Teacher education preparation programs are under pressure from the public to provide evidence that their programs and teacher candidates are improving student achievement. However, the connections between teacher education preparation programs, teacher candidates' evaluation, and student achievement are often hard to disentangle from other…

This study describes a rubric supporting fast and reliable assessment of preservice teacher electronic portfolios. The assessment calls for raters to quickly scan a portfolio to gain an overall impression, then dichotomously score a large number of indicators (e.g., educational philosophy, educational technology use, imaginative use of…

Evaluation methods lack direction to improve efforts of teachers because the methods operate on vague impressions. Congruence analysis techniques offer promise for diagnostic determination of strengths and weaknesses in teaching practices over a variety of specified criteria. The analysis circumvents some of the problems of linking objective data…

Extensive education research on the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results. First, teacher quality varies substantially as measured by the value added to student achievement or future academic attainment or earnings. Second, variables often used to determine entry into the profession and…

Two major functions of teacher evaluation documentation are to serve to help rationalize the process it documents, and to serve an evidential role, justifying decisions concerning personnel, policy decisions, etc. In sum, teacher evaluation documents provide access to teacher evaluation practice, the notion of teacher competency behind it, and…

This paper explores the politics of various types of teacher compensation reforms, with a particular focus on pay for performance. It examines the political positions taken by the nations two teachers' unions, the extent to which these reflect the preferences of teachers, and how both influence the decisions by localities to implement reforms. New…

This paper briefly describes and gives examples of how one teacher education program developed and has been successfully using a web based system to effectively and efficiently place student teachers, maintain records of placement information, communicate with schools, determine honoraria requests and obtain evaluation data from student teachers…

This paper is an overview of a teacher evaluation program developed by two elementary school principals in Ralston, Nebraska. The program's development is traced from its planning stage through implementation. Points of emphasis show how administrators and teachers jointly developed teacher standards of competence and show how this relationship…

This paper discusses teacher evaluation, including why teachers should be evaluated, what should be evaluated, and how it should be evaluated. Major problems in the evaluation process are listed, followed by a more detailed discussion of the why, what, and how. The paper concludes that dissatisfaction exists in the field of education with current…

Using a 1974 case in a Wisconsin court--Burish v. Rice--as a case study, this paper describes how educators can write letters of recommendation that are both educationally sound and legally defensible. The paper states that writers of negative recommendations must be ready to meet the tests of defense against libel and slander, which are truth and…

The Computerized Observation System (COS) is a software program which an observer can use with a portable microcomputer to document preservice and inservice teacher performance. Specific observable behavior such as appropriate questions and responses shown to increase student achievement are recorded as Low Inference Observation Measures. Time on…

This study investigated the relationship between the dimensionality of behaviorally anchored scales during construction and during their use. It was hypothesized that as the agreement among raters in assigning behaviors to dimensions increased, there would be an increase in the stability of the structure of the dimensions and in their independence…

Teacher performance data was used in this investigation to determine whether the stability of variance components and generalizability coefficients could be obtained by increasing sample sizes. A section of the Teacher Performance Assessment Instruments (TPAI) was utilized to assess 2 competencies for each of 750 teachers Each competency, defined…

Recent literature emphasizing the relationship of content knowledge to teaching performance has provided an inducement for some evaluators to use formal tests to assess teachers' understanding of subject matter. This study, conducted at a laboratory school connected with the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), examines the relationship…

Although teacher evaluation is well established in other English-speaking countries, it has only recently become a significant educational issue in Great Britain. In 1984 the School of Education at Great Britain's Open University began research on pioneering efforts in teacher evaluation among the country's individual schools. The first stage of…