A new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) examines the policy landscape of teacher and principal evaluations, as well as various states’ successes in using evaluations to inform teacher practice and administrative decisions. As of 2015, twenty-seven states require annual evaluations for all teachers, and forty-five require Read more
The National Association of State Boards of Education’s fall issue of its journal, The State Education Standard explores the many ways policymakers can ensure that those who teach and lead our children in public schools are better prepared and better supported to do their jobs well. Research shows that teacher Read more
GTL Center’s latest Professional Learning Module is Supporting Principals Using Teacher Effectiveness Data (September 2015). It discusses practical strategies principals and district leaders can use to make hiring, staffing, teacher leadership, and professional development decisions. Teacher effectiveness data can help school and district leaders to make informed and evidence-based talent Read more
Last year, with much fanfare, the Obama administration declared that it would tackle the tricky issue of equitable teacher distribution, calling on states to revise their plans for making sure that high-poverty schools get their fair share of qualified educators. Now most states have answered the call, rewriting plans that Read more
In 2016-17, the Opportunity Culture initiative included more than 110 schools, 1250 teachers, and 34,000 students in 17 sites across 7 states. According to the Public Impact website, Opportunity Culture schools are defined by the following characteristics: Teachers lead the way. Each Opportunity Culture school creates a team of teachers Read more
When teachers enter the profession during a recession, they’re more effective at boosting student test scores in math, a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds. Recession-era teachers didn’t have as much of an effect on student reading scores. The study considers data for 33,000 fourth Read more
Joe Ashby was a a multi-classroom leader (MCL) at Buena Vista Enhanced Option Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee before finishing his doctorate and moving on to be a principal in California. He recently wrote an article about that experience for Real Clear Education, and he focused on the flexibility and Read more
Teachers need helpful feedback and support to improve their instruction and own their professional growth. Over the past four years, 30 states have changed how they evaluate teachers, and another 14 states are slated to do so in the next two years. As many of those states are learning, however, Read more
Urban Teacher Residency United has released a new report titled Clinically Oriented Teacher Preparation. This report examines how preparation programs around the country are adopting core components of a residency model to innovate and improve teacher education through robust clinical experiences. A brief overview: Clinically Oriented Teacher Preparation (COTP) shares Read more
TNTP has spent the last two years trying to answer the question, “Do we know how to help teachers get better?” Their new report,The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development, shares what they found. The Mirage examines how three large public school districts and one Read more
The Schools of Character program has provided hundreds of schools with a framework and professional feedback that has improved their school culture and climate. In a more supportive environment, students thrive and schools see increased academic achievement and decreased behavioral issues. Every school can and should become a school of Read more
Professors Matthew Kraft and John Papay discuss research showing that the school contexts in which teachers work have a profound influence on their effectiveness. Below are excerpts from their article: An emerging body of research now shows that the contexts in which teachers work profoundly shape teachers’ job decisions and Read more
One of education’s big problems is that the collective wisdom, insights, observations and experience of educators are pretty much squandered. That is to say, millions of educators have figured out important things about what and how to teach under different kinds of conditions — but no system exists for them Read more
Two new research studies that evaluated vast amounts of data both concluded that teachers continue to improve over the course of their careers. The prevailing wisdom from previous research, which many teachers and teachers unions have disputed, said that teachers improved in their first several years of teaching, but then Read more
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has offered a national certification for interested teachers since the late 1980s. There are currently 110,000 National Board certified teachers across the U.S. This blog wrote about changes the NBPTS made to its certification process to incentivize more teachers to become board-certified. Read more
State and district leaders need more than high-quality measures of teacher effectiveness to make their evaluation policies stick. They also need communications and engagement strategies, ongoing professional learning and support opportunities for teachers, and a plan to combine and use evaluation data to inform decisions at the school, district and Read more