ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of evaluation in efforts to improve elementary and secondary school teaching, with particular attention to the decisions that occur throughout a teacher's career. The chapter reviews and examines alternative evaluation methods that pertain to teacher education evaluation, teacher licensing evaluation, teacher employment evaluation, and teacher advancement and national certification evaluation. The chapter reviews recent criticisms and pressures for reform of teacher evaluation practice, summarizes the professional standards of sound educational personnel evaluation, and describes a range of research and development responses to the problems of teacher evaluation. Specifically considered are recent developments in teacher evaluation, including the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the development of the Praxis licensing examination, and recent projects to use measures of student achievement gains for evaluating teacher effectiveness. Considering the state of the art of teacher evaluation, the chapter directs the research attention of educational psychologists to a wide range of technical, legal, substantive, and practice issues in teacher evaluation. The basic aim of the chapter is to provide analyses and recommendations that will assist the personnel of schools, state education departments, universities, research and development organizations, and professional education societies to develop and implement more effective teacher evaluations and thereby help improve teaching and learning in the schools.
