Effective teaching practice focused on encouraging deep engagement helps all students learn and succeed. Considerable work by researchers and change agents, encouraged by national organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Research Council, has promoted greater use of evidence-based educational practices, such as…

While researchers have shown great interest in understanding teacher evaluation, little is known about how teachers' actions and interactions surrounding evaluation affect the dual goals of evaluation--accountability and development. Using data collected during a yearlong ethnographic study at three schools (combined with follow-up interviews four…

This exploratory multi-case study investigates the types of teacher performance data principals consider and collect when evaluating teachers. Data come from public school principals (N = 10) in the U.S. state of Michigan and includes: interviews (n = 30), observations (n = 20), and artifacts collected in 2016 and 2017. Additionally, specific…

Purpose: Federal and state policymakers in the USA have sought to better differentiate the performance of K-12 teachers by enacting more rigorous evaluation policies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether these policies are working as intended and explore whether district stressors such as funding, enrollment, and governance are…

Traditional teacher evaluation systems have little to no impact on changing teacher behavior or improving student achievement. Subsequently, studies and reports show the lack of and need for multidimensional teacher evaluation system. This deficiency and need is especially evident in Michigan due to the state's recent legislative mandate that…

The push for accountability in public schooling has extended to the measurement of teacher performance, accelerated by federal efforts through Race to the Top. Currently, a large number of states and districts across the country are computing measures of teacher performance based on the standardized test scores of their students and using them in…

Each year, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) publishes the "State Teacher Policy Yearbook," a comprehensive examination of the state laws, rules and regulations that govern the teaching profession, measured against a realistic set of reform goals. For five years running, the full "Yearbook" compendium…

This article describes the development and initial implementation of the Comprehension and Learning from Text Survey (CoLTS), an instrument designed to assess teachers' specialized knowledge for comprehension instruction in the context of discussion. CoLTS is a paper-and-pencil test that engages teachers in analyzing a text to identify the most…

Until recently, states focused on ensuring the presence of a "highly qualified teacher" in every classroom. Under the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), this title described a teacher holding at least a bachelor's degree and the appropriate state license and…

The Kalamazoo school system has developed for its instructional staff a series of accountability schemes collectively referred to as the Instructional Staff Performance Profiles (ISPP). They presently include performance profiles for teachers, secondary instructional specialists, secondary academic specialists, elementary instructional…

A survey concerning peer observations of non-tenured teachers was administered in the Clarkston Public School District (Michigan). The goal was to obtain opinions about retaining peers to observe non-tenured teachers in the tenure receiving process. Of the 150 principals, tenured teachers, and non-tenured teachers surveyed, 86 responded. The…

This study investigated whether the criterion-related validity coefficient of the Instructional Strategy Usage (ISU) instrument was statistically significant, and investigated factors related to general education teachers' use of instructional strategies that facilitate inclusion of students with moderate and severe impairments in general…

This year-end report represents all of the materials produced in relation to the development and implementation of the Michigan Occupational Competency Assessment Center (MOCAC) during the 1978-79 project year. (The primary objective of MOCAC is to achieve the standardization of the methods, techniques, and criteria used to assess the occupational…