Everyone at the Table E-Book

Ellen Behrstock-Sherratt

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 407

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

A proven method for working with teachers to design betterevaluations There is no magic formula for successfully designing a teacherevaluation system. However there is abundant evidence that suggestsinvolving teachers in the process will reduce the likelihood ofopposition, gridlock, and reform failure. Everyone at theTable provides materials to genuinely engage teachers in theevaluation process. The book is a research-based and field-testedpractical guide for school leaders. With this resource, educatorswill have the tools they need to develop meaningful teacherevaluations. * Offers a collaborative approach to designing teacherevaluations * Includes a companion web-based resource, with video This research-based program outlines a solid plan for improvingteacher effectiveness through evaluation reform.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Part One: Understanding The Teacher Evaluation Conversation and Why it Matters

Chapter 1: Why Now?

The Current Climate

The Strengths of Engaging Teachers in Teacher Evaluation

Teacher Leadership and Teacher Engagement

Tying it Together

Chapter 2: The Teacher Effectiveness Question

The Challenge of Measuring Teacher Effectiveness

Dimensions of Teacher Effectiveness

Contemporary Approaches to Measuring Teacher Effectiveness

Roadblocks to Measuring Effectiveness—Implementation and The Need for Teacher Engagement

Part Two: What We Know About Effectively Engaging Teachers

Chapter 3: The Who, When, and How of Evaluation

Teacher Evaluation Reform 101

Decision Points for Teacher Engagement

Determining Decision Points When Progress is Under Way

Taking The Time to Make Teacher Evaluation Meaningful

Involving Teachers as Evaluators

Chapter 4: The Elements of Authentic Engagement

The Learning Curve: Helping People Wrestle with Trade-Offs and Move Toward Wiser Judgment

Principles of Sound Engagement

Embedding Engagement in the Local Culture: Bridgeport, Connecticut

The Importance of Culture

Part Three: The Engagement Process

Chapter 5: Planning

Before You Begin

Three Sample Plans for Teacher Engagement

Driving The Initiative

Engaging Teachers When Progress is Already Under Way

Teacher Engagement in Action: Detroit, Washington, and Colorado

Chapter 6: Strategies for Ensuring Authentic Engagement in Evaluation Reform

The Role of Teacher Engagement Teams

Ready? Set? Go! About The Activities in This Chapter

Strategies for Structuring Preliminary Activities: Taking The Temperature on Teachers’ Current Knowledge of Evaluation Concepts

Strategies for Structuring Essential Activities for Promoting Teacher Conversations

Strategies for Overcoming Obstacles and Troubleshooting

Guide to Next Steps

Strategies for Systematically Making Teachers’ Voices Heard at The Policy Table

Chapter 7: Optional Activities for Teacher Engagement in Evaluation Reform

Chapter 8: Other Stakeholders

The Transition of Principals to Instructional Leaders

Planning for Principal Engagement

Engaging Principals in Teacher Evaluation

Engaging Principals in Principal Evaluation

Optional Activities for Engaging Principals in Teacher and Principal Evaluation Reform

Engaging Parents and Community Members on Teacher and Principal Evaluation

Talking to The Public: Communications 101

Chapter 9: Conclusion

Teacher Engagement and Leadership as a Human Capital Management Strategy

Useful Resources: Sample Policy Reports From Teacher Leader Organizations

References

Index

More Praise forEveryone at the Table

“Everyone at the Table places teacher leaders squarely where they need to be—at the table in shaping policies and making decisions that impact classroom practice and student learning.”

—Katherine Bassett, director, National Network of State Teachers of the Year

“Meaningful change in our schools will only take hold when educators are included in the design and implementation of policies that affect their classrooms and careers. By highlighting the importance of giving teachers a seat at the policy table, Everyone at the Table moves the profession in a positive direction.”

—Syndey Morris, cofounder, co-CEO, Educators4Excellence

“Mobilizing educators to come together in an effort to redesign schooling, rethink the profession, and professionalize their craft can play a vital role in educational improvement. In Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers in Evaluation Reform, the authors offer useful guidance for engaging teachers in conversations about teacher evaluation. They sketch a road map for policymaking that promises to draw upon the wisdom and address the concerns of educators and educational policy leaders alike. This is an endeavor that we can all support.”

—Frederick M. Hess, PhD, director, Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

“This book makes clear why it’s critical to engage teachers in designing and implementing teacher support and evaluation systems. And it’s chock-full of concrete ideas, tools, and examples for making those conversations authentic and meaningful.”

—Lynn Olson, advisor to the director of College-Ready Education, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

ABOUT THE SPONSORS

About AIR

Established in 1946, with headquarters in Washington, DC, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that conducts behavioral and social science research and delivers technical assistance both domestically and internationally in education, health, and workforce productivity. AIR’s Education program includes work in all fifty states and internationally and involves more than five hundred staff working to improve the conditions of teaching and learning from early childhood through college and careers, with a special focus on the most underserved and vulnerable populations. For more information, visit www.air.org.

About Public Agenda

Public Agenda partners with citizens and leaders to help them better navigate complex and divisive issues. Through nonpartisan stakeholder opinion research and public engagement, Public Agenda provides the insights, tools, and support that people need to build common ground and arrive at solutions that work for them. Public Agenda works in K–12 education, higher education, the federal budget, health care, and other critical issues. A national, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, Public Agenda was founded in 1975 by the social scientist and public opinion expert Dan Yankelovich and former secretary of state Cyrus Vance, and is based in New York City. For more information, visit www.publicagenda.org.

Cover photo © Daly and Newton/Getty

Cover design: Michael Cook

Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

A Wiley Brand

One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594—www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone], or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax [phone], or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax [phone].

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Behrstock-Sherratt, Ellen.

Everyone at the table : engaging teachers in evaluation reform / Ellen Behrstock-Sherratt, Allison Rizzolo with Sabrina Laine and Will Friedman.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-52634-7 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-54013-8 (ebk.);

ISBN 978-1-118-54015-2 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-54022-0 (ebk.)

1. Teachers—Rating of—United States. 2. Teaching—United States—Evaluation. I. Title.

LB2838.B47 2013

371.14'4—dc23

2013006257

PREFACE

Superintendent Amelia Baker wakes up excited and nervous. Today she will share the new teacher evaluation system with the five hundred–plus teachers in Merryville School District. Superintendent Baker worked for two years on the system, in coordination with other district leaders and several content experts. They planned carefully, developed research-tested tools, and deliberated endlessly among themselves on the definition of effective teaching and the appropriate weights of different evaluation measures. Today, it’s finally time to present to teachers the new, carefully constructed approach to teacher evaluation. The union—indeed, all relevant parties—have come around to seeing the benefits of a more rigorous teacher evaluation system. So what could go wrong?

Sitting down for her morning coffee, Baker scans the day’s news: “Dunrock School District Returns to the Drawing Board on Teacher Evaluation System.” But how could this be? Baker wonders. She had discussed their evaluation reforms with the superintendent of nearby Dunrock, and they had found so many similarities in their approaches. Not to mention that Dunrock’s superintendent was well known for her thoughtfulness and positive reputation.

Standing at the podium, ready for the big presentation, Baker scans the faces of her teachers and notes the many crossed arms in the audience. She suddenly wonders if she and her committee had missed a step. She opens her mouth but doesn’t get past “Good morning” before an arm shoots up and a teacher asks, “I understand that the district has developed a new way to do evaluations—why is this the first time many of us are hearing about it or being asked to give input?”

Baker’s heart sinks as she realizes that, even today, her fifteen-minute presentation leaves no space for “input.” Her heart sinks further, and she mutters under her breath, “It is going to be a long fifteen minutes and a long week, month, and school year.”

Superintendent Baker’s predicament is unfortunately not unique. Even the most well-intentioned education leaders often fail to consider the input of those most deeply affected by teacher evaluation: teachers themselves. It is rarely a case of malicious intent; rather, education leaders don’t have the time to engage teachers, don’t know how, or are fearful of handing over power. They see engagement—or collaborative decision making, distributive leadership, or other variations on that theme—as difficult or unpredictable, and they worry that engaging teachers will just lead to venting and resentment, making the problem worse, not better.

We believe, however, that engaging the stakeholders who are most directly affected by change can be a transformative experience, not a threatening one. Teacher engagement, when done right, has the potential to bring vital, firsthand knowledge and ideas to problem solving; facilitate smoother implementation; help education leaders circumvent potential roadblocks or unintended consequences resulting from new policies; create legitimacy through shared ownership; and lead to policies that stick.

Authentically engaging teachers is not an easy process—it requires a good amount of planning, foresight, and, yes, time. Nonetheless, ensuring that teachers are engaged up front will often help prevent adversity that can delay or derail reform and force education policymakers back to the drawing board once again. Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers in Evaluation Reform is intended to make the seemingly overwhelming task of engaging teachers in evaluation more straightforward and more effective. The book provides a rationale for increased teacher leadership in reform, as well as actionable strategies to get everyone around the table and partaking in meaningful, research-driven conversations that will result in reforms that can be implemented successfully and sustained over time.

Teacher evaluation reform is already well under way, with thirty-six states and Washington, DC having adopted new laws concerning evaluation systems. As these reforms take place at a faster and faster pace, with time often too scarce to carefully develop policies (let alone collaboratively develop them), the absence of teacher voice in education reform has become more acute, and we’ve seen the repercussions. The anger of frustrated teachers boiled over into the 2012 Chicago Public Schools teacher strike. Principals from Long Island in New York sued that state’s education department over their dissatisfaction with the teacher evaluation system. We’ve also seen the absence of teacher voice spark the formation of the numerous teacher voice organizations that we profile in this book.

These organizations understand, as we and many frustrated teachers and principals do, that successful reform is impossible without the active support of those who will be most affected. It is best practice for any good leader or manager, in any sector, to take the time to consult with those on the ground doing the work, before deciding how to evaluate or improve their jobs. And it is likewise best practice for any teacher to embrace this opportunity.

In September 2012, an adviser for teacher quality to the secretary of education led a presentation and panel discussion at a convening of state-level education leaders for the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. The event aimed to help state leaders visualize how the teaching profession would ideally be transformed into one that met the needs of all students. Participants concluded that in order to transform the teaching profession, teachers and leaders at all levels of the system would need to develop a common vision through ongoing collaboration. Creating structures to facilitate consistent dialogue at the school, district, and state level would aid this collaboration. State education leaders further articulated the need for states to encourage teacher-initiated solutions and to develop formal avenues for teacher leadership as key elements to transforming the teaching profession to one that meets the needs of every student. This book answers that call.

Everyone at the Table presents an array of well-tested engagement and discussion approaches that can help generate deep thinking about the design and implementation of a comprehensive approach to teacher evaluation—one that will align with state and federal policy requirements and, more important, work in a given local context.

This book equips readers with a variety of resources: the research base behind teacher effectiveness and quality; the key policy questions reflected in the national debate around measuring teacher effectiveness; practical, hands-on recommendations for taking action to promote dialogue and collaborative problem solving on policy design; and ready-made, flexible, and well-tested materials for teacher-led dialogue on teacher evaluation.

The strategies introduced in this book are intended to genuinely include teachers in conversations that affect the future of their profession as well as their own careers. They are designed to include all teachers—not just the outspoken “usual suspects” who are already active in policy debates—and to go beyond what many typically think of as “dialogue,” challenging local leaders to create a new vision for inclusive decision making.

The approach and materials in Everyone at the Table also depoliticize the issue of measuring teacher effectiveness and provide teachers with a framework to transcend an either-or pattern of thinking, talk about the real values and trade-offs inherent in any evaluation strategy, generate new insights on complex problems, and start moving toward workable solutions for their own contexts.

The book is divided into three parts, each of which contains a number of chapters. Part One focuses on the need for teacher engagement and the context of evaluation reform; Part Two focuses on the entry points for and principles of teacher engagement; and Part Three focuses on the process, or “how-to,” of engaging teachers in the dialogue. This last part also broadens the discussion to talk about the need to engage principals and the community in teacher evaluation (and teacher quality more broadly), as well as the need to apply the concepts in this book to other education policies.

Part One: Understanding the Teacher Evaluation Conversation and Why It Matters

Chapter One, “Why Now? The Importance of Cultivating Teacher Leadership and Teacher Voice in the Age of Accountability,” provides an overview of engagement in evaluation reform, including its wider goals of strengthening the teacher workforce.

Chapter Two, “The Teacher Effectiveness Question: How Can Effectiveness Be Measured?” focuses on the contemporary controversies, emerging research on best practice, and trends in assessing teacher effectiveness, and provides a brief contextual history of this important but complex issue.

Part Two: What We Know About Effectively Engaging Teachers

Chapter Three, “The Who, When, and How of Evaluation: Engaging Teachers on Issues That Matter,” provides a crash course in Teacher Evaluation 101, detailing the technical aspects involved in designing a new teacher evaluation system and the key decision points for teacher engagement. This chapter also includes a section about teacher involvement in the evaluation process, as peer observers and in other capacities.

Chapter Four, “The Elements of Authentic Engagement,” highlights research, theory, and innovative practices from the field of public engagement, detailing the core principles of authentic engagement and exploring why engaging teachers on hot-button topics like evaluation is so critical.

Part Three: The Engagement Process

Chapter Five, “Planning: Steps for Engaging Teachers,” lays out strategies for engaging teachers, sample plans for teacher engagement to help organizers envision a timeline, and activities to help organizers envision how they will engage teachers in their school or district.

Chapter Six, “Strategies for Ensuring Authentic Engagement in Evaluation Reform,” includes the most essential strategies for teacher engagement—recruiting teachers to the conversation and then conducting facilitated discussions that get to the heart of the issues of greatest importance.

Chapter Seven, “Optional Activities for Teacher Engagement in Evaluation Reform,” details a number of optional activities for promoting teacher conversations, including resources for further reading and sharing, and an interviewing exercise.

Chapter Eight, “Other Stakeholders: Engaging Principals, Parents, and Community Members,” presents strategies for engaging these other stakeholders in teacher and principal evaluation reform.

Chapter Nine, “Conclusion: Teacher Voice in Evaluation and Beyond,” discusses how to move the conversation beyond teacher evaluation to address a range of other pressing policy issues related to teacher quality, including compensation, induction and mentoring, recruitment and hiring, working conditions, and professional learning opportunities. To truly advance the teaching profession, it argues, evaluation reform is only the beginning.

The approach taken in this book is based on the Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers in Evaluation Reform project, developed by Public Agenda and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Everyone at the Table website (www.everyoneatthetable.org) includes several multimedia resources that you may wish to access, such as

A two-minute video that captures the importance of broader, more genuine involvement of teachers in evaluation reform and demonstrates the enthusiasm of education leaders around the country for this involvement (

http://www.everyoneatthetable.org/leadersVideo.php

).

An eight-minute discussion-starter video that gives teachers the chance to think and talk about the pros and cons of different kinds of evaluation systems (

http://www.everyoneatthetable.org/gtt_video.php

).

A PowerPoint presentation and a number of Word documents that can be modified and used for teacher discussion activities.

In some cases, the recommendations in this book guide you to these online resources. Recognizing that readers will approach this book from many different school and district contexts, the supporting materials have been designed to be customizable and flexible. All downloadable materials are formatted as Word documents and can be easily modified to suit the particular local context of your school and community.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?

This book is intended for a variety of audiences, including school district leaders, union leaders, teacher leaders, school principals, school board members, and other community members.

Teacher leaders (particularly those who aim to be on-the-ground leaders of discussions about policy) are a key audience for this book, and they can promote and lead all the undertakings recommended here. The approach is always most effective, however, if those charged with overseeing teacher evaluation (for example, district and school administrators) are supportive of the way teachers’ voices are included in the process.

School district leaders can read this book to understand how to better include teachers in local policymaking related to teacher quality. School district leaders set the tone for how teacher voice will be considered when important decisions are made, and their support is key to generating fruitful conversations with teachers, many of whom are often reluctant to speak up for fear of getting into trouble or wasting their time. District leaders are in an ideal position to identify teacher leaders, or teachers with leadership potential, to discuss the strategies in this book.

Union leaders may consult this book for an innovative approach to engaging teachers at scale and soliciting more representative and in-depth teacher input than may normally be achieved through a survey or a single union meeting. In unionized districts, the structured and solutions-oriented approach that is recommended in this book can build collaboration among teachers across a district and between union leaders and district administration.

School principals may wish to become familiar with the approaches recommended in this book to encourage teacher engagement and become a conduit between classroom teachers and district decision makers. Many teachers express a desire to serve in leadership positions outside the classroom, and principals can use the contents of this book to facilitate teachers continually expanding their horizons on educational policy, building leadership skills, and collaborating with colleagues in new and interesting experiences.

School board members can use this book to identify strategies for conveying to other leaders in the district and community the importance of meaningfully bringing teachers into the conversation on new policies as they develop. They can also identify ways to improve their own dialogue and decision-making processes, as well as the quality of dialogue with their constituent community members.

Parents and community members who are concerned about teacher effectiveness can read this book to gain insight on the topic of teacher evaluation and to find ways of convening structured dialogues to incorporate the noneducators’ perspective on this important issue.

This book is intended for anyone concerned with developing strong and sustainable teacher evaluation systems that are created with and for teachers to inform their practice and improve student learning. In addition to the groups we’ve listed here, state education agency staff who are charged with supporting districts in improving teacher effectiveness, as well as the many national organizations that are committed to elevating teaching and learning in our schools, will find this book valuable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the contributions of many dedicated individuals. First, we thank our three research assistants from American Institutes for Research (AIR): Lauren Bivona, Jenni Fetters, and Catherine Jacques. For her valuable contributions to the seminal research that underlies this book, we thank Public Agenda senior fellow Jean Johnson, who also contributed helpful reviews of the manuscript and key suggestions.

Others who reviewed and contributed to the Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers in Evaluation Reform project include Jonathan Rochkind; Amber Ott; Jeremy Hess; Gretchen Weber, NBCT; Molly Lasagna; Jill Shively; Sheri Frost Leo; Jane Coggshall, PhD; Sara Wraight, JD; Lisa Lachlan-Haché, EdD; Ellen Cushing; Catherine Barbour; Lynn Peloquin; and Cass Daubenspeck. For their extensive contributions to the field of public engagement, which undergirds the approach described in this book, we thank Public Agenda founder Dan Yankelovich along with Alison Kadlec and the rest of the Public Agenda public engagement team.

We give particular thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for supporting the Everyone at the Table project and to the many inspiring individuals who provided feedback at the Gates Teacher Voice convenings, in particular John King, Sydney Morris, Evan Stone, Rhick Bose, Dina Rock, Wendy Uptain, Jeanne Bliss, Alesha Daughtrey, and Lindsay Sobel. We thank the American Federation of Teachers, each district, and the many teachers and principals who participated in focus groups to field-test this approach, including Hazelwood, Missouri; Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse in Detroit; Cranston, Rhode Island; Prince George’s County, Maryland; and New Orleans, Louisiana, among others. We also thank Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos (WA) for sharing valuable insights on the Everyone at the Table concept.

This book would not have been possible without the support of the individuals and organizations that are highlighted in the text as examples of effective teacher voice initiatives: Teach Plus, Educators4Excellence, VIVA Teachers, New Millennium Teachers, Hope Street Group, Advance Illinois, and Teachers United.

Finally, our sincere gratitude goes out to all of the teachers and school and district leaders who are working each day to reshape the teaching profession into one that is more collaborative and more engaged, and one in which teacher leaders can succeed in realizing a shared vision for advancing teaching as a profession.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ellen Behrstock-Sherratt, PhD, is a senior policy analyst on educator quality at the American Institutes for Research. Behrstock-Sherratt supports education policy stakeholders through the national Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, has authored or coauthored numerous articles, briefs, and reports on teacher and principal quality, and is coauthor of the book Improving Teacher Quality: A Guide for Education Leaders (Jossey-Bass, 2011). She led the Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers in Evaluation Reform initiative to increase teachers’ engagement in the process of designing the policies that affect them, and she has supported both national teachers’ associations and state policymakers in Illinois, Ohio, Washington, Maine, and Massachusetts on improving teacher and principal effectiveness. She is a frequent presenter on such topics as teacher incentives, equitable teacher distribution, Generation Y teachers, and human capital management in education. Behrstock-Sherratt earned her doctorate in education from the University of Oxford.

Allison Rizzolo is the communications director at Public Agenda. She develops and leads the organization’s communications strategy. Rizzolo writes frequently on such issues as K–12 education reform, teacher engagement, public engagement, and improving our country’s democratic processes. Rizzolo also contributes to various programs for Public Agenda. In addition to her deep involvement in Everyone at the Table, she produced Public Agenda’s 2012 Citizens’ Solutions Guides, nonpartisan discussion guides that improve collaborative problem solving by using the Choicework framework to help citizens better grasp their practical choices. Rizzolo is a coauthor of “Energy: A Citizens’ Solutions Guide” and “Health Care: A Citizens’ Solutions Guide,” and the author of “Immigration: A Citizens’ Solutions Guide.” Rizzolo is a former middle school and high school teacher. She is a graduate of Tufts University, where she studied international relations and anthropology.

Sabrina W. M. Laine, PhD, is vice president, Education Program at the American Institutes for Research. She is a principal investigator on multiple technical assistance initiatives focused on educator quality that are funded by the U.S. Department of Education, such as the national Center on Great Teachers and Leaders. Laine has spearheaded efforts to contribute to policy research and resource development related to every aspect of managing and supporting educator talent, including recruitment, compensation, evaluation, distribution, and professional development. She leads a team of more than twenty-five researchers and policy analysts who are focused on the challenges faced by educators in urban, rural, and low-performing schools. Laine has worked for the last several years to ensure that policies and programs are in place that enable all children to have access to highly effective teachers and leaders. She is the primary author of the book Improving Teacher Quality: A Guide for Education Leaders (Jossey-Bass, 2011) and is a frequent presenter in states and districts across the country on topics ranging from ensuring teacher effectiveness to equitable teacher distribution. Laine earned her doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Indiana University.

Will Friedman, PhD, is the president of Public Agenda. After founding the organization’s public engagement department in 1997, Friedman has overseen Public Agenda’s steady and expanding stream of work aimed at helping communities and states build capacity to tackle tough issues in more inclusive, deliberative, and collaborative ways. In 2007, he established Public Agenda’s Center for Advances in Public Engagement (CAPE), which conducts action research and evaluation to assess the impacts of public engagement and improve its practice.

Friedman is the author or coauthor of numerous publications, including “Reframing Framing,” “Transforming Public Life: A Decade of Public Engagement in Bridgeport, CT,” “Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Scope,” “Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Power,” and “From Employee Engagement to Civic Engagement: Exploring Connections Between Workplace and Community Democracy.” He is also the coeditor, with Public Agenda chairman and cofounder Daniel Yankelovich, of the book Toward Wiser Public Judgment (Vanderbilt University Press, 2011).

Friedman holds a doctorate in political science with specializations in political psychology and American politics.

Part One

Understanding the Teacher Evaluation Conversation and Why It Matters

Chapter One

Why Now?

The Importance of Cultivating Teacher Leadership and Teacher Voice in the Age of Accountability

Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain

—New York Times, January 6, 2012

Good Teachers Lead to Test Success

—Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2013

Teacher quality is making headlines and has risen to the top of the national education policy agenda in recent years. In many ways, effective teachers have come to be seen as a panacea for all that ails society—from crime and prejudice to inequality—a pathway to a healthy democracy and a means of strengthening our national economy. In spite of facing one of the deepest economic recessions in history, policy leaders continue to invest in new approaches to attract and retain effective teachers to staff our ninety-nine thousand public schools. The public, political, and financial commitment to securing effective teachers is unprecedented, and it creates a critical window of opportunity to develop a truly world-class teaching profession for all students.