Over the past decade, many states enacted substantial reforms to teacher-related laws and policies. In Michigan, the state legislature implemented requirements for teacher evaluation based partly on student achievement, reduced tenure protections, and restricted the scope of teacher collective bargaining. Some teacher advocates view such reform as…

Effective teaching practice focused on encouraging deep engagement helps all students learn and succeed. Considerable work by researchers and change agents, encouraged by national organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Research Council, has promoted greater use of evidence-based educational practices, such as…

We examine the effect of Michigan's 2011 reforms to teacher evaluation and tenure policies on teacher retention. Our data are drawn from administrative records containing the population of public school employees from 2005-2006 through 2014-2015. To identify the causal effects of these reforms on teacher attrition, we utilize a…

In 2009, the United States Department of Education (USDOE) incentivised states to create more rigorous teacher evaluation systems that better differentiated teacher performance as well as provided more information on what makes a high-quality teacher. One result of these revised teacher evaluation systems was principals, in most cases the primary…

Recent corporate education reform policies have replaced relatively informal systems of principal observations that had been familiar to many teachers for much of their professional careers with high-stakes teacher evaluation (HSTE) systems that now determine who is allowed to remain in the profession and who gets terminated. Many education…

This article examines the re-professionalization of teaching across a transformative decade of market-based and standards-based reforms in the U.S.A. The first section works with the sociological concept of the 'new professionalism' to situate the No Child Left Behind act, Race to the Top, and CAEP accreditation within a broader movement to align…

While there is an established body of literature on teacher stress and on the factors that may make music teaching uniquely stressful, there has been little or no research on how the recent era of accountability influences music teacher stress. In this article, I review the literature on music teacher stress and on how accountability reforms may…

This report examines the ongoing effort to revamp teacher evaluations. After collecting and synthesizing data from 17 states and the District of Columbia, it provides five major lessons for policymakers. New evaluation systems are just one part of sweeping changes in American schools. Because the number and extent of these changes are daunting,…

With the national focus in education turning to increasing student achievement and closing achievement gaps between demographic groups, federal and state policy has extended responsibility and high stakes accountability for student growth and achievement. Overall, student achievement status and elimination of achievement gaps between…

This study focuses on Public Act 103 of 2011, which made teacher evaluation, layoff policies and teacher placement prohibited subjects of bargaining, among other things. After surveying 200 Michigan school district collective bargaining agreements, this study finds that as many as 60 percent of districts could have collective bargaining agreements…

Great teachers can actually alter the life trajectory of their students. Effective teachers can help close gaps for students who come to school far behind; they can influence whether their students attend college after high school; they can even significantly impact the future salaries of their students, years before they enter the workforce. For…

In little more than a decade, Michigan has gone from being a fairly average state, to among the nation's bottom ten states in essential measures for student learning. It's a devastating fall, and students of color and low-income students--long poorly served by the state--are suffering the most from the system's terribly low performance. Governor…

In December 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), as the nation's major law governing public schools. ESSA retains the requirement that states test all students in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, as well as the requirement that…

Michigan students continue to fall behind their peers in other states in learning. According to 2013 national assessment data, an appalling 69 percent of Michigan fourth-graders cannot read on grade level -- an indicator of future academic success. Neither Michigan's students nor the state's economic future can afford to wait to turnaround our…

In a global knowledge economy, filling in the bubbles on a standardized test isn't going to prepare children to succeed in life. This is the time to shed the old conflicts and come together. In this article, the author suggests a new path forward--toward a 21st-century education system, a serious and comprehensive reform plan to transform U.S.…