Empowering Effective Teachers: Strategies for Implementing Reforms
Abstract
A teacher's effectiveness has more impact on student learning than any other factor under the control of school systems, including class size, school size, and the quality of after-school programs.In the summer of 2009, nine school districts and one coalition of Charter Management Organizations proposed strategies to increase the recruitment, placement, evaluation, retention, and support of highly effective teachers.
During these cooperative planning processes, the site teams identified many of the same strategies for implementation: adoption of multidimensional measures of teacher effectiveness; creation of better teacher evaluation tools and processes; making the tenure decision a more meaningful milestone; and the design of career pathways and differentiating compensation.
This brief provides examples of how some sites plan to implement those strategies over the coming years. For more on this work, read the companion report: Empowering Effective Teachers: Readiness for Reform.