Can Evaluating Teachers Improve Effectiveness?

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We are pleased to share with you the most recent PREAL Policy Brief  “Can Evaluating Teachers Improve Teacher Effectiveness? IMPACT Evaluations in Washington, DC.” PREAL Policy Briefs provide non-technical overviews of key education policy topics.

In this issue, Tamara Ortega Goodspeed, Inter-American Dialogue Senior Education Associate and Dialogue intern T’Nia Crutchfield focus on Washington, DC’s IMPACT teacher evaluation system, its key features, successes and challenges and potential implications for teacher policy in Latin America. Initial studies suggest that the high-stakes system—which evaluates teachers based on classroom observation, their contribution to students’ learning, contributions to the school community, and core professionalism—has encouraged lower performing teachers to either improve or resign, while retaining higher performing teachers and helping them improve.