Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, whole-school reforms will continue to be a prominent strategy for improving student outcomes in low-performing schools. As reform models have proliferated, so has research evaluating the impact in reform schools. However, previous evaluations have rarely examined unintended spillover effects in nonreform…

Background: Many studies have shown that ambitious, "student centered" approaches to STEM instruction benefit K-12 student learning. However, relatively little research has systematically investigated the learning processes that support teachers to skillfully enact these challenging pedagogies. In this study, we used a mixed-methods,…

Many prior studies have explored average differences in initial levels of teaching effectiveness among graduates from different teacher preparation programs (TPPs) and the features of preparation that predict these differences. We focus on another important dimension of effectiveness--how graduates from different TPPs improve over time. Examining…

Previous reports suggest that administrators rarely dismiss low-performing teachers despite the changing policy landscape allowing them to do so. This brief uses survey data from Tennessee to investigate the underlying reasons explaining administrators' decisions to retain low-performing teachers. The presented analysis suggests that…

Just a few years ago, tenure appeared low on the reform list for state policy makers and district administrators, viewed as too hot an issue politically to challenge. But it was front and center in the 2014 landmark "Vergara v. California" lawsuit, which challenged teacher tenure and related policies. Yet whether to grant tenure or not…

Research shows that effective teachers are one of the most important in-school contributors to student learning. To improve low-income minority students' access to effective teaching, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching (IP) initiative in the 2009-2010 school year. The program was…

In 2018, The RAND Corporation and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) published an evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching (IP) initiative, which was designed to improve achievement among low-income minority (LIM) students. The initiative provided support for several reforms that…

This report offers state leaders key areas for action to continue progress in implementing evaluation systems, even as federal policies on teacher evaluation relax state requirements. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) offers its current best thinking for how state agencies can make the smartest use of funds, time and partners to refine…

On November 19, 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would invest $290 million to support effective teaching as a means to ensure all students receive the education they need to succeed in high school and beyond. The foundation made six-year grants to support four Intensive Partnership for Effective Teaching (IP) sites…

The answer to the question, Can evaluation improve teaching? is a qualified yes. Teacher evaluation has changed and the role of the principal has changed as well; the focus now is on evidence, not merely good judgment. With the right tools, systems, and support, it should be possible to help improve teaching performance and student learning…

During the spring and summer of 2012, the Tennessee Department of Education trained about 200 Common Core Coaches who then went on to facilitate summer trainings for thousands of the state's third through eighth grade math teachers. The following summer, the training sessions reached nearly 30,000 teachers across the state, covering math, English…

In the summer of 2012, thousands of teachers across the United States attended several days of professional development workshops. The workshops, which focused on the Common Core State Standards, were part of a Tennessee Department of Education initiative in teacher leadership. The department recruited and trained 200 highly-effective teachers to…

This report highlights 10 of the most advanced and talked-about teacher evaluation systems nationally: Delaware; Rhode Island; Tennessee; Hillsborough County, Florida; Houston, Texas; New Haven, Connecticut; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC (referred to throughout just as Washington); Achievement First (a charter management organization,…

In a private room at the back of a busy restaurant just outside of Tampa, Florida, drinks and appetizers went unnoticed as 12 diners sat around one large table and engaged in multiple rapid-fire conversations about professional learning. On one side of each conversation were representatives of Memphis (Tennessee) City Schools. The district was in…

One of the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act that has gained prominence as a policy focus only in the last several years is the requirement that poor and minority children be served by highly qualified teachers to no less a degree than other, more affluent children. Under the Obama administration, the focus on "highly qualified"…