Interactive Data Tools
Critical Decisions Guide:
Building Teacher Effectiveness Systems
The Critical Decisions Guide: Building Teacher Effectiveness Systems leads users through a series of steps to ensure that they make thoughtful decisions based on evidence and experience that result in a robust, sustainable, and comprehensive teacher evaluation system.
Education reformers have shifted the focus from “highly qualified teachers” to “teacher effectiveness.” Moving the conversation beyond characteristics and qualifications, the emphasis on teacher effectiveness focuses attention on assessment and evaluation of teacher practices through a multidimensional approach that includes teacher practice and student learning. This Critical Decisions Guide offers states and districts resources and tools to build better evaluation systems. At the initial stages of reform, states and districts often have many questions about effective implementation. This guide is designed to assist leaders as they think critically about each phase in the development of their evaluation system.
This guide addresses decisions that education leaders commonly face. For each decision, users are provided a series of questions for consideration as well as links to resources available from the TQ Center and other education organizations to assist in responding to these questions. Many of these resources include powerful examples of the different ways in which states and districts have addressed these issues.
