Can Teacher Evaluation Programs Improve Teaching?

The past decade has brought dramatic growth in teacher evaluation in American public schools; growth in the money, time, and effort devoted to evaluation, but also growth in the sophistication and innovativeness of evaluation measures and other program features. There were many forces driving that growth. One force was incentives from the federal government, beginning notably with the Race to the Top competition and continuing with the requirements of NCLB waivers. A second force was new research evidence documenting large differences in teaching performance between individual teachers.