A clear and comprehensive guide to evaluating and supporting instructional coaches and coaching programs, including how to recruit, hire, and retain effective coaches. With sound practices in place to evaluate coaching programs, instructional coaches will become better partners, teachers will become better mentors, and students will become better…

As states are continuing to refine teacher evaluation models, there are opportunities for student learning in the arts to be documented and connected with teacher evaluation. The Tennessee Portfolio of Student Growth in the Arts ("the Portfolio") has provided a new perspective on documenting the relationship between student growth and…

Student ratings are not leaving today or anytime soon. However, as the title of this article indicates, student ratings are not the only option to provide evidence in the evaluation of teaching. There is a broad range of alternatives to consider beyond student ratings in the delicate decision-making processes to improve teaching and determine the…

Effective instructor evaluation is complex and requires the use of multiple measures--formal and informal, traditional and authentic--as part of a balanced evaluation system. The student voice, a critical element of that balanced system, is appropriately complemented by instructor self-assessment and the reasoned judgments of other relevant…

This is the first book to gather and address what we have learned about the impacts and challenges of data-intensive teacher evaluation systems--a defining characteristic of the current education policy landscape. Expert researchers and practitioners speak to what we know (and what remains to be known) about evaluation measures themselves, the…

This discussion guide is part of a larger practice guide designed to help state education agencies (SEAs) define measurement goals, select college and career readiness measures and indicators designed to support those goals, and use the data gathered with those measures and indicators to make informed decisions about college and career readiness…

This "Rating a Teacher Observation Tool" identifies five simple questions and provides an easy-to-use scorecard to help policymakers decide whether an observation framework is likely to produce fair and accurate results. The five questions are: (1) Do the criteria and tools cover the classroom performance areas most connected to student outcomes?…

This book compiles several essays about effective evaluation of teaching. Contents of this publication include: (1) Conducting Research on Student Evaluations of Teaching (William E. Addison and Jeffrey R. Stowell); (2) Choosing an Instrument for Student Evaluation of Instruction (Jared W. Keeley); (3) Formative Teaching Evaluations: Is Student…

Student evaluations of teacher performance are generally taken as an important measure of teaching effectiveness. However, they often misrepresent classroom realities. The ratings on the forms frequently reflect students' emotional experiences in their courses rather than pedagogy or the amount of learning. Finally, since education is necessarily…

This article describes a research-driven heuristic for the scholarly evaluation of teaching and learning interventions, which is systematic, collaborative, and discipline focused. We offer this guide to educational developers and other instructional support staff who are tracking the impact of interventions in teaching and learning with academic…

This book offers an ambitious new system for evaluating, compensating, and providing professional development for school teachers and administrators. In this realigned system, new forms of accountability are introduced, but they go hand in hand with new rewards and access to enhanced forms of professional development to help educators succeed in…

Like the other books in the A-Z series, this book provides practical tools and activities that can be used immediately to improve your practice. This guide offers specific strategies that will help you become a more effective principal. There are 26 chapters in this book, one for each letter of the alphabet. Contents include: (1) Achievement is…

This report provides guidance on conducting tenure evaluations that are thoughtful and just. Practical suggestions for the tenure evaluation process fall into four themes. The first is that of the need for clarity in standards and procedures for evaluation. Institutions should ensure that their stated criteria for tenure match the criteria that,…

A survey of over 200 English comprehensive schools revealed that nearly half the schools had either implemented or were about to implement staff appraisal schemes. The survey emphasizes the definitional problem of appraisal; some styles of appraisal were the same as staff development. (MLF)

Discusses how issues involved in establishing the type of master teacher evaluation system called for in Tennessee's Comprehensive Education Reform Act apply to reading specialists: arbitrary selection of measures and criteria for assessing teacher effectiveness; utilization of alternative approaches including self-, student, and observer…