Using Multiple Evaluation Measures to Improve Teacher Effectiveness: State Strategies from Round 2 of No Child Left Behind Act Waivers
Author: Partee, Glenda L.
Date: 2012-12-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Evidence,Evaluation Methods,Grants,Educational Change,Human Capital,Teacher Evaluation,Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,Elementary Secondary Education,Compliance (Legal),Competition,Academic Standards,State Standards,Teaching Methods,Academic Achievement,Educational Indicators

Research shows that an effective teacher is key to student success. But determining what evidence best reflects teacher effectiveness and how this information can be used to improve the quality of teaching are among the significant issues facing public education today. The impetus for meaningful teacher evaluation reform from many sectors set the stage for the major changes the nation is now witnessing in the direction and scope of teacher performance evaluation. Dynamic reforms effecting teacher evaluation and support are now happening in states and school districts. These reforms are inspired in part by the U.S. Department of Education's competitive grant programs, including Race to the Top, which require new standards and assessments in public schools, data systems capable of measuring student growth, and human capital systems designed to recruit, develop, and retain effective teachers. This effort is matched by recent priorities of the Teacher Incentive Fund supporting district-wide evaluation systems that reward teacher success. The Education Department's decision to provide waivers from key provisions of or flexibility within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--also known as No Child Left Behind--offers a further boost and a framework for states to make these long overdue reforms in a coherent way. Many states are now actively building or implementing educator workforce systems with meaningful evaluation and support systems that are linked to improvements in classroom practices and student achievement. The focus of this report is on one piece of this very large set of transformations: the multiple measures and multiple methods used in new teacher evaluation systems, including the weighting of these measures, to determine a composite score of teacher effectiveness. The data source for this analysis is the plans of 23 second-round waiver applicants approved by the U.S. Department of Education as of August 2012. These include the plans received and approved for Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. The review of these various reform plans indicates that the design and implementation of new systems of evaluation and support are truly works in progress. It's clear that this work will be an iterative process and that it should be open to review and adjustment as new research and the results of pilot implementations surface. For now, the state efforts and the waiver process both represent a rich laboratory of exploration and reform that bears watching for lessons to be learned, as well as for necessary corrections to be made. A few findings have already emerged from this initial review. They include the following: (1) This is hard work that is being approached differently by states while they implement multiple reforms; (2) Measures used to assess educator effectiveness are diverse and cannot be captured by only one or two indicators; (3) States are expanding the measures used to determine teacher effectiveness for nontested grades and subjects; (4) Systems have diverse purposes; and (5) Successful systems need an infrastructure of support. Policy recommendations are offered. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table, and 73 endnotes.)