a high level of teaching rigor.
May include experience level/type, gender, new teacher status, qualifications
in content areas, subject certification or licensure.
Examples may include classroom management and structure, leadership
style, nurturing disposition, personality type, and sensitivity level.
Denotes that teacher may have history of experience or teaching with a
student's siblings or other family members; schools may place the current
student with the same teacher because of that past experience.
Number of
comments
19
26
90
37
5.2.4 Team Leadership and Coaching
Team leadership and coaching (81 total comments) referred to the level of principal leadership
(35 comments) and teacher leadership (46 comments). Principal leadership occurred in classroom
assignment meetings, as well as before and after. Principals varied in their level of engagement, and how
much autonomy they gave teacher teams to control the classroom assignment process. For example, one
principal said:
“I actually know every single kid in this school, I know them well. It's one of my
leadership goals, so, but I trust that their teachers know them even better.”
Teacher leadership also varied from school to school. Some schools embodied a shared leadership
model, where multiple teachers worked together to lead the group and the control was shared. In other
schools, there would be a single teacher leading and controlling the flow of the session. In both cases, the
principal was not leading the work; instead they participated or observed the process.
5.3 Process Characteristics
Process characteristics (927 total comments) comprised the nature of team work. These processes
are both at the individual and team levels. The processes identified in this study are intended to be a small
sample of the number of processes that evolve over time. Processes may sometimes be referred to as team
competencies, as they inform the quality and content of the actions team engage in to complete a task or
goal. See Table 5 for a summary of process characteristics categories.
Table 5
Summary of Comments on Process Characteristics
Subcategories
of process
characteristics
Total number of
comments
Adaptive
Process
--
Back-up
Behavior
--
208
10
Process Characteristics (Teamwork)
Coordination
Group
Interpersonal
Mechanisms
Dynamics
Communication
--mechanisms (562)
Mutual performance
monitoring (35)
Mutual trust (28)
625
40
9
Team
Orientation
--
35
5.3.1 Adaptive Process
Adaptive process (108 comments) was defined as the ability to recognize deviations from
expected action and readjust actions accordingly. It is also important to realize that detecting changes and
adjusting behavior is not enough to ensure successful performance. At times, groups actively managed
instances where they needed to adapt their tasks and decisions to new data, information, or perceptions
from other teachers. Meetings were also punctuated with periods of confusion and lack of progress. One
teacher said:
“That's one of the ongoing challenges of doing it, and that's a pro and a con, […] we
talked about how it's great to start it early because there's a lot of work to do, and a lot of
revisiting and editing. But in a way it is hard because you don't know who's coming in
and who's being hired and who's moving […].”
Another teacher talked about how a lack of adaptive process can stagnate a meeting because the
discussion can veer off to a debate, rather than reorienting or reaching consensus:
“Well we had trouble even just determining what high, we, we understood highacademic, but high-behavior, like, whether it was, you know, a lot of social-emotional
stuff, or kids could have high-behavior if they just need a lot of teacher time, so we spent
a lot of time debating what exactly that meant.”
5.3.2 Back-Up Behavior
Back-up behavior (10 comments) described the provision of resources and task-related effort to
another team member, which is intended to help the member or team reach its goals. Teams where
teachers worked together talked about “looking out for each other,” making sure that no one’s room has a
bigger class size or has a lot of high-teacher time kids. It is also possible teachers engage in back-up
behaviors that are not explicit to the group. Some teachers said that they will avoid placing certain
students in a receiving teacher’s classroom because they believe that the child is not a good fit for the
teacher or classroom.
5.3.3 Coordination Mechanisms
Coordination mechanisms referred to how teams organized and managed their tasks and work
(652 comments). The largest category of coordination mechanisms were communication mechanisms
(562). Schools relied mostly on physical artifacts to organization and structure the representation of
student information and how they would use it to communication to the group and to make decisions. See
Table 6 for a summary of communication mechanisms.
Table 6
Summary of Communication Mechanisms
Subtypes of
communication
mechanisms
Classroom lists
Data (forms, types,
use)
Data visualizations
District placement
card
Notes and index cards
Parent preferences or
survey sheet
Parent requests
Principal placement
notes
Stakeholder input
Teacher preferences
or input sheet
Definitions
Number of
comments
Lists of students in current classrooms, arriving students, etc...
Various types of data teachers and schools use to codify student
performance and communication about the status of the student.
The way that teachers/school leaders may display student data and other
relevant data points to inform and organize classroom room assignment
decisions and resulting classroom lists. Some examples may include
charts, graphs, or matrixes.
District-generated artifact to capture information and data about students
and intended to be used during the classroom assignment process.
The index cards hold information on the students' profiles; their individual
information (e.g., reading/math levels, gender, etc...).
Captures input on parental preferences, or gathers information about what
the parents view as educational or instructional needs of their child. This
form may or may not allow parents to request teachers (depends upon
school policy).
Comments specific to parents making requests (demands?) for specific
teachers. This is different than a preference sheet or survey of parents'
perceptions of their child’s needs or characteristics.
Refers to artifacts or communication activities that principals use or
engage in to capture placement decisions for current year and beyond.
Input gathered from instructional support, non-instructional staff, and
parents/families.
The school and/or principal may gather input from teachers on their
preferences for students, grades, or classrooms the following year.
66
101
59
90
77
51
59
3
4
52
Other coordination mechanisms were mutual performance monitoring and mutual trust. Mutual
performance monitoring (35 comments) referred to the awareness about how the team was functioning
and how well they were monitoring the work of their teammates. Mutual trust (28 comments) referred to
the extent to which teachers relied and depended upon one another to accomplish their tasks.
5.3.4 Group Dynamics
Group dynamics (40 comments) was a team-level process and referred to the socio-emotional
aspects of team member interaction during team work; it evolves and changes over the lifecycle of the
project. Some teacher teams reported high levels of group support, while other teams’ experiences were
punctuated with frustration and deflated feelings. Teachers reported that group dynamics can also shift
from year to year, especially if there are changes in organizational structure, management approach,
assignment processes, or shifts in teachers’ positions.
5.3.5 Interpersonal Process
Interpersonal process (9 comments) is an individual-level process that referred to individual
competencies that contribute to or hinder team performance. One of the most important competencies that
contribute to teamwork is the depth of knowledge that teachers have about their students. One teacher
said:
“I had 3rd grade last year, so, those were the 4th grade teachers who had the kids I had last year.
So I did know those kids. And I knew the kids that I was placing. So, I thought I took offense to
that […].”
5.3.6 Team Orientation
Team orientation (35 comments) was an individual-level process and referred to a preference for
working with others and the tendency to enhance individual performance through coordination,
evaluation, and utilization of task inputs from other group members while performance group tasks
(Driskell & Salas, 1992). There are instances when teachers know and understand the process better than
others, they recognize that, and help the other teachers understand and engage in the group. Other
teachers are aware that they are “all in this together” as one teacher explained:
“It's as objective as we can possibly be and still be people. You know? And I think, too,
that we're very respectful of the professionalism because we all understand what it's like
to, not only be that teacher, but also to support and be on a team with that teacher who is
heavy-loaded, and how much of a drain it is.”
5.4 Performance Outcomes
Performance outcomes (1288 total comments), both team-based and individual, can serve to
change both the organizational inputs and team's inputs available to subsequent performance episodes. In
the context of classroom assignment, performance outcomes referred to the results of their teamwork and
whether or not they met their objectives and goals. See Table 7 for a summary of comments on
performance outcomes.
Table 7.
Summary of Comments on Performance Outcomes
Subcategories of performance
outcomes
Individual Outcomes
--
Total number of comments
30
Performance Outcomes
Team Performance Outcomes
Classroom designs (692)
Matching or splitting (399)
Team teaching designs(167)
1258
5.4.1 Team Performance Outcomes
Team performance outcomes (1258 comments) were the resulting classroom designs, matches or
splits, or team teaching designs that were produced at the end of the classroom assignment process. A
summary of classroom designs can be found in Table 8.
Table 8
Summary of Classroom Designs
Subcategories of
classroom designs
Balanced classrooms
Class sizes
Grouping and student
teams
Heterogeneous
classrooms
Homogeneous
classrooms
Special classroom
designs
Definitions
Classrooms that consist of a mix of students so that one subgroup does
overwhelm the other students or the teacher.
Refers to number of students within a classroom.
May include ability grouping within classrooms, grouping across
classrooms, grouping special education students within one regular
education classroom, grouping students who work well together,
interdisciplinary student teams, pull outs.
Classrooms that have a mix or balance of different types of students
(usually balanced on attributes defined by teachers and/or principal).
Classrooms that have one type of student, some examples are: special
education classrooms, classrooms that have one ability type, gender.
Bilingual classrooms, split grades in one classroom, horizontal
classrooms, kindergarten, looping, vertical grades
Number of
comments
210
132
157
54
14
125
Matching or splitting (399 comments) referred to pairing or separating students from teachers,
students from other students, or teachers from other teachers. Matching and splitting are based upon the
individual attributes of students and teachers. For example, a teacher with strong classroom management
skills may be paired with a student with behavioral challenges. Refer to the earlier section on individual
student and teacher attributes (see Section 5.2.3).
Team teaching designs (167 comments) referred to configurations of two or more teachers
grouping together to plan and execute instruction. This included multi-teacher teams, single teacher
classrooms, team teaching across grades, team teaching with special education teachers, team teaching
with specialists, team teaching within disciplines, and teams teaching across classrooms within grades.
Team teaching was the norm in almost all the schools. Teacher rarely taught their entire teaching load
autonomously.
5.4.2 Individual Outcomes
Individual outcomes (30 comments) referred to products produced as well as the psychosocial
traits that result from a team’s experiences while navigating its operational challenges. For example, one
teacher summed up a multi-year experience:
“I think we can all think back as adults and think to certain years where there's like "oh
yeah, I had a great year with that teacher... or wow, that one was really miserable, that
was a bad mix"... I think it's a process that needs a lot of thought.”
6. Discussion
Classroom assignment is a complex, team-based process. Teachers and principals use a range of
data and experiential knowledge to inform the placement of students in classrooms. A multitude of factors
inform and comprise team performance; therefore focusing a single factor (e.g., principal involvement) or
cluster of factors (e.g., parent requests) will not adequately capture the classroom assignment process.
Further, the classroom assignment process is fluid, iterative, and takes place over the course of
the school year. Teachers assess student performance, behavior, and other attributes over time, informed
by numerous interactions or observations of the student. They may meet as teams multiple times in spring
to formalize their impressions and select classrooms for the following year. The principal may review
these lists and make changes over the summer, and make changes again at the beginning of the school
year to accommodate new students and re-adjust after currents students leave unexpectedly. At the
beginning of the following school year, the classroom lists may look much different from the original
plan determined in spring.
Schools vary in the attributes that they value as important to inform classroom assignment,
though there was a lot of commonality in the attributes they used in the process. Most schools used a
combination of student academic performance, behavior, and individual traits to place students in
classrooms. Some schools valued academic performance over behavior, while other schools placed
students based upon behavior or disposition first, followed by academic ability. These attribute sets were
very rich, and multiple data points and experiences with students were used to inform how to place
children into classrooms. Teachers’ attributes were also important; school teams also assessed the
characteristics of their colleagues to inform optimal placement in classrooms.
Teacher teams used an array of artifacts, visualizations, and supportive group processes to
organize and structure their work. All schools used pen-and-paper lists or computer print outs of student
data to support their decision-making; the use of computers or digital media was not used in any of the
assignment meetings observed in this study. At the same time, not all the artifacts represented the
knowledge that informed the decision-making process. Teachers engaged in various communication
patterns, built off the opinions and experiences expressed by others, and re-evaluated or recalibrated their
decisions as the engaged the assignment process. Therefore, the resulting class lists were a culmination of
various data, coupled with the teachers’ wisdom and knowledge exchanged in the meetings. This makes it
especially difficult to pinpoint a role, person, process, or data point that fully explains the etiology of a
classroom roster or list.
Given all these complexities, where does that leave the validity concern that classroom
assignment may introduce a bias to value-added scores? One policy decision could be to mandate random
classroom assignment in all schools. The underlying assumption in this policy is the benefits derived from
diminishing the bias in the value-added scores outweighs the benefits to students who are optimally
placed in classrooms by teachers who are familiar with their performance and disposition. Unfortunately,
we do not have a way to assess this trade-off, and prior research on classroom assignment is overly
simplistic (e.g., principals drive classroom assignment, parent requests determine placement, both of
which may inform or influence the process, but these factors do not comprise the process).
Classroom assignment was deliberate in all schools; there were not any schools that engaged in
random assignment (e.g., using a deck of note cards to place student in classrooms). However, all schools
used principles of balance and heterogeneity design classrooms, usually so that no one teacher was
overburdened and the placement of students was mutually beneficial to all. Therefore, assessing quality
and fairness of the classroom assignment process becomes equally if not more important than the
characteristics of the students on the classrooms lists.
One way to assess the classroom assignment process at scale is to develop and implement a
survey (Steele et al., 2012, this session). This survey assesses the perspectives of teachers, principals, and
school educators on classroom assignment in their school. The survey could also make inferences about
the fairness and quality of the assignment process, and potentially flag schools that may be engaging in
unfair or low-quality assignment practices. In these schools, random assignment could be imposed, or,
grade- or school-level value-added measures may be a more appropriate and fair choice for teacher
evaluation.
The other validity consideration is quality of the data used to make to inform the VAMs. As we
have observed in the results of this study, teaching usually occurs in teams and the assignment of students
to classrooms is fluid throughout the year. As of yet, we have not observed schools that systematically
capture their assignment practices or student attributes in their data systems. Watson and colleagues
(2012, this session) calibrate the differences in VAM scores before and after adjusting for team teaching
practices.
On the research side, this study contributes to scientific literature in several ways. First, the team
performance model revealed the complex and multifarious nature of classroom assignment; our prior
notions of who contributes to classroom assignment (i.e., “who is in charge?”) and how decisions are
made are overly simplistic. Second, this framework provides a starting point to assess team-based
performance in schools for other purposes, such as resource allocation, program effectiveness, or changes
in teaching practice. The current trend in data based decision making does not fully afford for teams
performance or the organizational context in which schools engage in improvement efforts. The team
performance framework could serve as a departure point to design infrastructure and systems aligned to
the processes, mechanisms, and factors that underpin teacher team processes. Lastly, this research
highlights the importance of mixed-methods research in VAM and other high-stakes accountability
measures. It is not enough to rely solely quantitative measures to model the performance of classrooms,
because we do not know enough about the school and classroom context. Further, other disciplinary
perspectives, such as team performance modeling found in the field of human factors engineering,
complement and enhance the theory, understanding, and interpretation of models in the field of
economics.
There were several limitations to this study. The approach and findings of this exploratory study
are descriptive in nature and do not imply causality or predict school or teacher team performance. A
relatively small number of schools were sampled in this study. In future research, more schools in
multiple school districts are needed to identify differences in various contexts. The findings of this study
may be transferrable to other contexts with similar conditions, but more research is needed to determine
how or if these findings could be generalizable. The use of surveys in schools to assess classroom
assignment practices, is one way to assess generalizability, reliability, and validity of these findings.
Acknowledgement
This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Education – Institute of Science
(Grant # R305A080038, PI: Robert H. Meyer).
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