This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

In recent years, Bill Gates has given financial support to American education.

Late last year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Measures of Effective Teaching project. The project tests new ways to recognize what makes a good teacher.

Its is to help educators and policymakers identify and support good teaching.

The study is being carried out in public school systems in seven American cities. Thousands of teachers to take part. They agreed to have their classes recorded on video, but only for observation by expert researchers.

Last spring, the project collected digital videos of thirteen thousand lessons in the classrooms by the teachers. They were in grades four through nine.

Researchers also collected information from students. They asked students to report their opinions of each teacher's classroom. Students were also tested in mathematics, English and .

Officials recently released early results of the project study. The report says teachers' past success in student scores on state tests is one of the strongest signs of their ability to do so again. This is known as a teacher's “value-added.”

The teachers with the highest value-added scores on state tests also help students understand math or show reading .

The results also say students know effective teaching when they experience it. The students gave comments on or not their teachers cared about them. They also gave opinions on how much teachers controlled or managed student in the classroom.

The report found that classrooms where students reported positive experiences were more likely to show greater learning .

Another finding shows that combining different sources of information helps administrators provide better comments and suggestions to teachers. In many cases, administrators had been their comments on student test scores only.

The Measures of Effective Teaching project continues through twenty twelve when final results will be released. Researchers plan to test a new measure that examines what a teacher knows about how to teach a subject. Experts say these findings could also help create better and development for teachers.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Lawan Davis. Join us online at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also join us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember.