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Quality of Evaluations Draws New Attention As Stimulus Aid Flows

The nation’s oft-criticized systems for evaluating the quality of its educator workforce are poised to receive increased scrutiny, thanks to an Obama administration plan to require school districts to disclose how many teachers perform well or poorly.

Although nearly every state requires districts to evaluate teachers, the instruments are typically designed locally. And as both policy experts and some union leaders attest, they are frequently of poor quality, not based on standards of good teaching, and incapable of rendering fine-grained, fair judgments about teacher performance.

Policy experts widely view the U.S. Department of Education initiative, which is part of the implementation of the federal economic-stimulus package’s aid to education, as an attempt to collect baseline data on teacher evaluations and to promote an overhaul of those systems. It could also, they say, pave the way for shifting the “highly qualified” teacher provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act from a focus on paper credentials...