The Teacher/Principal Evaluation System will be test piloted in four school districts in PA.

Great teachers and education leaders are critical to advancing student learning.

In fact, research has demonstrated that an effective teacher is the single most important factor impacting student achievement.  Until now, there has been little data correlating teacher practices in the classroom with student achievement.

All students deserve to be educated by effective teachers and good schools require exceptional leaders. To achieve this goal requires a quality evaluation system that both recognizes exceptional educators, helps those in need of improvement, and helps better understand what practices drive student achievement.  (Here is a research brief based on this project.) (Here is an article concerning a Foundation-sponsored forum discussing teacher effectiveness.)

Team PA is leading a statewide effort to develop and pilot a new teacher and principal evaluation system with the guidance of a steering committee representative of multiple constituencies including educators, school districts, union representatives, post-secondary, business and government.

This effort was begun through the generous financial support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Our work has caught the attention of the State Legislature, which has introduced bills concerning this initiative. Read more on how legislation would drastically alter the antiquated teacher evaluation system in Pennsylvania.

This work has led to a second phase pilot launched in October of 2011 which will incorporate 6,600 teachers and more than 100 school districts.  The first evaluation pilot project resulted in the development of teacher and principal evaluation tools and has been piloted in four PA school systems including Allentown, Cornell, and Mohawk school districts and Northwest Tri-Community IU5.

These pilot sites were trained and have implemented the tools designed to help evaluators’ rate performance. The data and feedback gathered during the pilot will inform recommendations for a new evaluation system.

A final report is being complied and will include a review of best practices, the training of the pilot sites, as well as an analysis on the use of a growth measure utilizing student achievement data. This report will include analyses by the project’s University of Pittsburgh released in October of 2011 and Mathematica researchers  released early 2012 which will be used to improve the model and evaluation system.

Read our coverage on this important initiative.