In the past two years, as concerns over teacher quality have swelled, teacher evaluation has emerged as a crucial tool for principals and other administrators to improve instructor performance. More states are seeking federal waivers to the stringent benchmarks of No Child Left Behind; others are vying for Race to the Top funds. Both require…

Seasoned principals know that when veteran teachers are replaced by large numbers of teachers new to the profession, student achievement levels are threatened. The influx of new teachers, coupled with consistently high rate of teacher attrition, creates challenges for principals who have the responsibility of bringing new teachers up the…

Marginal teachers have three common behaviors that have questionable or negative effects on student learning: failure to create an appropriate classroom atmosphere, lack of personal insight and motivation, and unwillingness to accept responsibility for problems. When mentoring and improvement programs fail, collaborative programs with the right…

To help beginning teachers succeed, principals should identify individual teachers' strengths and weaknesses during the interviewing/hiring stage, balance neophytes' workloads, limit their extracurricular activities, establish expectations, select veteran mentors, offer informal formative assessment, be specific about classroom observations, and…