In Australia, teachers' accountability has grown less centralized and less bureaucratized as teachers have become more knowledgeable and better trained. Opposing forces are currently battling over whether to increase monitoring. In as multidimensional an administrative field as Australian schooling, a complex, changing monitoring system must…

Describes and applies several alternative distribution criterion to secondary analysis of pre- and post-achievement scores from 15 sixth-grade classrooms. Illustrates examples where a teacher could be considered "effective" under one criterion, but "ineffective" under another. Also addresses policy implications concerning use of alternative…

Creating a system for successfully supervising and evaluating the entire teaching staff of a school district is a daunting task. An effective system-wide program can only be achieved if the administrators, teachers and the teachers' association understand and attend to the educational, legal, public relations (political), and social-emotional…

This book looks at how portfolios may be used in the teaching profession as a powerful tool to help educators examine their beliefs about teaching, achieve personal growth and development, and work toward self-improvement. Each part of the book is independently authored. Section 1, by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Ellen Vogt, focuses on the…

The amount of due process tenured teachers are entitled to in some states discourages schools from pursuing dismissals of even the most unsatisfactory teachers. Administrators need to work intensively with new teachers, and administrators' own evaluations should include measures of how effectively they evaluate teachers. (MLF)

By granting teachers greater empowerment and higher compensation in return for closer involvement with students, Rochester City School District is seeking to make public schools successful for all students. (Author/TE)

Offers conclusions of research examining the U.S. history knowledge of 263 elementary education majors. Reports poor performance for the students. Suggests that the students have a greater understanding of more recent historical events than of earlier U.S. history. Argues that knowledge of history is essential in understanding the world and…

Reports on a study of the impact of student evaluations of higher education economics instructors on faculty behavior and grades. Finds that initially grades increased but then declined over a nine-year period. Recommends further research on this issue. (CFR)

Guidelines for teacher management procedures are presented in this resource book, which focuses on developing an information record system. Examples are drawn from countries with rapidly expanding education systems in Africa, particularly southern Africa. The book is an outcome of a series of four workshops organized by the Human Resource…

Teacher evaluation procedures, if ineptly accomplished, are potentially vulnerable to litigation (which most school districts can ill afford), because there is no consensus as to what constitutes effective teaching; hence the validity of rating systems and/or reliability of observations is open to challenge. Accordingly, the evaluation policies…

This paper inquires into the relationship between the criterion variable of teacher effectiveness and the independent variables of the score on the teacher evaluation procedure and the teacher demographic variables of race, sex, level of teacher certification, area of teacher certification, and years of teaching experience. The ultimate goal of…

This article presents a documentation system that principals can use in the teacher evaluation process to help improve a teacher's performance or, if necessary, to present at a hearing to support a recommendation for termination. The documentation involves the use of several types of memoranda: (1) memoranda to the principal's file (for less…

This paper considers the kinds of interventions that elementary school principals make for the purpose of improving practice in their schools. Findings are derived from the Principal-Teacher Interaction Study being conducted at the University of Texas at Austin, which has categorized interventions hierarchically at the following levels: policy,…

In response to accountability pressures over the past several years, a body of research attempting to identify characteristics of effective schools has developed. Efforts to improve school climate or evaluate teachers solely according to "effective school" characteristics may be misguided. One problem is that school effectiveness may be…

This presentation examines the history of merit pay and analyzes studies and research on merit pay to discover directions for developing effective procedures. Reasons for failure of merit pay plans include administrative problems, personnel problems, collective bargaining, financial problems, unsatisfactory evaluation, staff dissension,…