One of the greatest challenges for schools is to identify effective and ineffective teachers in a classroom. Teacher evaluation is an expensive process in both time and resources. It is important that evaluations provide data to improve teaching and learning. Therefore, each evaluation needs to communicate opportunities for growth. This…

Teacher quality is among the most significant indicators of student achievement. Policymakers have implemented teacher evaluation reform as the primary strategy for improving teacher quality and increasing student outcomes. In Texas, the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) is the evaluation system endorsed by the state and is…

Districts spend thousands of dollars on computerized teacher screeners without knowing if they are identifying the most effective teacher. Hiring quality staff is one of the most important job functions of a principal, and many times a teacher screener score may eliminate an effective teacher. The current study examined the value of teacher…

The instructional feedback cycle is an essential tool in the field of education. When implemented successfully, feedback has the potential to significantly affect student and teacher growth. However, instructional feedback frequently goes unimplemented or unvalued, which can potentially lead to a decrease in student performance or the…

Research indicates that teacher performance is a critical focus for school districts, administrators, and teachers. Pre-service teacher preparation, teacher retention, job satisfaction, mentoring, continuous feedback, and onboarding support for new teachers are all factors that influence teacher performance (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond,…

Despite the perspectives of music educators in classroom evaluation processes, the perspectives of Texas administrators using the newest teacher evaluation process, the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS), have yet to be examined. The administrators' perspectives matter because the complexity of the T-TESS process coupled with the…

Educators play a crucial role in student skill development; hence this dissertation explores incentive-driven public policies and understands the effect that educators have on students. The first chapter estimates relative contributions of the subjective (supervisor observations and student surveys) versus objective (value-added) evaluation…

This study addressed researchers call for collecting the perceptions of how Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System implementation and feedback affect prekindergarten teachers' instructional practices and the alignment of the T-TESS instrument to the Texas prekindergarten guidelines because the focus of such research is usually on teachers of…

The purpose of this narrative study was to explore administrator perceptions of their transformational leadership in the classroom learning environment as a domain of T-TESS. Administrators have the responsibility, under T-TESS, to lead and develop leaders who can have a positive impact on the learning environment and student outcomes. T-TESS is a…

Special education in the public-school setting is designed to support students with disabilities by providing them specially designed instruction to meet their unique needs. This cannot be achieved without special education teachers who undergo specialized training to enable students with a disability to reach their maximum potential. Special…

The purpose of this research study was to examine the dynamics that exist among the teacher preparation program (TPP), student achievement, and teacher performance. This study included a review of data collected from archived data derived from the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR)…

The purpose of this case study was to explore the perspectives of T-TESS administrative feedback for teachers in an urban school district. Interviews were conducted with 10 teachers, employed by the district, who provided their experiences with being evaluated with the system and perspectives of feedback from their evaluator. Responses were…

The purpose of this case study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of fairness under the new Texas teacher evaluation system (T-TESS). Using the theoretical framework of procedural justice, the qualitative study measured the teachers' perceptions of fairness utilizing Leventhal's six rules (1976) of representativeness, bias suppression,…

The purpose of this study was to review policies that affect English Learners in Texas public schools. Specifically, the relationship between ESL certification and teacher preparedness to teach English Learners was addressed. In this journal-ready dissertation, the first article contains a review of national and state policies that were designed…

In recent decades, changes to federal and state accountability policy and related teacher evaluation systems occurred in the United States with minimal input from two of the largest groups of stakeholders impacted: principals and teachers. For this case study, I explored principals' and teachers' perceptions of their experiences with the Texas…