The requirements for the quality of the teacher's pedagogical work and its assessment are constantly increasing. The paper focused on knowledge related to teacher competence. It resulted from research activities in several scientific research projects (e.g. the Slovak Research and Development Agency, Evaluation of Teacher Competencies),…

Decisions about hiring are never easy, especially in education. Sharpwood Elementary School has an open teaching position and the principal is charged with hiring the best candidate. The principal knows that a diverse teaching staff benefits all stakeholders in a school, especially students, and he wants to honor that expectation. The staff really…

The demand for assessments of competencies that require complex human interaction is steadily growing as we move toward a focus on twenty-first century skills. As assessment designers aim to address this demand, we argue for the importance of a common language to understand and attend to the key challenges implicated in designing task situations…

Quality professional development (PD) can be a great benefit to teachers who need help with classroom management implementation. PD programs have better outcomes when there is follow-up after skill instruction. Providing PD within a multitiered support (MTS) framework can make PD delivery more efficient for schools. We describe an MTS-PD program…

Classroom observations and the feedback they generate have great potential to support educator development, especially when compared with other components of teacher evaluation systems. Challenges to observation include: (1) The dual foci of teacher evaluation (accountability and development) cannot be addressed simultaneously; (2) Excellent…

In 2007, Mexico's Federal Government, through the Public Education Secretariat, started a project with the participation of the states' education authorities in order to optimize teaching and the management of the quality of schools. This project was carried out as a mean to solve the decades of falling behind that the quality of education in…

This report summaries the Professional Pathways for Teachers (PPfT) appraisal scores and teachers' perceptions of the appraisal system. The PPfT appraisal system was developed and refined during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years. The 2016-2017 school the appraisal system was implemented district-wide. The 2016-2017 appraisal scores will…

This case provides principals and principal licensure candidates an opportunity to delve into the nuances of supervising teachers in content areas, which may be unfamiliar, and to explore strategies for increasing knowledge about the structures and emphases of the "Common Core State Standards" (CCSS). The case presents issues related to…

This report presents a survey tool, developed by REL Central at Marzano Research, designed to gather information from teachers about their perceptions of and responses to evaluator feedback. District or state administrators can use this survey to systematically collect teacher perceptions on five key aspects of evaluation feedback: (1) feedback…

Imagine a school with no principal and with a leadership structure that holds teachers accountable for the learning of all students. About 50 such teacher-led schools currently operate across the United States, and this article tells the story of one of them. The Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy (MSLA) in Denver, Colorado, serves about…

Educator Excellence Innovation Program (EEIP) is a Texas Education Agency (TEA) grant program that funds innovation in teacher supports and leadership opportunities. This report describes feedback from teachers at the six EEIP schools and summarizes implementation in the third year of the program.

In the era of teacher evaluation and effectiveness, assessment tools that identify and monitor educators' instruction and behavioral management practices are in high demand. The Classroom Strategies Scale (CSS) Observer Form is a multidimensional teacher progress monitoring tool designed to assess teachers' usage of instructional and behavioral…

The Alhambra district, along with 11 other districts in Maricopa County, have forged an alliance to implement a performance-based evaluation system that supports teachers in attaining, maintaining, and enhancing core competencies aligned to a common vision of instructional improvement. At the heart of the system is the Learning Observation…

This commentary on the article titled "Examining the Internal Structure Evidence for the Performance Assessment for California Teachers: A Validation Study of the Elementary Literacy Teaching Event for Tier 1 Teacher Licensure" provides an overview of Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), its relationship to edTPA and…

The practice of teaching a foreign language in primary schools in Italy was first officially provided for by a decree in 1985, but it was only in 1991 that the figure of the Foreign Language (FL) teacher was actually defined. The issue at that stage was how to select and train the prospective L2 teachers, and so in-service courses were organised…