Educational Leadership

the late 1980s, several states have developed similar assessments for beginning teachers. Teachers are asked to plan a unit of instruction linked to the standards in their content area, to adapt their plans for English learners and students with special needs, to teach the unit, and then to be videotaped while teaching these lessons. They also collect evidence of student learning and analyze both their teaching and the student learning that resulted.

Connecticut developed its BEST Portfolio to guide learning for beginning teachers and then to determine the candidates’ readiness for a professional credential after two years in the classroom. Research shows that the scores on that portfolio significantly predicted teachers’ effectiveness with students.

There are now 27 states piloting a national version of a performance assessment for the initial license, which builds on the success of California’s Performance Assessment for Teachers. A number of those states are beginning to think about also using a related performance assessment during the first two or three years of teaching that continues to build on the initial portfolio and that could become the basis for achieving the professional credential. These kinds of tools, plus the kinds of close-in evaluation and support provided by mentors in districts that have adopted peer assistance and review programs, have also been found to improve effectiveness.

That’s what we should be doing with beginning teachers: using professional teaching standards and thoughtful support and evaluation processes to give them the feedback that they need.

One last point on the test-based
teacher evaluations: Teachers who are
subjected to those systems are saying
that they can’t draw any relationship
between what they do from year to year
and how their ratings bounce around. As
a teacher in Houston put it: “I do what
I do every year. I teach the way I teach
every year. My first year got me pats on
the back. My second year got me kicked
in the backside. And for year three my
scores were off the charts. I got a huge
bonus, and now I am in the top quartile
of all the English teachers. What did I do
differently? I have no clue.” 4

Schools and education leaders can’t
always change the policies affecting
teachers, but what might they do to
support their teachers?

Teachers want to be in environments where they are going to be successful with students, where they’re getting help to do that, where they have good colleagues, where they’re working as a team. Teachers, especially those just entering the profession, are generally collaboratively oriented people.

What great schools, great principals, and great school teams know is that you support teachers by structuring group collaboration for planning curriculum, by building professional learning communities, by encouraging ongoing inquiry into practice.

The schools that build those kinds of environments give teachers continuous opportunities to grow and learn, provide the tools they need to do their job,

and enable them to build good relationships with parents so they can work as partners on behalf of the child.

This may mean reorganizing the schedule, but in building those systems, leaders personalize the school environment. All of those things really are what will help teachers learn—and become happy and successful in their work. EL

1See Wei, R. C., Darling-Hammond, L., & Adamson, F. (2010). Professional development in the United States: Trends and challenges. Dallas, TX: National Staff Development Council, p. 28.

2Darling-Hammond, L. (2003). Keeping good teachers: Why it matters, what leaders can do. Educational Leadership, 60( 8), pp. 6–13.

3Gitomer, D. (2007). Teacher quality in a changing policy landscape: Improvements in the teacher pool. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

4Darling-Hammond, L., Amrein-Beardsley, A., Haertel, E., & Rothstein, J. (2012). Evaluating teacher evaluation. Phi Delta Kappan, 93( 6), p. 11.

Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles Ducommun Professor of Education and codirector of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University, California; ldh@stanford .edu. Marge Scherer is Editor in Chief of Educational Leadership; mscherer@ ascd.org.