E-School News – Matthew P. Steinberg and Lauren Sartain
“Of all school-level factors related to student learning and achievement, the quality of the student’s teacher is the most important. Yet the teacher evaluation systems in use in American school districts historically have been unable to differentiate teachers who improve student learning from lower-performing educators. Many have failed to differentiate teachers at all. A 2009 study by The New Teacher Project found that “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” were the only ratings available to school administrators in many districts, and that more than 99 percent of teachers in those districts were deemed satisfactory.”(more)