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Saturday, December 4, 2010

Teacher Evaluations May Get a Video Assist - NYTimes.com

Teacher Evaluations May Get a Video Assist - NYTimes.com

Teacher Ratings Get New Look, Pushed by a Rich Watcher

Travis Dove for The New York Times

Lindsey Cozat, a technology teacher at Croft Community School in Charlotte, N.C., set up a classroom recording device.

PRINCETON, N.J. — In most American schools, teachers are evaluated by principals or other administrators who drop in for occasional classroom visits and fill out forms to rate their performance.

Travis Dove for The New York Times

The aim is to capture what happens in the classroom of a fifth-grade teacher, Damien Kingsberry, and to evaluate him.

The result? More than 9 out of 10 teachers get top marks, according to a prominent study last year by the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group focusing on improving teacher quality.

Now Bill Gates, who in recent years has turned his attention and considerable fortune to improving American education, is investing $335 million through his foundation to overhaul the personnel departments of several big school