A decade and a half ago, there was a national push to reform the way educators are evaluated. Policy makers believed that better performance information and feedback would help educators learn on the job. The enhanced performance information also would allow better human resource decisions — decisions about tenure, dismissal, or bonuses, for example. The end result would be better instruction and improved student achievement.
Did policy makers place their faith in a good strategy? What was working and what wasn’t? To address these questions, researchers launched various studies. Among those was a randomized controlled trial we led — one of the largest such trials we have ever conducted. We published our study findings in a peer-reviewed journal article and two technical reports (Song et al., 2021; Garet et al., 2017; Wayne et al., 2016). As we explain here, what began for us as a study of educator evaluation reform became a study of teacher professional learning. Its findings exemplify one of the main lessons of the past decade about what it takes for teacher professional learning to be effective.
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