Learning about Teaching Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project

In fall 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project to test new approaches to measuring effective teaching. The goal of the MET project is to improve the quality of information about teaching effectiveness available to education professionals within states and districts— information that will help them build fair and reliable systems for measuring teacher effectiveness that can be used for a variety of purposes, including feedback, development, and continuous improvement. The project includes nearly 3000 teachers who volunteered to help us identify a better approach to teacher development and evaluation, located in six predominantly urban school districts across the country: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools (including Tampa, Florida), Memphis City Schools, and the New York City Department of Education. As part of the project, multiple data sources are being collected and analyzed over two school years, including student achievement gains on state assessments and supplemental assessments designed to assess higher-order conceptual understanding; classroom observations and teacher reflections on their practice; assessments of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge; student perceptions of the classroom instructional environment; and teachers’ perceptions of working conditions and instructional support at their schools.