Measures of effective teaching (MET) project

Two-thirds of American teachers feel that traditional evaluations don't accurately capture the full picture of what they do in the classroom. They want information that they can trust from measures that are fair and reliable.

Check out the most recent product from the MET project

Better Feedback for Better Teaching: A Practical Guide to Improving Classroom Observations

The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project was designed to find out how evaluation methods could best be used to tell teachers more about the skills that make them most effective and to help districts identify and develop great teaching. When it came to identifying what great teaching looks like, we knew that it was imperative to go straight to the source: teachers. Through the MET project, we sought to answer the following critical questions:

• Is it possible to identify and measure effective teaching?
• Can we pinpoint what works in the classroom?

The outstanding work of our partners has proven the answer is “yes.” Over the span of three years, dozens of education experts and researchers, 3,000 teacher volunteers in six urban districts, 20,000 videotaped lessons, student surveys, and student performance on state and supplemental higher-order thinking skills tests, have given us a much better understanding of what great teaching looks like. This evidence-based knowledge has helped to create tools and systems that help empower teachers to help students succeed.

Based on lessons learned through the MET project, our partners identified nine guiding principles to inform the design and implementation of high-quality teacher support and evaluation systems. These principles guide districts and schools as they design their own measurement and feedback systems to improve the quality of instruction, which will ultimately lead to enhanced student success.