School districts and states across the Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic Region and the country as a whole have been modifying their teacher evaluation systems to identify more effective and less effective teachers and provide better feedback to improve instructional practice. The new systems typically include components related to…

Observation measures of instructional quality tend to fall into two broad categories--those for use across subject areas and those intended for use in specific subject areas. The move toward content-specific measures is a result of research suggesting that effective teaching looks different across subject areas and that both content knowledge and…

School administrators served as subjects to determine the effectiveness of teacher evaluation procedures. Examination of teacher's lesson plan had no effect on teacher assessment. However, prior assessment of lesson plan via an evaluation instrument improved effectiveness of evaluation of teacher's task sequencing skills, subject knowledge, and…

The manual describes the differences between low-inference observation and rating scales when evaluating teachers. Procedures for observing are set forth. The body of the manual defines and exemplifies the 115 items used on the observation instrument as well as the use of two other instruments used before and after the observation, i.e., the…

This paper describes attempts to evaluate whether teachers who had participated in a staff development program could apply what they had learned in a controlled, specific situation significantly better than teachers who had not had the training. The program under evaluation provided training in peer supervision and evaluation. Test results…