The well-being and mental health of kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) public school teachers has been a topic of national concern during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In 2021 and 2022, teachers were twice as likely to report experiencing frequent job-related stress and difficulty coping with their job-related stress than the…

Over both recent years and many decades, California districts have produced a range of substantively different approaches to teacher evaluation, demonstrating both the potential for district-level action generally and specific design options. In this report, the authors focus on teacher evaluation programs and further focus on the features of…

Education policy often requires balancing the professional interests of adult employees with the educational needs and rights of students. Nearly everyone agrees, for example, that children deserve an education that prepares them for success in college and life, and that teachers should be afforded reasonable job protections. Yet these values and…

Better teacher evaluation should lead to better instruction and improved outcomes for students, but more accurate classification of teachers requires better information than is now available. Because existing measures of performance are incomplete and imperfect, measured performance does not always reflect true performance. Teachers who are truly…

As new performance-management-related policies go from idea to implementation, policy makers and education leaders will be called upon to flesh-out what are still broad principles in many areas. This represents a significant inflection point for the teaching profession and the management of public school systems. Early decisions will determine…

This brief reviews the publicly available principal assessments and points superintendents and policy makers toward strong instruments to measure principal performance. Specifically, the measures included in this review are expressly intended to evaluate principal performance and have varying degrees of publicly available evidence of psychometric…

Teacher evaluation has emerged as a major focus for reform at the highest levels of education policymaking, and for good reason. Most evaluations are based on scant evidence of actual effectiveness, produce inflated ratings, and provide teachers with little useful feedback. This paper offers policymakers and practitioners important "lessons…

The author of this article, an education attorney, begins by describing a case where, a school superintendent of personnel for a rural school district in Michigan had just received a performance evaluation with high marks and a new three-year contract. Two months later the school board called him into a closed session and presented him with…

Traditionally, policymakers have attempted to improve the quality of the teaching force by raising minimum credentials for entering teachers. Recent research, however, suggests that such paper qualifications have little predictive power in identifying effective teachers. The authors propose federal support to help states measure the effectiveness…

Within any college and university, it is in the academic department where most of the work is accomplished in educating students and carrying out the institution's academic mission. Department chairs are at the front lines of policy implementation. At a recent meeting members of [New England Resource Center for Higher Education's] NERCHE's…

Unless school boards link member training and school improvement plans to performance evaluations for themselves and their schools, the exercise might not be worth the time and effort. Board evaluation should focus on three general areas: board dynamics, policy process, and educational quality. Three evaluation approaches should be considered:…

This document contains validated activities and competencies needed by information professionals working as records and information managers. The activities of information professionals are listed by function: records and information program management; systems analysis; records center administration; general administration; planning; financial…

This document contains validated activities and competencies needed by information professionals working in an information service company. The activities and competencies are organized according to the functions which information professionals in such companies perform: project management; reference/analysis of secondary data; research, analysis,…

Competent performance is described in terms of the competency to be performed and a set of standards applied to that performance that covers both routine and nonroutine skills. The competency-based approach brings flexibility to a training and education system. It allows the development of a continuum of competence statements from basic to…

This paper provides an overview of traditional administrator evaluation and compensation approaches based on control in three areas: certification, position, and time. Recent research suggests that compensation based solely on acquiring proper academic requirements, responsible positions, or additional experience is unlikely to increase school…