In the Washington DC, the board of DCPS (District of Columbia Public Schools) recently announced that they are implementing a teacher evaluation system that is quite controversial. The measure is called IMPACT, it will assess teachers based on their performance of whether or not the have improved over the year based on the following degrees, not just student’s test results. Teachers are marked based on specific criteria that the school district uses to define effective instruction including “how well they explain concepts and if they check for student understanding. School administrators also rate DCPS teachers on their support of school initiatives, their efforts to promote high expectations and their demonstration of core professionalism”.

This system should prove to be highly effective, although in it’s early stages, it is quite controversial. While many teachers are willing to be evaluated in order to keep their job and possibly receive a monetary bonus, some lower-performing teachers are voluntarily leaving the classroom in order to avoid the risk of being fired.

IMPACT’s dismissal policy as well as it’s substantial financial rewards for high-performing teachers are a particularly important measure because if high performing teachers (teachers that receive a 350 or higher based on a 400 mark scale) earn an annual bonus of as much as $25,000, and for those who are “minimally effective” teachers (scores below 250) are told they have one year to become effective or they face the threat of dismissal.

Since the study was completed, the results have demonstrated that minimally effective teachers are much more likely to voluntarily leave, allowing for a new and much more hard-working teacher to take their place. The majority of the teachers demonstrated a significant improvement, emphasizing that a money based incentive and a threat to job security increases the performance of teachers.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/october/dee-teacher-assessments-101713.html