There is much agreement about the need to rethink the way decisions are made about the teacher workforce. Currently many decisions such as granting tenure, laying off teachers, and determining compensation are made with little regard to a teacher’s impact on student learning. So these actions, instead of rewarding effective teachers and enhancing the profession, do little to improve the quality of the teaching force.
Yet, spurred in part by competitive federal programs such as the Race to the Top initiative, a growing number of states and districts are beginning to incorporate measures of student performance into human capital policies. What kinds of measures of student performance could be used and are being used and what do we know about them? How can these measures inform workforce decisions about teachers in ways that encourage effective instruction? Join us for a conversation with expert researchers and practitioners that addresses these questions and others. We will be releasing two papers to launch our discussion. One paper, by Dan Goldhaber, examines the potential for using value added measures to inform teacher workforce decisions. The other paper, by Jennifer Steele, Laura Hamilton, and Brian Stecher, examines how a variety of measures of student performance are being incorporated into teacher evaluations.
Featured Speakers:
Dan Goldhaber, Director of the Center for Education Data & Research and Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington-Bothell
Scott R. Palmer, Partner and Co-founder, EducationCounsel LLC
Angela Minnici, Associate Director, Educational Issues Department, American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
Jennifer Steele, Associate Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation
Moderated by:
Cynthia G. Brown, Vice President for Education Policy, Center for American Progress
For a full transcript click here.