News Brief

Using Teacher Evaluation Reform and Professional Development to Support Common Core Assessments

Center for American Progress (02/05/13) Youngs, PeterA report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) reveals that past attempts to enact standards-based education reform have been impeded by teacher evaluation limitations and that the Common Core State Standards draws on the "standard of care" concept, which calls on teachers to continually acquire new knowledge and hone their skills. The report examines new approaches to teacher evaluations and learning, including classroom observation protocols, student surveys, value-added models, and teacher performance assessments. Classroom protocol is the Framework for Teaching and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, which distinguishes among teachers at various levels of proficiency, gives teachers detailed feedback, has documented reliability, and has demonstrated empirical relationships with student learning. The Tripod Student Perception Surveys, on the other hand, ask students for their views on teacher instruction, while teacher value-added models use student achievement data to gauge teacher effectiveness but do not use data on instruction. CAP suggests that districts use school-based instructional coaches in English language arts and mathematics to provide ongoing professional learning opportunities to teachers; ensure the validity and reliability of classroom observation protocols by adopting a standardized approach to training principals and other evaluators and monitoring their ratings; and provide training to principals to ensure that student surveys are administered in a uniform way across schools and classrooms.

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