Each year, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) publishes the "State Teacher Policy Yearbook," a comprehensive examination of the state laws, rules and regulations that govern the teaching profession, measured against a realistic set of reform goals. For five years running, the full "Yearbook" compendium…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

The recent wave of new legislation affecting public school teachers has its roots, in part, in the budget shortfalls that have challenged states for the past several years. The first signs of fiscal troubles for many states became evident in 2008, and most instituted midyear budget reductions in 2009. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the…