EMPOWERING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS
STRATEGIES FOR IMPlEMENTING REFORMS
1
POWER
EM
ISSuE BRIEF
EMPOWERING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS
FEBRuARy 2010
STRATEGIES FOR
IMPlEMENTING
REFORMS
EMPOWERING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS
READINESS FOR REFORM
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EMPOWERING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS
STRATEGIES FOR IMPlEMENTING REFORMS
1
The contribution of teachers to student
learning and outcomes is widely recog-
nized. A teacher’s effectiveness has more
impact on student learning than any other
factor under the control of school systems,
including class size, school size, and the
quality of after-school programs.1 In a
study of Los Angeles schools, the dif-
ference between the performance of a
student assigned to a top-quartile teacher
rather than a bottom-quartile teacher
averaged 10 percentile points on a stan-
dardized math test.2 Researchers studying
high schools in North Carolina found that
having a class with a strong teacher had
an impact 14 times greater than having a
class with five fewer students.3
In spite of these realities, the education
community has not focused sufficiently
on improving teacher effectiveness: on
the recruitment, evaluation, development,
placement, and retention of highly effective
teachers. Instead of evaluating teachers’
performance and treating them differ-
ently on that basis, teachers are treated
uniformly and rewarded for longevity and
degrees. Paper credentials that have little
to no proven value trump how successfully
teachers educate their students when it
comes to compensation and tenure.
Intent on helping to change this cur-
rent reality, the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation embarked on a process to find
sites that would help determine how to
use measures of teacher effectiveness to
transform human resources, specifically
in determining who is hired and retained,
how tenure is granted, how teachers are
placed, and how compensation and promo-
tion are determined. In April 2009, the
foundation asked nine school districts and
one coalition of charter management orga-
nizations (see si