There's a lot of conversation in the early childhood community on evaluating teachers to improve their performance. Raising the quality of early care and education is a priority for policymakers and practitioners on local, state, and federal levels. As a result, much attention is being focused on early childhood educators to ensure that they do a…

The purpose of this interview study, conducted with 12 primary music teachers in Singapore, was to determine whether peer observation is viewed as a learning approach that may contribute to professional growth. We found that both specialist and generalist music teachers highly valued peer observation and were optimistic about the use of…

A focus on improving teacher quality and student achievement led many states to implement teacher effectiveness systems. The Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching was adapted by Kentucky as the Teacher Professional Growth and Effectiveness System (TPGES). This study examined educator viewpoints concerning the impact of TPGES on improving…

Research shows that teachers affect student learning more than any other factor. The Educator Effectiveness Research Alliance, a collaborative partnership of educators, policymakers, and researchers, seeks to improve educator quality through research and analytic technical support. Initially focused on Texas, the alliance has expanded to include…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA--the main federal education law) was signed into law at the end of 2015, but schools and districts have until the 2017-2018 school year to begin implementing their plans to comply with it. ESSA represents a substantial shift from prior law in how it addresses teacher professional growth and evaluation, and as…

This study examined the relationship between teacher demographic characteristics (race/ethnicity, age, and gender) and teacher summative performance evaluation ratings in a large urban district over three school years--2012/13-2014/15. In all three years a disproportionately large percentage of Black teachers, teachers age 50 and older, and male…

Today's teachers and administrators are caught in a squeeze of conflicting demands. And evaluation guru Charlotte Danielson fears that teacher evaluation, as it's often implemented today, is making things worse. In schools where teacher evaluation has become simply a matter of numbers, ratings, and rankings, it may be undermining the very…

In 2013, a team of experts funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wrapped up a three year, $45 million project to identify Measures of Effective Teaching (MET)--an effort to determine whether it's possible to put numbers on something as complex as teaching. After reviewing 20,000 classroom videos, crunching data from thousands of student…

This study aims to improve the competence of school teachers in the Province of North Sumatra, Indonesia, through collaboration between the Universitas Negeri Medan and local governments. It introduced a training program model to school teachers in 33 regencies and cities, comprising activities as agreed in a Memorandum of Understanding. The…

Teaching observations are commonly used among educators to document and improve teaching effectiveness. Unfortunately, the necessary protocols and supporting infrastructure are not consistently available for faculty who teach online. This paper presents a brief literature review and reflective narratives of educators representing online education…

District- and state-level efforts to remake teacher evaluation systems are among the most substantial and widely adopted reforms that U.S. public schools have experienced in decades. Research on these next generation of evaluation systems has focused overwhelmingly on policy goals, program designs, and performance measures. However, still very…

In this study, we investigated the factor structure underlying the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement used across the nation for increased teacher-level accountability purposes. We found evidence of poor fit based on the factor structure posited and found large correlations among dimensions, suggesting one-to-two factors with one…

While many factors have been identified as influencing student academic performance, previous studies consistently determined effective teaching as the most significant factor, within the control of educators, leading to improved student achievement. Nonetheless, educational experts, statisticians, and policy-makers alike acknowledged the…

Value-added models try to separate the contribution of individual teachers or schools to students' learning growth measured by standardized test scores. There is a policy trend to use value-added modeling to evaluate teachers because of its face validity and superficial objectiveness. This article investigates the potential long term consequences…

Beginning with the 2010-2011 school year the North Carolina State Board of Education (SBE) mandated the use of the North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Process (Evaluation Process) for use in all public school systems in the state to conduct teacher observations and evaluations. The Evaluation Process replaced the Teacher Performance Appraisal…