The growing prominence of value-added models for measuring teacher effectiveness has prompted a recent surge in policies that consider students' classroom performance part of a teacher's evaluation. Yet, in light of the criticism and limitations of the current models, whether and how evaluation systems will adapt over time is unclear. This paper…

For better or worse, many educational decisions that were once handled on a personal level by teachers or administrators now increasingly rely upon data and information. To be successful in this era, educators need to understand this broad sociotechnical revolution and how it is realigning traditional roles and responsibilities. In this book, the…

With two decades of implementation in urban, suburban, rural, remote, tribal, public, private, and charter schools, the TAP System is impacting educators and students across the country. This document summarizes results from prior selected studies of TAP's impact and spotlights several new studies showcasing improved student achievement in…

It has been three years since Race to the Top grant-winning states piloted new teacher evaluation systems and many of them have made considerable progress, yet according to media coverage and a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published in April 2015, struggles remain and most grantees have asked to extend the timetables for…

In 2009 the Committee for Economic Development (CED) called on district and state education officials to revamp the way that teachers are paid. New compensation systems are needed to attract highly qualified individuals into teaching under labor market conditions that have changed substantially since the typical framework for teacher salaries was…

The Baltimore City Public Schools made national headlines late last year when the district adopted a new contract designed to take student learning and teacher professionalism to the next level. The three-year deal replaced conventional approaches to compensation--regular pay increases based on years in the system--with a new approach that gives…

All Massachusetts school districts will have to adopt new evaluation systems based on a state framework that was approved by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on June 28. The new system will be phased in over three years, beginning with Level 4 schools--those designated "underperforming" by the state--in the 2011-12 school…

A state law, which helped Tennessee win Race to the Top money, pushed schools to implement a system that had limited pilot-testing. Education officials in Tennessee are taking flak from teachers and unions for rushing the implementation of the new teacher-evaluation system that will eventually undergird tenure decisions--a move, some worry, that…

This publication provides an overview of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The following topics are covered : (1) Introductory Information, including a timelime and ESSA modifications to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB); (2) State Plan; 3) Statewide Accountability System, ; (4) Academic Assessments; (5) Standards; (6) School Improvement;…

Across the nation, states and local school districts are seeking to redesign their educator-evaluation systems. Newly funded initiatives from the U.S. Department of Education--such as Race to the Top, School Improvement Grants, and the Teacher Incentive Fund--call for innovative teacher and principal evaluation models. These new evaluation models…

American children deserve the one ingredient we know creates stellar learning results: excellent teachers. These teachers produce "well over" today's typical year of learning growth. Without them, even with solid teachers who produce a full year of progress, children who start behind stay behind, and few students get ahead of their…

As the movement to overhaul teacher evaluation marches onward, an emerging question is splitting the swath of advocates who support the new tools used to gauge teacher performance: Who should get access to the resulting information? Supporters of typing teacher evaluations to student performance differ over whether individuals' results should be…

The levels and growth achievement functions make extreme and diametrically opposed assumptions about the rate at which teacher inputs persist. I first show that if these assumptions are incorrect, teacher value-added estimates can be significantly biased. I then develop a tractable, cumulative model of student achievement that allows for the joint…

This article, an extract from the author's book "Head on the Block," describes how the purpose of the school examination system has changed such that now it is to evaluate the performance of teachers rather than the performance of their students. It highlights some of the negative effects of school league tables--in particular, how the…

This Special Issues Brief from the "Center on Great Teachers and Leaders" (GTL Center) introduces an approach to creating coherence among three potentially transformative instructional reforms: implementation of the Common Core State Standards for student learning, new standards-based teacher evaluation systems, and job-embedded…