Stimulus Reflects Push for Teacher Effectiveness

Almost since the day the No Child Left Behind Act became law eight years ago, teacher-quality advocates have complained about the insufficiency of its rules for staffing classrooms with “highly qualified” teachers. Formal qualifications, they pointed out, don’t necessarily make for effective, engaging teachers.

But the focus began to shift when President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which, in the course of pouring historic levels of new aid into education, also addressed the complex and politically fraught issue of teacher effectiveness.

The result has been a new federal emphasis on teachers’ on-the-job performance as a basis of gauging their capacity, rather the strength of “inputs” such as credentials, subject-matter knowledge, and the...