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Measurement makeover

By Learning Forward
December 2011
Vol. 32 No. 6
Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Schools had a concern. A review in 2008 of teacher evaluations in the district found that more than 99% of the 12,000 teachers were rated satisfactory or outstanding, and nearly half of high school teachers received perfect scores. While Hillsborough is a high-performing district and has several high schools on Newsweek’s 2010 list of the nation’s best, many in the district agreed the evaluations must be misleading — but there was no way to know exactly how the ratings matched up to student learning. And teachers and administrators alike didn’t know exactly how to describe what the evaluations were supposed to do: What does exceptional teaching look like? Teachers were laboring under an unequal system of evaluation from school to school.

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Authors

Valerie von Frank

Valerie von Frank ([email protected]) is an education writer and editor of Learning Forward’s books. 

References

Goe, L. & Croft, A. (2009, March). Methods of evaluating teacher effectiveness: Research-to-practice brief. Washington, DC: National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality.

Hillsborough County Public Schools. (n.d.). Leading change in Hillsborough County Public Schools. Tampa, FL: Author. Available at https://communication.sdhc.k12.fl.us/eethome/casestudies. 

Measures of Effective Teaching Project. (2010, December). Learning about teaching: Initial findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project. Seattle, WA: Author. 

McCaffrey, D.F., Lockwood, J.R., Koretz, D.M., & Hamilton, L.S. (2003). Evaluating value-added models for teacher accountability. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Available online at www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG158.pdf. 

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. (2011). Student learning, student achievement: How do teachers measure up? Arlington, VA: Author.

Rockoff, J.E. & Speroni, C. (2011, October). Subjective and objective evaluations of teacher effectiveness: Evidence from New York City. Labour Economics, 18(5), 687-696.

Weisberg, D., Sexton, S., Mulhern, J., & Keeling, D. (2009). The widget effect. Santa Cruz, CA: The New Teacher Project.

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Learning Forward is the only professional association devoted exclusively to those who work in educator professional development. We help our members plan, implement, and measure high-quality professional learning so they can achieve success with their systems, schools, and students.

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