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Teacher quality is the most important in-school factor influencing student learning and achievement. Research shows that students with high-performing teachers can progress three times as fast as students with low-performing teachers and each student deserves access to highly effective teachers in every subject. In turn, all teachers deserve a fair and accurate assessment of their skills, how they perform in the classroom, and how they can improve. Teacher effectiveness is dependent on accurate and fair evaluations, based on multiple measures, including—but not solely based around—their students' performance in the subjects they teach.
Teachers should be evaluated based on their performance in their own subject area using a range of criteria, including observations, peer reviews, parental or student input, and analysis of agreed-on student learning evidence. In this episode, we discuss effective teacher evaluation that produce results that truly benefit students, schools, and educators. You'll hear from
- Mike Blakeslee, deputy executive director and chief operating officer of the National Association for Music Education, a whole child partner organization and member of ASCD’s College, Career, and Citizenship Readiness Coalition;
- Bryan Goodwin, vice president of communications at McREL, based in Denver, Colorado, and coauthor of "Use Caution with Value-Added Measures" in the November 2012 issue of ASCD's Educational Leadership; and
- Cindy Weber, superintendent of Durand Area Schools in Durand, Michigan, and author of "The Balancing Acts of Teacher Evaluation," also in this month's Educational Leadership.
If the ultimate goal of teacher evaluation is to improve student performance, what should evaluators be looking for?