Several Race to the Top grantees are considering the development of video libraries as one element of their larger teacher and leader effectiveness reforms. Video libraries promise to offer "real world" examples of teaching practice that can be used for a wide range of purposes: providing teachers with concrete evidence of excellent…

This guide is intended to help the reader understand: the value of teacher induction programs designed to orient, support, train, and assess novice teachers; what makes induction programs work; the essential ingredients of an effective induction program; and how to get started improving efforts to support and assess novice teachers. Six sections…

Teacher evaluation can be used as a tool in school improvement. Principal inconstancy, insufficient time and resources, and lack of evaluating skills are some difficulties in teacher evalution. The use of evaluation as a means of professional development is discussed. (DF)

The purpose of this book is to help practitioners and policy makers understand how important it is to assist beginning teachers, and what it involves in terms of policy, procedures, pitfalls, personnel, price in time and money, and prospects. The book is divided into the following chapters: (1) "Beginning Teacher Assistance Programs: An…

Teachers and administrators from three rural impoverished school districts in South Carolina, together with consultants and the principal investigator from Clemson University, identified seven requisite qualities of teachers: knowledge, instructional management, classroom management, communications skills, planning ability, professional qualities,…

Addressing professional and popular concern about identifying and adequately rewarding excellent teachers, the authors describe a proposal for selecting master/mentor teachers and utilizing them in demonstration schools. There are six specific elements that should make any master teacher proposal realistic and educationally and economically…

The general purpose of the Arizona career ladder pilot project is to establish a social intervention program which will result in improvement of the professional development and effectiveness of teachers and enhance student learning. This document is a comprehensive report to the Arizona state legislature on the development and progress to date of…

This paper presents the results of a study on faculty workload undertaken by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) as part of its ongoing interest in issues of cost and productivity in higher education. The survey not only included responses from SHEEO members in the 50 states, but also from multi-institutional system governing…

In 1979, Act 187, known now as the Educator Improvement Act, was mandated by the legislature of the State of South Carolina. One tenet of Act 187 was the establishment of an Educator Improvement Task Force to develop an instrument which could effectively measure minimal teaching competencies. To help in the content and design of the instrument,…

This report describes the activities and research directions taken during the second year of an anticipated four-school-year study that attempts to identify effective instructional practices in Chapter 1 junior high schools in Los Angeles (California). The report is divided into four sections. Section 1 reviews the purposes of the study and…