In April 2006 the Hamilton Project issued a report entitled "Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job." This report has been cited by education reformers across the country as a guide for improving student achievement in America's Public Schools.
The report offered five recommendations-
1. Reduce the Barriers to Entry into Teaching for Those Without Traditional Teacher Certification.
2. Make It Harder to Promote the Least Effective Teachers to Tenured Positions.
3. Provide Bonuses to Highly Effective Teachers Willing to Teach in Schools with a High Proportion of Low-Income Students
4. Evaluate Individual Teachers Using Various Measures of Teacher Performance on the Job
5. Develop Data Systems to Link Student Performance with the Effectiveness of Individual Teachers over Time
These ideas have been have been embraced by people at the federal Department of Education and are part of the criteria in The Race To The Top state competitive grant program (which Nebraska applied for but did not meet). If states want the federal dollars, they will have to do these things.
Eventually Nebraska will adopt some of the concepts brought out in this report. The Nebraska Department of Education has employed to consultants to develop a model teacher and principal evaluation system that will be piloted across the state in 2013-14, so they are addressing recommendation #4. Nebraska also has the ability to link students with their teachers (recommendation #5).
This is where education is heading in this country, like it or not.
