The Wallace Foundation
Districts’ ways of evaluating and supporting novice principals is the focus of Volume 4 of PSA’s evaluation of the Wallace Foundation-funded Principal Pipeline Initiative. Specifically, districts see evaluation as a tool to help principals improve, and they have paid attention to the process of implementing and fine-tuning their evaluation systems. In particular, too, they have worked to build principal supervisors’ capacity to observe and rate professional practice, to give feedback, and to guide principals’ efforts to improve their work.
U.S. Department of Education
Turnaround School Leaders Program
The U.S. Department of Education has released Leading Low-Performing Schools. This study—conducted by PSA and Westat—describes the implementation of the federal Turnaround School Leaders Program. The study examined partnerships among school districts, states, higher education, and nonprofits to develop leaders for low-performing schools. Read the report here and the summary here.
Teacher Evaluation Systems
PSA conducted case studies of eight districts' teacher evaluation systems. The case studies, intended to inform teacher evaluation policies and practices, examined the planning, design, and early implementation of eight local teacher evaluation systems that relied on multiple measures of teacher performance, including gains in student achievement and observation of classroom practice. The study describes teacher evaluation systems in eight school districts, including Austin Independent School District (Austin, TX), District of Columbia Public Schools (Washington, DC.), Hamilton County Department of Education (Chattanooga, TN); Harrison School District 2 (Colorado Springs, CO); Hillsborough County Public Schools (Tampa, FL); Pittsburgh Public Schools (Pittsburgh, PA); Plattsburgh Public Schools, (Plattsburgh, NY); and St. Mary’s County Public Schools (Leonardtown, MD).
Study of Emerging Teacher Evaluation Systems (Full report)
Results in Brief: Study of Emerging Teacher Evaluation Systems