Northwest Regional Comprehensive Center

The Center for American Progress has released a new report examining how we can accurately and effectively evaluate teacher performance to improve the quality of teaching.

The National Education Policy Center has released a brief reviewing credible research exploring: the feasibility of combining formative assessment (a basis for professional growth) and summative assessment (a basis for high-stakes decisions like dismissal); the various tools that might be used to gather evidence of teacher effectiveness; and the various stakeholders who might play a role in a teacher assessment system. It also offers a brief overview of successful exemplars.

New Leaders for New Schools published a white paper which includes recommendations for policymakers at all levels of government to support a new approach to principal evaluation. They focus in particular on the development of policies that:

• Balance accountability for student and teacher outcomes with professional supports from principals
• Reduce conflicting layers of accountability, thus ensuring alignment between federal, state, and local accountability for individual schools and principals

The Economic Policy Institute's brief addressing the idea of measuring teachers' effectiveness largely by student test scores will lead to improved student achievement is now available. The brief points out that if new laws or policies specifically require that teachers be fired if their students’ test scores do not rise by a certain amount, then more teachers might well be terminated than is now the case.