Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness in a Professional Development Program: Considering Measures for Inclusion in a Comprehensive Teacher Evaluation System

Effective teachers not only affect academic achievement but also a lifetime of success. Equal opportunity to access quality education is recognized as a fundamental constitutional right for every child in America, yet it is rarely actualized. Supporting the belief that teaching matters, school reform measures turn to focusing on ensuring access to effective teaching. The federal government, states, and districts, are proposing new teacher evaluation systems with inherently higher levels of validity and reliability that can more accurately and meaningfully assess teacher effectiveness.Comprehensive teacher evaluation systems (CTESs) use multiple-measures of teacher effectiveness (e.g. student achievement, personnel review, self-and-peer-evaluation, student feedback, etc.) that differentiate levels of teaching, for formative (improve teaching and learning) and summative (decision-making) purposes. As longstanding perfunctory evaluation systems are replaced by CTESs, discussions revolve around the "right" measures for inclusion. Using pre-existing data (teacher survey, expert assessment, classroom observation), from a three-year state funded Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) science and social studies-history, urban middle school, professional development (PD) program, this study explores: the sensitivity of measures to detecting differences (within-groups and between-groups); relationships between teacher effectiveness constructs (and teacher characteristics and PD); and the extent to which depictions of teachers vary across different measures of effectiveness. This study takes a step in understanding what measures should be included in a CTES aimed a providing a complete assessment of teacher quality.Findings indicate low-to-moderate-levels of sensitivity in detecting differences and high-levels of construct score consistency within the expert assessment and classroom observation measures. Further, the validity and reliability of the teacher survey is questioned, eliminating it for consideration in a CTES. Teacher characteristics do a poor job predicting scores on teacher effectiveness constructs, while PD participation and use of instructional strategies moderately predict construct scores. Classroom observations provide a unique portrayal of teacher effectiveness and are strongly recommended for inclusion in a CTES. While comprehensive teacher evaluation systems take a holistic approach to evaluation, recognizing and valuing the complexities of teaching, connecting teacher performance to personnel decisions revolutionizes education. As we move towards identifying, retaining, rewarding, and developing effective teachers, the promise of public education is hopeful