In the last few years, all but a few U.S. states have rushed to enact tougher teacher evaluation systems. Spurred by the incentives offered by two federal education initiatives--Race to the Top and the ESEA Flexibility Program--these states have designed teacher evaluation systems designed to "remove ineffective tenured and untenured…

Public schools failing to meet accountability standards have been shut down, taken over by charter organizations, or undergone reconstitution. This article challenges deficit views of students as passive and complacent in a schooling context dictated by accountability sanctions. Drawing from counterpublic theory, it describes a case study that…

This quantitative study investigated the relationship between teacher dispositions, subject content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and reasons that school principals recommend non-renewal of teachers' contracts. Nearly 2,000 school principals in 13 states completed an emailed survey. In deciding whether to non-renew a teacher contract,…

This report describes the value-added models used as part of teacher evaluation systems in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and in eligible DC charter schools participating in "Race to the Top." The authors estimated: (1) teacher effectiveness in DCPS and eligible DC charter schools during the 2011-2012 school year; and (2)…