Does Teacher Evaluation Policy That Incorporates Student Growth Measures Exacerbate or Ameliorate Educational Inequities?

• In Event: 70.065 - Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 70.065-2 - Teacher Perspectives on Teacher Evaluation and Performance Pay Programs

Abstract

Policies in forty states and D.C. incorporate student growth measures into educator evaluation. The federal government positions such policies as levers for ensuring that more students are taught by effective teachers and that effective educators are more equitably distributed amongst schools. Because these policies are new, little is known about how educators respond to them. Survey data from North Carolina indicate that substantive, unintended effects may undermine the purposes for which these policies were developed, including teacher recruitment and retention issues, segregation and further marginalization of students with disabilities and those who are substantially academically behind, and exacerbation of inequitable distribution of effective teachers.

Author

• Kimberly Kappler Hewitt, University of North Carolina - Greensboro