Chicago Teacher Evaluation Pilot Shows Promise for Fairly, Accurately Evaluating Teachers

More progress on coming up with a fair teacher evaluation system:

 

As schools across the country face mounting state and federal pressure to overhaul teacher evaluation, a pilot initiative in Chicago provides evidence that principals are able to assess teachers accurately on practices that drive student learning, according to a new study from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

 

Rethinking Teacher Evaluation in Chicago found that teachers who received the highest ratings from principals on classroom observations were also the teachers whose students showed the greatest learning gains. This suggests that principals were able to distinguish between strong and weak teaching and that the observation tool used in the Chicago pilot, the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching, captured factors that matter for student learning.

 

These findings have important policy implications for states and districts across the country working to implement evaluation systems that include classroom observations. Evaluations that rely on classroom observations provide teachers with a common definition of effective teaching and feedback on how they stack up on those criteria. They also can serve as the primary source of information on teacher quality in grade levels and subjects that are not tested.

 

…The report was funded by the Joyce Foundation. A link to the full report is available at www.ccsr.uchicago.edu. 

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November 15, 2011

 

Chicago Teacher Evaluation Pilot Shows Promise

for Fairly, Accurately Evaluating Teachers