Assuring Highly Effective Teachers for All Ohio Students

A teacher's effectiveness has a tremendous impact on a child's learning and academic trajectory. Ohio has debated for many months about how best to strengthen the quality of its teaching force. The biennial budget adopted in June calls for the state to develop a model teacher evaluation framework by the end of 2011 and to adopt policies tying teacher evaluations to key personnel decisions such as compensation, placement, tenure, and dismissal. Likewise, school districts and charter schools must implement their own local evaluations, based on the state model, starting in 2013-14.

It's evident that Ohio schools are about to undergo a major shift when it comes to how teachers are evaluated and developed, a change with great potential to impact student achievement. For this reason, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, along with the Nord Family Foundation and Ohio Grantmakers Forum, are convening this public discussion (and another one in Lorain) on assuring highly effective teachers for students across the state.

Featured speakers include:

Mike Miles, superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado, a school system on the cutting edge of teacher compensation reform, will review the teacher-effectiveness work his district is doing and the results they're seeing. Kate Walsh, President of the National Council on Teacher Quality, will discuss the state of teacher effectiveness nationally and what can be learned from research about teacher quality. Eric Gordon, new superintendent of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, will provide an Ohio voice on the panel. Gordon was one of the major architects of CMSD's Academic Transformation plan, which garnered national recognition for its approach to school reform.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, moderated the discussion.