A team of researchers from the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation and NC State College of Education have been awarded the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Division L Outstanding Long Policy Report Award for their work on the 2024 evaluation of the Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR) program, titled “Advanced Teaching Roles: Annual Evaluation Report.” 

The Outstanding Long Policy Report Award recognizes an outstanding policy report that contributes to education research and/or policy through its analysis, evaluation and/or critique of education policy. 

“This award highlights the value of sustained partnerships across research, policy and practice,” said Shaun Kellogg, former senior director of the Program Evaluation and Education Research Group at the Friday Institute and principal investigator (PI) for the ATR evaluation during the release of this report. “While the recognition is for the report, it really belongs to the broader team of researchers, state leaders and district partners who made the work possible. Collaborations like these are ​essential to produce evidence that is both rigorous and genuinely useful to educators and decision-makers.”

AERA’s Division L awards teams and individual members of AERA’s Education Policy and Politics community who exemplify a commitment to conducting meaningful research and supporting the research and practice community.

“This project has been an important example of how state educational policy can work in partnership with rigorous research and evaluation to improve an important program that is expanding across our schools and districts,” said Lam Pham, assistant professor in the College of Education and quantitative lead for the ATR evaluation.

The ATR program aims to “allow highly-effective classroom teachers (Advanced Teachers) to impact an increased number of students and enable local school administrative units to create innovative compensation models that focus on classroom teacher professional growth.” The main goal of the program is to improve student outcomes. 

The “Advanced Teaching Roles: Annual Evaluation Report” highlights the evaluation of ATR Program implementation during the 2023-24 school year and quantitative estimations of schoolwide and teacher-level impacts for the 2022-23 school year.  The evaluation helps interested and relevant stakeholders better understand the implementation of the ATR program and help identify factors supporting or impeding its success. Plus, it helps the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NDPI) and its public school units assess the academic and instructional impact of ATR programs as well as their impact on the teaching profession more broadly. 

“North Carolina is leading the way in creating teacher career ladders, building pathways that support teachers, strengthening schools and giving students more opportunities to succeed,” said Sarah Bausell, research scholar at the Friday Institute and qualitative lead for the evaluation report. “This award reflects the value of sustained, on-the-ground work by capturing how a single policy can take shape in different ways depending on local conditions and by elevating the perspectives of the educators doing that work every day. I hope readers see the value of educational research as a process that helps improve policies and informs practice.”

Report authors include Bausell, Kellogg and Emily Thrasher from the Friday Institute and Pham and Tamara Young from the College of Education. Report contributors include Aaron Arenas, James Birkett, Victor Cadilla, Brayan Diaz, Amber Moore and Jodie Roberson. Key ATR project contributors also include Callie Edwards and Erin Manuel.

Award winners will be honored at the AERA Division L Business Meeting & Awards Ceremony April 9 at the J.W. Marriott in Los Angeles.