The Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) is an authentic tool for evaluating prospective teachers by examining their abilities to plan, teach, assess, and reflect on instruction in actual classroom practice. The PACT seeks both to measure and develop teacher effectiveness, and this study of its predictive and consequential…

As the internationally benchmarked Common Core State Standards, or CCSS, are adopted in states across the country, educators are seeking ways to support an increasingly diverse student population to meet these more demanding expectations. The likelihood that students will achieve the aims of the standards will be substantially shaped by how well…

As teaching has become a major focus, teacher evaluation is currently the primary tool being promoted to improve it. Thus, most states are dramatically overhauling their evaluation systems for teachers and administrators. What we really need is the conception of teacher evaluation as part of a teaching and learning system that supports continuous…

For years now, educators have looked to international tests as a yardstick to measure how well students from the United States are learning compared with their peers. The answer has been: not so well. The United States has been falling further behind other nations and has struggled with a large achievement gap. Federal policy under No Child Left…

Using five AERA presidential addresses over the past half century as landmarks, this essay traces the evolution of research on teaching and teacher education as well as some critical impacts the research has had on policy and practice related to teacher education and teacher evaluation in the United States. The discussion shows how these addresses…

There is a widespread consensus among practitioners, researchers, and policy makers that current teacher evaluation systems in most school districts do little to help teachers improve or to support personnel decision making. For this reason, new approaches to teacher evaluation are being developed and tested. There is also a growing consensus that…

Engaging students in meaningful applications of their knowledge is a key aspect of both addressing the standards and providing greater access. Not only do the standards emphasize the importance of meaningful engagement in real-world tasks, but evidence shows that engagement is strongly related to student performance on assessment tasks, especially…

Virtually everyone agrees that teacher evaluation in the United States needs an overhaul. Existing systems rarely help teachers improve or clearly distinguish those who are succeeding from those who are struggling. The tools that are used do not always represent the important features of good teaching. Criteria and methods for evaluating teachers…

There is a growing consensus that evidence of teachers' contributions to student learning should be a component of teacher evaluation systems, along with evidence about the quality of teachers' practice. Value-added models (VAMs), designed to evaluate student test score gains from one year to the next are often promoted as tools to accomplish this…

This white paper describes what a student assessment system could look like if built from the principles and best practices found in current educational research and effective educational systems in the U.S. and high-achieving nations around the world. With this paper, the Council of Chief State School Officers seeks to illuminate and enrich the…

As a major policy focus, teacher evaluation is currently the primary tool promoted to improve teaching quality. But evaluation alone is not enough. What will most transform teaching quality--and the profession--is the creation of a larger system that supports teaching and learning through on-the-job evaluation and professional development, and…

Efforts to improve teacher education have recently focused in on the importance of well-supervised clinical practice as a critical element of effective preparation. This article outlines the challenges to creating productive clinical experiences for prospective teachers, and identifies strategies that have been found successful in confronting…

In this article, the author briefly describes how Finland built a strong educational system, nearly from the ground up. Finland was not succeeding educationally in the 1970s, when the United States was the unquestioned education leader in the world. Yet this country created a productive teaching and learning system by expanding access while…

This study examines how mathematics and science teachers' classroom assessment practices were affected by the National Board Certification process. Using a 3-year, longitudinal, comparison group design, evidence of changes in teachers' classroom practice were measured on six dimensions of formative assessment. The National Board candidates began…

Every classroom should have a well-educated, professional teacher, and school systems should recruit, prepare, and retain teachers who are qualified to do the job. Yet in practice, American public schools generally do a poor job of systematically developing and evaluating teachers. Many policy makers have recently come to believe that this failure…