Using Open Innovation to Improve Teacher Evaluation Systems

Working from the premise that teacher evaluations are a meaningful part of ensuring that all students have access to a high-quality education, Hope Street Group’s policy team developed the following recommendations and principles for teacher evaluations:

1. 1. Objective measures of student achievement gains must be a major component of teacher evaluation.
   2. Clearly defined standards of quality instruction should be used to assess a teacher’s classroom performance.
   3. Teachers, teacher groups and unions should be included in developing and implementing teacher evaluation systems.
   4. Teacher evaluation systems themselves must be periodically evaluated and refined.
   5. Teacher evaluation systems should reflect the importance of supportive administrators and school environment to effective teaching.
   6. Components of teacher evaluation that rely on observation and discussion must be in the hands of instructional leaders who have sufficient expertise, training and capacity.
   7. Evaluations must differentiate levels of teaching efficacy to identify opportunities for professional growth, and drive rewards and consequences.
   8. Information from teacher evaluations should be comparable across schools and districts, and should be used to address equity in the distribution of teaching talent.

Using Open Innovation to Reform Teacher Evaluation Systems