Large numbers of children of low income families in the United States arrive at kindergarten already far behind their more affluent peers on measures of school readiness. In the absence of any federal preschool policy and amidst alarm about this growing divide, universal prekindergarten (UPK) programs have been launched around the United States,…

A central part of education reform today is the wide-ranging and unprecedented effort to either revamp existing teacher evaluation systems or develop and implement entirely new systems. High-quality teacher evaluation systems are seen as one lever for improving the teacher workforce and hence the outcomes of students, including high school…

Since the first child care Quality Rating System (QRS) was implemented in Oklahoma 11 years ago (in 1998), 16 additional statewide systems have been launched and numerous states are piloting or developing a QRS (Zaslow, Tout, & Martinez-Beck, forthcoming). As QRS stakeholders across the nation look ahead to the next decade, it is important to take…

This chapter considers the design of incentive pay systems for teachers and principals and the challenges facing policy makers who seek to design them. The author argues that policy makers must direct the efforts of teachers and principals toward schools' mission--the acquisition of skills and knowledge among children--and must find ways to link…

Measures of quality are now in widespread use across states as part of quality improvement initiatives. For example, many states are currently using global measures of quality that were first developed for research and practice purposes (such as the Environmental Rating Scales) in their Quality Rating Systems (QRSs). Although global quality…

Recommendations for deriving and using student ratings of college teachers are presented. General recommendations for teacher evaluation include: (1) using multiple sources of data about a faculty member; (2) using student ratings as one aspect; and (3) determining the purpose of the ratings before they are collected. Ten specific recommendations…