Educator effectiveness is a United States K-12 school system education policy initiative that measures the quality of an educator performance in terms of improving student learning. It describes a variety of methods, such as observations, student assessments, student work samples and examples of teacher work, that education leaders use to determine the effectiveness of a K-12 educator.
The drive for educator effectiveness programs stem from the Race to the Top program, where states were awarded points for meeting educational policies based on the teacher's effectiveness. This policy was the basis of the emergence of statewide educator effectiveness programs.
Educator effectiveness programs vary from state to state. Typically, an educator effectiveness program describes a cycle of observations and assessments that apply to different groups of teachers during an academic year. New teachers are evaluated more frequently, and veteran teachers are evaluated across multiple year cycles. Evaluated teachers have multiple scheduled classroom observations and conferences with the evaluator in addition to unannounced classroom observations. A controversial aspect of The purpose of evaluations is to help educators determine what is effective in their practices and provides them a medium to reflect upon and change their practice to help teachers become more effective.