Have We Identified Effective Teachers? Validating Measures of Effective Teaching Using Random Assignment

Ever since the Empowering Effective Teachers initiative began in Hillsborough County, Florida, Robert Kriete’s professional learning community has taken a more targeted, and more productive, approach to improving practice.

This brief highlights a set of guiding principles to inform the design and implementation of high-quality teacher support and evaluation systems based on three years’ of work by the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, its partners, and other leading school systems and organizations.

It has been thrilling from day one—in August of 2007—when I was hired as the director of the K-12 Education team. The team was given one year to assess the foundation’s work and propose a strategy for the next phase. We were given this advice:  when you take on a cause where government is spending a lot of money, philanthropy can make the biggest impact by finding a strategic lever that others are missing.