How Do High-Performing Nations Evaluate Teachers?

By Tim Walker Who decides if a teacher is effective and how is that determination made? School systems across the United States are struggling to answer that question as they try to design and implement teacher evaluation systems that are fair and accurate. It’s no easy task and is not limited to public schools in [...]

Van Roekel Announces Plan to Strengthen Teaching Profession

By Tim Walker National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis Van Roekel today laid out a new action agenda for the nation’s largest organization of educators that will help transform the teaching profession and accelerate student learning. Speaking at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C., Van Roekel detailed three major strategies that will guide the NEA’s [...]

Leading Economist: Gates Value-Added Research Deeply Flawed, Ignores Its Own Data

By Kevin Hart One of the country’s leading economists is warning that a Gates Foundation study on value-added teacher evaluation not only fails to meet key academic standards, but that it dangerously misinterprets its own data. Last month, the Gates Foundation released the first report of the Measures of Effective Teaching project, and the report [...]

Top Education Experts Raise Caution on Teacher Evaluations

By Kevin Hart Evaluating teachers based on students’ standardized test scores may be en vogue, but a panel of America’s leading education experts is warning that the process is badly flawed and is likely to result in misguided personnel decisions that could harm public education. Ten prominent education scholars have drafted a policy letter on [...]

Seattle Creates a New Model of Teacher Accountability

By Dale Folkerts Across Seattle and Washington, and increasingly across the country, the description of the new Seattle public schools contract comes in a single word – “historic.” Despite talks that went lengthy and late for many days, concerted opposition from the Superintendent and the pressures of back-to-school, a district bargaining team agreed with its [...]