Improving Teaching Effectiveness : Implementation

Brian M. Stecher, Michael S. Garet, Laura S. Hamilton, Elizabeth D. Steiner, Abby Robyn, Jeffrey Poirier, Deborah Holtzman, Eleanor S. Fulbeck, Jay Chambers, Iliana Brodziak de los Reyes

"To improve the U.S. education system through more-effective classroom teaching, in school year 20092010, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the Intensive Partnership for Effective Teaching sites. The Intensive Partnerships Initiative is based on the premise that efforts to improve instruction can benefit from high-quality measures of teaching effectiveness. The initiative seeks to determine whether a school can implement a high-quality measure of teaching effectiveness and use it to support and manage teachers in ways that improve student outcomes. This approach is consistent with broader national trends in which performance-based teacher evaluation is increasingly being mandated at state and local levels. To test the theory in practice, the foundation sought partnership sites. It selected three school districts Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida, Shelby...