Educator effectiveness

Educator effectiveness is a K-12 school system education policy initiative that measures the quality of a educator performance in terms of improving student learning. It describes a variety of methods, such as observations, student assessments, student work samples and examples of teacher work, that education leaders use to determine the effectiveness of a K-12 educator.

The drive for educator effectiveness programs stem from Race to the top where states were awarded points for meeting educational policies based on the teacher's effectiveness. This policy was the basis of the emergence of statewide educator effectiveness programs.

Educator effectiveness programs vary from state to state. Typically, an educator effectiveness program describes a cycle of observations and assessments that apply to different groups of teachers during an academic year. New teachers are evaluated more frequently, and veteran teachers are evaluated across multiple year cycles. Evaluated teachers have multiple scheduled classroom observations and conferences with the evaluator in addition to unannounced classroom observations. A controversial aspect of The purpose of evaluations is to help educators determine what is effective in their practices and provides them a medium to reflect upon and change their practice to help teachers become more effective.

Educator effectiveness is a method used in the K-12 school system that uses multiple measures of assessments including classroom observations, student work samples, assessment scores and teacher artifacts, to determine the impact a particular teacher has on student's learning outcomes. While schools have used teacher evaluation practices and policies for many years, the emergence of educator effectiveness policies combines these existing practices with rubrics and test scores to provide more robust perspectives on the work of teachers. Educator effectiveness initiatives often use descriptions of effective teaching practices, such as Charlotte Danielson's "Framework for Teaching", to organize teaching separate domains for assessment. Danielson's domains include: Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Professional Responsibilities, and Instruction.

Teacher evaluations have changed over time and have had different standards across the United States. Evaluation systems often have been comprised an administrator observing a teacher a couple times per year. In some locations, teacher observations were only done on a three-year or longer cycle. In the past, a Widget Effect, as described by The New Teacher Project has been established that has developed a culture where all teachers feel as though they deserve the highest marks on evaluations. Schools used to see their job as filling positions and thought that any teacher who was given a license was high quality, and thus scored them according to that thought process. Therefore, all teachers were getting scores that were good or great and no variation was able to be determined between any two teachers.

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