Studies Test for Ways to Spot Good Teachers
The latest results of the massive Measures of Effective Teaching Project may give pause to districts working to develop teacher-effectiveness evaluations.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's MET project, one of the largest instructional-observation studies in the country, has found that teacher-effectiveness assessments similar to those used in some district value-added systems aren't good at showing which differences are important between the most- and least-effective educators, and often totally misunderstand the "messy middle" that most teachers occupy.
"The beauty of multiple measures isn't that there are more of them—more can be more confusing. These need to be aligned to the outcomes we care about," said Steve Cantrell, who oversees the MET project for the Seattle-based Gates. (The foundation also helps support coverage of K-12 business and innovation in Education Week .)
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