Presentation for CIES 2024 panel: Disrupting the Status Quo of Continuous Teacher Professional Development: Alternative Models for Improved Learning Outcomes. This presentation describes the Senegal RELIT programme's teacher professional development process.

Taken together, the case studies in this Report highlight the core components of an effective performance and accountability framework – a comprehensive system to optimize individual and system-wide performance through establishing outcome goals, tracking, and incentivizing progress against them The case studies show that effectiveness is not determined by implementing a set of individual policies, tools, and structures, but rather how they are collectively used to drive a culture that empowers its people to achieve a system’s ambitious agenda. The components of a performance and accountability framework that are featured in these case studies include: • System leadership that prioritizes a culture of high-performance around targets. • Outcome focused targets and supporting indicators that are well understood and communicated throughout the system, to define and quantify a system’s aspiration. • Quantitative data which is available and regularly shared across a system to gauge system performance, and to identify areas for additional focus or support. • Targeted and tailored support for system actors to help them improve performance, including a focus on specialized support for underperformers, driven by an understanding of data and evidence. • Performance routines and reporting with key system actors focused on reviewing progress, problem solving, and decision making to unlock barriers to improvement. • System engagement and site-visits/fieldwork that surfaces key challenges and opportunities to drive improvement. • Public engagement that keeps the public up to date on progress. Some of these components may require adaptation to different parts of the system. For example, targets may feature in performance agreements for senior leadership roles, but not for frontline staff who may be engaged in a more indirect way around targets (for example, communication of the reform with a focus on enhancing practice and improved outcomes). Similarly, formal performance routines that focus on a broader strategic reform are effective at driving a performance culture at senior levels, but not so for frontline staff who are rightly focused on teaching practice in their classroom. To be effective, embedding a performance and accountability culture across a system requires a nuanced and tailored application of these components to frontline staff, middle management, and senior levels.

In Year 2 (October 2020–September 2021), the Program designed and implemented a Status of Instruction Study (SIS) to shed light on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, skills, and behaviors; the resources available at the school level and for the targeted subjects; and how these resources are used. The Program also designed a Teacher Support System Study (TSSS) to examine the existing teacher support system and identify teacher support challenges and opportunities. The TSSS results will be used to create a Program TPD approach. The TSSS data collection process was integrated into the second phase of the SIS data collection process, which occurred in mid-2021. This was done because both studies targeted the same respondents: teachers, school directors, and methodologists. The TSSS, like the SIS, was originally intended to include in-person interviews. However, because of the prolonged difficulties caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, data collection was done remotely. This report presents the TSSS methodology and findings from online surveys administered to more than 4,100 teachers, 183 school directors, and 131 methodologists from all regions of Uzbekistan, including the Republic of Karakalpakstan and Tashkent City.

The Status of Instruction Study (SIS) aims to shed light on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, and skills and behaviors; the resources available at the school level and for the targeted subjects; and how these resources are used. The SIS was designed to inform the customization and development of student textbooks, teacher guides, and TPD approaches. Originally, the SIS was to have a school-based data collection component that would include classroom observations and parent and teacher interviews. Given the protracted challenges resulting from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, data collection was conducted remotely and focused on garnering feedback directly from teachers. As such one limitation of this study is that all data are self-reported without additional means of triangulation or confirmation at this point in time. This report presents the SIS methodology and findings from online surveys administered to more than 9,400 teachers from all regions of Uzbekistan, including the Republic of Karakalpakstan and Tashkent City.

This study is Phase II of a two-part Teacher’s Guide Uptake Study (TGUS) for ICT and EFL. Phase I was conducted in December 2021 and field tested the above-referenced ICT TGs and the addendum to the EFL TGs to determine, within a short period of time, what changes and adaptations in terms of content, instructional strategies, and design needed to be made before revising the books and submitting them to MoPE for nationwide printing and rollout at the end of Year 3 of the Program (beginning of 2022/2023 school year). TGUS Part I also served to test TGUS data collection tools, built team capacity to use Tangerine, RTI’s opensource data collection platform, and determine the current level of use of student-centered instructional strategies by ICT and EFL teachers. The purpose of Phase II of this study, conducted in May 2022, was to continue to track teachers’ use of the new TGs and their application of selected student-centered teaching strategies in the classroom. Findings from Phase II also informed the overall design of the ULA and Mathematics TPD approach employed to support teachers during the pilot of the ULA and Mathematics TGS and STBs in the 2022/2023 school year. For comparative purposes and to show levels of uptake over time, this report combines select Phase I findings with Phase II findings.

This first phase of this Teacher Guide Uptake Study (TGUS I) examines teachers’ use of TGs and application of student-centered teaching strategies to provide targeted feedback for the revision of the TGs. The second phase of the TGUS will continue to examine the adoption of the new ICT and EFL teaching materials as part of the pilot process. PURPOSE- The purpose of this first phase study is to determine what changes and adaptations, in terms of content, classroom instruction, and design, should be made to ICT and EFL TGs.

This report presents the findings of a deep dive impact evaluation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program (The Program), which was initiated on December 9, 2019, and originally scheduled to end on December 8, 2023, then extended through March 31, 2024. The Program is implemented by a consortium of partners including RTI International (RTI) as the consortium lead and Florida State University and Mississippi State University as partners. For this report, the Program used a comparative analysis of Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Assessments (EGRA and EGMA, respectively) administered at baseline in 2021 and at endline in 2023. The Program evaluation focused on students in grades 2 and 4. In November and December of the 2021-22 school year, the baseline EGRA and EGMA were administered to students who completed grades 2 and 4 and had been in grades 3 and 5 for three months. The endline assessments were administered to students in grades 2 and 4 in May of 2023, a few weeks prior to the end of that school year. This meant that students at endline were being assessed after having completed 68 fewer days of schooling than those who were assessed at baseline.

The Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), conducted the Teacher Support System Study (TSSS) to examine the existing teacher support system in Uzbekistan and identify teacher support challenges and opportunities. The Program is implemented by the RTI International Consortium, which includes Florida State University and Mississippi State University.

The Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program is a 4-year program (December 9, 2019–December 8, 2023) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the RTI International Consortium in collaboration with the Uzbekistan Ministry of Public Education. The Program conducted baseline Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Assessments (EGRA and EGMA, respectively) in November and December 2021. The purpose of the baseline was to measure the pre-intervention levels of mathematics and Uzbek language reading achievement for students at the end of grade 2 and grade 4.

Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) is a methodology to measure the quality of a product. It was first used in the early 1920s of the last century in car factories to ensure their products quality. A sample of the cars manufactured by the production lines is tested to ensure its quality. Thus, the test result is mainstreamed to all cars. Through this methodology, poor quality products or “defects” can be quickly and accurately identified so that they can be disposed or repaired. As it would be a very expensive and time-consuming process if manufacturers checked the quality of each individual product they produce. Therefore, LQAS methodology provided sampling that allowed the classification of an entire production unit by testing a small number of randomly selected products of that unit. If the selected products meet the minimum quality standards, the producers are satisfied that the entire unit has met the minimum quality standards, and if a sufficient number of those selected products do not meet the minimum quality standards, then the entire unit is rejected. This methodology was first used in the humanities, including education, about 20 years ago. Using such a methodology in the education sector enables the Ministry of Education and field directorates to control the quality of the teaching and learning process, and to classify schools as “Achieving” or “Not achieving” the minimum standards of performance quality. Likewise, the MOE’s officials can categorize field directorates as “Achieving” and “Not achieving” the minimum performance standards.