What is effective teaching? It is not enough to say "I know it when I see it"--not when we are expecting so much more from students and teachers than in the past. To help teachers achieve greater success with their students we need new and better ways to identify and develop effective teaching. The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project represents a groundbreaking effort to find out what works in the classroom. With funding by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MET project brought together leading academics, education groups, and 3,000 teachers to study teaching and learning from every angle. Its reports on student surveys, observations, and other measures that have shaped policy and practice at multiple levels. This book shares the latest lessons from the MET project. With 15 original studies, some of the field's most preeminent experts tap the MET project's unprecedented collection of data to offer new insights on evaluation methods and the current state of teaching in our schools. As feedback and evaluation methods evolve rapidly across the country, "Designing Teacher Evaluation Systems" is a must read and timely resource for those working on this critical task. This book contains the following chapters: (1) Why Measure Effective Teaching (Jeff Archer, Kerri A. Kerr, and Robert C. Pianta); (2) Grade-Level Variation in Observational Measures of Teacher Effectiveness (Kata Mihaly and Daniel F. Mccaffrey); (3) Improving Observational Score Quality (Courtney A. Bell, Yi Qi, Andrew J. Croft, Dawn Leusner, Daniel F. Mccaffrey, Drew H. Gitomer, and Robert C. Pianta); (4) How Framework for Teaching and Tripod 7Cs Evidence Distinguish Key Components of Effective Teaching (Ronald F. Ferguson and Charlotte Danielson); (5) Making Decisions with Imprecise Performance Measures (Douglas O. Staiger and Thomas J. Kane); (6) To What Extent Do Student Perceptions of Classroom Quality Predict Teacher Value Added (Stephen W. Raudenbush and Marshall Jean); (7) Combining Classroom Observations and Value Added for the Evaluation and Professional Development of Teachers (Erik A. Ruzek, Christopher A. Hafen, Bridget K. Hamre, and Robert C. Pianta); (8) Classroom Observation and Value-Added Models Give Complementary Information About Quality of Mathematics Teaching (Candace Walkington and Michael Marder); (9) Does the Test Matter (Morgan S. Polikoff); (10) Understanding Instructional Quality in English Language Arts (Pam Grossman, Julie Cohen, and Lindsay Brown); (11) How Working Conditions Predict Teaching Quality and Student Outcomes (Ronald F. Ferguson and Eric Hirsch); (12) Evaluating Efforts to Minimize Rater Bias in Scoring Classroom Observations (Yoon Soo Park, Jing Chen, and Steven L. Holtzman); (13) Scoring Design Decisions (Jilliam N. Joe, Catherine A. Mcclellan, and Steven L. Holtzman); (14) Assessing Quality Teaching in Science (Susan E. Schultz and Raymond L. Pecheone); (15) Evidence on the Validity of Content Knowledge for Teaching Assessments (Drew H. Gitomer, Geoffrey Phelps, Barbara H. Weren, Heather Howell, and Andrew J. Croft); and (16) Optimizing Resources to Maximize Student Gains (Catherine A. Mcclellan, John R. Donoghue, and Robert Pianta). The Conclusion: Measuring Effective Teaching--The Future Starts Now was written by Robert Pianta and Kerri A. Kerr. Contains an author and subject index.