Giving Compass' Take:

· A recent report released by the Rand Corporation shows that the costly teacher evaluation systems funded by the Gates Foundation had little, if any, effect on teacher quality and student learning. According to Chalkbeat, the idea came with intentions to improve student success, but didn't lead to any clear gains in student learning.

· What needs to be done to end inequity in schools? What else can be done to improve student success? 

· Learn about a fresh approach to evaluating education systems.

Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address reflected the heady moment in education. “We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000,” he said. “A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.”

Bad teachers were the problem; good teachers were the solution. It was a simplified binary, but the idea and the research it drew on had spurred policy changes across the country, including a spate of laws establishing new evaluation systems designed to reward top teachers and help weed out low performers.

Behind that effort was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which backed research and advocacy that ultimately shaped these changes.

It also funded the efforts themselves, specifically in several large school districts and charter networks open to changing how teachers were hired, trained, evaluated, and paid. Now, new research commissioned by the Gates Foundation finds scant evidence that those changes accomplished what they were meant to: improve teacher quality or boost student learning.

Read the full article about teacher evaluations by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.