National Assessments of Teacher Quality

This report addresses the issue of evaluating and measuring the quality of school teachers. In particular, it speaks to the problem of assessing the competence, performance and effectiveness of elementary and secondary teachers through large-scale national sample surveys. Its objective is to provide a foundation and springboard for thinking about the conceptual and methodological issues underlying the development of national survey measures of teacher quality. This paper will not attempt to conceive or construct such measures or indicators themselves. Rather, it seeks to provide background to such efforts. Its role is to review the range of contemporary thought on assessing teacher quality and to discuss the possibilities and problems of adapting existing methods and measures for use in large-scale surveys, such as those undertaken by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education.