Educator Evaluation Systems

The California Department of Education provides these links as information only.

Educator Evaluation Systems

Educator evaluation alone is an ineffective approach to significantly improving the quality of all teachers and leaders. Who is recruited into the profession and how they are prepared are just as essential as how we develop, support, and retain educators once they enter the classroom or begin serving in the administrator role. To ensure educational equity, such an approach must include educator evaluation systems designed to help all teachers and leaders develop and improve throughout their careers. The following links are resources that discuss the topic of educator evaluations.

National Resources

Center on Great Teachers and Leaders
The Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) is based at American Institutes for Research and funded through a cooperative agreement by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Formerly called the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, the GTL Center supports state education leaders in their efforts to grow, respect, and retain great teachers and leaders for all students.

• Student Learning Objectives Resource Library
  Student learning objectives (SLOs) are emerging as one measure to assess teachers' contributions to student growth in educator evaluation systems. To support states and districts in developing and implementing SLOs, the GTL Center has created a searchable collection of SLO resources.

• Teacher Evaluation Practical Guide: Interactive Online Version
  The Teacher Evaluation Practical Guide organizes the key resources and guidance needed to develop a teacher evaluation system that identifies effective teachers and supports teachers in improving practice.
  
  
• Principal Evaluation Practical Guide: Interactive Online Version
  This website compiles key resources to support efforts to designing principal evaluation systems as a means of improving leadership, learning, and school performance.

The MET project
The MET Project is a research partnership of academics, teachers, and education organizations committed to investigating better ways to identify and develop effective teaching. Funding comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

California Resources

• California Standards for the Teaching Profession (PDF)
  Establish expectations for effective educators and help to focus the content of professional learning and development on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that educators need to increase capacity and improve their performance.

• California Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PDF)
  Provides quality standards for site and district leaders in order to help establish a framework for preparation, professional learning, certification, and assessments.

• Continuum of Teaching Practice: California’s Continuum of Teaching Practice (PDF)
  Based on foundational work of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), the California Department of Education (CDE) and the New Teacher Center (NTC) over the past 15 years, the Continuum of Teaching Practice is aligned with the California Standards for the Teaching Profession. It builds on California’s pre-service Teaching Performance Expectations and sets forth a description of teaching that respects the diverse ways teachers pursue excellence in teaching and learning.

• Greatness by Design (PDF)
  The California Department of Education (CDE) and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) convened the California Educator Excellence Task Force, which published the report, Greatness by Design: Supporting Outstanding Teaching to Sustain a Golden State (GbD). The recommendations in this report call for the development of a coherent and stable system of professional learning, a critical factor in improving educator capacity so that all students learn and thrive.

Additional Information

• Creating a Comprehensive System for Evaluating and Supporting Effective Teaching
  This report outlines an integrated approach that connects these goals to a teaching-career continuum and a professional learning system that supports effectiveness for all teachers at every stage of their careers.

• Toward the Effective Teaching of New College- and Career-Ready Standards: Making Professional Learning Systemic (PDF)
  This report describes the elements necessary to align state-level policies and practices with one another and to move away from professional development and to move toward professional learning so that more teachers in more schools have access to the conditions, incentives, and the opportunities for engaging in professional learning that is less fragmented and more coherent, more relevant, and better differentiated.

• The Mind Shift in Teacher Evaluation: Where We Stand-and Where We Need to Go (PDF)
  An article by Angela Minnici, director of the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, that explores the successes and challenges of implementing evaluation systems (2014). 

• One Piece of the Whole: Teacher Evaluation as Part of a Comprehensive System for Teaching and Learning (PDF)
  An article by Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, that details how teacher evaluation and training and collaboration create a healthy environment for teaching (2014).