The role of teacher evaluation is among the most contentious issues in education today. Even when there is general agreement that teachers' performance should be assessed in some way, there is vigorous disagreement about how those assessments should be conducted and how the results should be used. If the ultimate goal of teacher evaluation is to improve student performance, what should evaluators be looking for? And if teachers fail to measure up to whatever standards have been set, what should the consequences be?
The November 2012 issue of Educational Leadership considers the purposes of evaluations and how to make them more beneficial to teachers. Articles include:
- "Perspectives: Teachers Under the Looking Glass" by Marge Scherer
Creating an excellent teacher evaluation system is one of the more complex efforts of our times. - "Keeping Improvement in Mind" by Paul Mielke and Tony Frontier
Involving teachers in their own evaluation keeps the focus on student learning. - "The Two Purposes of Teacher Evaluation" by Robert J. Marzano
One purpose is measurement; the other is improvement. How do