teacher leadership

This report, one in a series to be released by Accomplished California Teachers (ACT), a group of National Board Certified Teachers, examines teacher evaluation.

This report offers our recommendations on making teacher evaluation a more useful tool to advance the quality of teaching...

This policy brief outlines key components of providing quality educational opportunites for all students. The paper includes details and specific state examples to illustrate how performance assessments can be used to support and assess how educators meet professional standards for teaching....

In this paper, Linda Darling-Hammond and Beverly Falk describe evidence of how student-performance assessments support teachers' learning from the United States and around the world, particularly in countries that have been recognized for their high-performing educational systems. The authors...

This paper seeks to clarify the responsibilities of policy makers to create the conditions for an effective accountability system that produces substantial improvements in student learning, strengthens the teaching profession, and provides transparency of results to the public. The authors point...

This paper argues that halting testing won't fix flawed assessment and accountability systems.  Instead, the authors advocate improving the system of assessments to improve what is taught in school.  After outlining performance assessments, the paper outlines political and policy recommenations...

This report is designed to offer practitioners models, tools, and examples from the Linked Learning Pathways Initiative for developing a performance assessment system. The California Linked Learning District Initiative is in its fifth year. The initiative has provided significant support to nine...

This paper offers a retrospective research study of performance assessment initiatives beginning in the 1990s up to today.  The study addresses three specific questions: 

• What were the conditions that helped sustain some of the programs? 

• What were the challenges that led to...

This report focuses on schools using student-centered practices through either the Linked Learning initiative or Envision Education model. Linked Learning, a state-wide initiative, integrates rigorous academics with career-based learning and real-world workplace experiences.  The main features...