• Sampling of Performance - the selection of an array of teaching performances and settings to be evaluated so that they are wide enough in range and large enough in numbers both to: (1) cover the scope of the performances addressed by the evaluation system in terms of representativeness and comprehensiveness, and (2) permit valid inferences about performances to be made. See   Error of Measurement.

• Sanction - that which is given to encourage improvement in less than satisfactory performance or service, or as a penalty for poor performance. See  Reward.

• Scale (Rating) - a series of numerical or descriptive ratings on a continuum used to assess or judge specific levels of performance. See  Behaviorally-Anchored Rating Scale, Rating.

• Schedule - the designated dates and times for various activities related to the evaluation (e.g., when the classroom will be observed, when the portfolio is to be submitted, when the teacher will be interviewed). The schedule, which is part of the procedures, should also indicate the location of such activities and the people who will be involved. See  Frequency of Evaluation, Timeline.

• Scope of Content - the extent of coverage, by an instrument or process, of all knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors to be measured, in terms of both breadth and depth of coverage.

• Score (noun)  - the number of points earned on a measure or the degree of success on an assessment of teacher attributes or performance. Scores are usually expressed in numerical terms, but sometimes in descriptive terms or graphically. See  Estimate, Obtained Score.

• Scorer - an assessor who summarizes the results of an assessment for use by an evaluator or decision maker. See  Assessor, Evaluator, Scoring.

• Scoring - the process of determining the value of a performance on an indicator or criterion. See  Analytic Scoring, Holistic Scoring, Primary Trait Scoring, Score, Scorer.

• Scoring Dimension - an attribute or facet of behavior or performance in a domain. Dimensions are usually determined through logical or statistical analysis, and sometimes are reported as part scores. See   Criterion-Domain.

• Scoring Rubric - a set of rules, guidelines, or benchmarks at different levels of performance, or prescribed descriptors for use in quantifying measures of teacher attributes and performance. See  Analytic Scoring, Holistic Scoring, Primary Trait Scoring, Protocol.

• Scripting - the writing of evidence and notes throughout an assessment activity (e.g., interview, classroom observation) about what is happening. Scripting does not include making judgments or interpreting the evidence and notes. Scripting may be continuous throughout the activity or intermittent at pre-specified time intervals (e.g., 3 minutes on, 2 minutes off). See  Evidence, Notes.

• Secondary Standards - those standards that apply to the evaluation process and assessment methods rather than to the teachers being evaluated or to their performance levels, and for which it is desirable, but not crucial or important, that they be met or addressed before the assessments are administered and the evaluation process is implemented. See   Primary Standards, Standards (Legal), Standards (Professional), Standards (Technical).

• Self-Assessment - the process of judging one's own teaching performance for the purpose of self-improvement. A teacher may use such techniques as self-viewing on a videotape, observing and modeling exemplary teachers, filling out self-rating forms, completing open-ended self-reports, keeping a log, compiling a portfolio, or using self-study handbooks and materials. See   Reflection, Self-Evaluation, Self-Study Materials.

• Self-Evaluation - the process of reviewing one's own behavior and student learning outcomes for the purpose of monitoring and changing one's own teaching performance. See  Reflection, Self-Assessment, Student Learning Outcomes.

• Self-Report Measures - those instruments in which teachers record their own recollections of events, feelings, judgments, and attitudes. See  Self-Evaluation.

• Self-Study Materials - the programs designed for use by a teacher in assessing his/her own teaching behaviors. See  Self-Assessment.

• Sensitivity - the awareness and understanding of other people's feelings, attitudes, social and cultural backgrounds, ethnic traditions and customs, languages, interests, rights, and needs.

• Setting - the temporal and physical environment of an event or activity. See  Context (Teaching), Learning Environment.

• Similar-to-Me Effect - a type of rater effect in which an assessor or an evaluator judges more favorably those people seen as similar to himself/herself. See   Rater Effect.

• Simulation - an imitation of a typical job task or situation to assess how well a teacher might implement such a task or perform in an actual situation (e.g., asking a science teacher to prepare slides for biology, having a music teacher listen to a tape and show how he/she would conduct that piece of music using the musical score in front of him/her, asking a fourth-grade teacher to develop and present a learning activity on interpreting map symbols). See  Assessment Center, Surrogate Task, Task, Work Simulation.

• Situational Specificity - the extent to which it is appropriate to use an assessment conducted in one setting or context for other settings or contexts. See  Context (Teaching), Generalizability, Transportability, Validity.

• Skill - the ability to use knowledge in a practical manner. See  Ability, Capacity, Competency, Knowledge, Talent.

• Specifications (Assessment) - a delineation of the major attributes of an assessment to be developed, including breadth and depth of content to be covered, level of difficulty, format of the assessment materials, supplies and equipment needed, level of complexity, administrative process (e.g., individual or group, location, timing), scoring procedures, and numbers and types of items and tasks.

• Spontaneous Performance Assessment - a measure based on observing, without prompting or preannouncing, what a teacher does during non-assessment activities (e.g., the principal oversees one teacher helping another teacher prepare a plan for working with a difficult student).

• Stakeholders - those individuals who have a substantial interest in teacher evaluation and in the quality of teaching. These include not only the teacher and the principal, but also other teachers, school and district staff, students, parents, school board members, future employers, taxpayers, and community members. See  Audience.

• Standard - the level of performance on the criterion being assessed that is considered satisfactory in terms of the purpose of the evaluation. There are three major categories of standards, related to various purposes. (1) Developmental standards specify improvement levels to be attained and may be used for professional development and self-assessment. (2) Minimum standards designate the level below which performance is not acceptable and are used for such purposes as licensure and job assignments. (3) Desired performance standards reflect what is regarded as accomplished or effective teaching and typically are used for such purposes as promotions, awards, and certification. See   Criterion.

• Standard Score - an indicator of the relative standing of a score within a normal distribution of scores, defined by its mean and standard deviation. By transforming raw scores to standard scores, the user can interpret intervals between any two score points in relation to a reference population. Z scores are a commonly used standard score transformation, providing a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. A teacher evaluation system may use several different tests or assessmnets. If it is important to compare a teacher's performance on the different assessments, then the scores from each test or assessment need to be standardized. Given that each of the assessments may have a different number of items or rating scale points and each may have been administered to different groups of teachers, standardizing the scores within each distribution becomes a necessity for purposes of comparing a teahcer's performance on the different assessments. By transforming the raw scores for each assessment into standard scores, it becomes possible to determine a teacher's relative strengths and weaknesses within the groups of teachers upon which the scores were standardized.
• See
  Raw Score.
• Standard Setting - the determination of the teaching performance level considered acceptable in terms of the purpose of the evaluation. Standards are usually determined using empirical or judgmental techniques, or a combination of these. See  Standard.

• Standardization - the use of consistent procedures for administering, scoring, reviewing, interpreting, and reporting the results of the teacher evaluation.

• Standardized Conditions - the administration of an assessment process or instrument to all teachers in the identical manner (e.g., same instructions and timing, comparable settings, use of trained assessors and evaluators). See   Irregularity.

• Standards (Legal) - those guidelines and requirements related to an assessment and evaluation that are specified in the law, governmental policies and regulations, school district policies, and court decisions. See  Primary Standards, Secondary Standards.

• Standards (Professional) - those guidelines related to an assessment and evaluation that are specified by the individuals and associations in the career area affected, directly or indirectly, by the assessment. See  Primary Standards, Secondary Standards.

• Standards (Technical) - those guidelines related to an assessment and evaluation that are specified by psychometricians, statisticians, test publishers, and specialists in the domain covered by the assessment. See  Primary Standards, Secondary Standards.

• Stringency - a type of rater effect in which an assessor or an evaluator tends to rate a teacher too low or to judge the performance level as poorer than it actually is. Sometimes stringency is referred to as "negative leniency." See  Leniency, Rater Effect.

• Structured Performance Assessment - a measure based on the administration of an assessment instrument or task at a specified time and in a designated manner.

• Student Learning Outcomes - the measures of student achievement of knowledge and skills and other educational outcomes such as improved student attitudes and behaviors that should have been taught to them by the teacher being evaluated. This term covers acquisition, retention, application, transfer, and adaptability of knowledge and skills. See  Outcome Variables, Teacher-Outcomes Evaluation.

• Style-Based Evaluation - a teacher evaluation approach that uses criteria which specify in what way or how teachers are to perform their job (e.g., announced objectives at the start of each lesson, use of cooperative learning techniques) rather than what teachers are responsible for doing. See  Duty, Foundation, Responsibility.

• Subjective (adjective)  - a characteristic of an assessment, observation, or conclusion that yields results which cannot be empirically verified by another person. See  High Inference, Judgment, Objective, Replicable, Verification.

• Summary - a concise report encompassing the major results of an assessment or an evaluation of a teacher's performance.

• Summative Teacher Evaluation - an evaluation conducted primarily for the purpose of making personnel decisions about the teacher (e.g., merit pay, reassignment, promotion, dismissal, tenure). Summative evaluation usually is done by an administrator rather than a supervisor or another teacher. See  Formative Teacher Evaluation.

• Supervisor - the person responsible for overseeing the work of a teacher and for ensuring that the teacher performs his/her duties and professional responsibilities. See  Administrator.

• Surrogate Task - a substitute or replacement for an actual activity or task, but one that is very similar to the actual task and that uses the same types of skills, behaviors, materials, and equipment. An example is asking a candidate for a teaching position to present a lesson to a group of ten students. See   Simulation, Task, Work Sample, Work Simulation.

• Synthesis - the process of combining data and information from multiple sources, or of ratings and judgments on separate scoring dimensions in order to arrive at a conclusion or result. See   Analysis, Configural Scoring Rule, Review, Scoring Dimension, Weighted Score.

• Systemic Validity - See   Validity.

• Talent - an unusually high level of proficiency in performing a task or using a skill. Talent can be in the affective, cognitive, and psychomotor domains. See  Ability, Affective Domain, Cognitive Domain, Merit, Proficiency, Psychomotor Domain, Skill.

• Task - an assessment activity or assignment to be completed by the teacher being evaluated. See  Simulation, Surrogate Task, Work Sample, Work Simulation.

• Teachable - the practicality or feasibility of providing instruction on a topic, knowledge area, or skill in terms of the readiness of the learners, the expertise of the teachers, and the availability of resources (e.g., equipment, time).

• Teacher Effectiveness - the attribute of a teacher who has the capability or potential of having a positive impact on student learning, behavior, and attitudes. See   Effective Teaching.

• Teacher Evaluation - the systematic appraisal of a teacher's performance and/or qualifications in relation to the teacher's defined professional role and responsibities as well as to the school's and district's missions. See Assessment, Evaluation, Performance Evaluation. See  Assessment, Evaluation, Performance Evaluation.

• Teacher Evaluation System - a complete approach to the evaluation of teachers including its purpose, the rules and regulations that apply, the target group to be evaluated, the domains to be covered, the procedures and methods to be employed, the instruments to be used, the persons to be involved, and the types of reports and feedback to be provided.

• Teacher Improvement - the accomplishment of goals and objectives for professional development, growth in knowledge, acquisition of skills, and changes in practices. See  Plan of Assistance, Professional Development, Remediation.

• Teacher Norms - the expectations of teacher behavior in a given context or setting that are usually learned during student teaching or in the first year of teaching in a new school. See  Induction.

• Teacher-Outcomes Evaluation - an approach to evaluating teachers that is based on student performance, usually standardized achievement test results. See  Student Learning Outcomes.

• Teachers' Rights - the privileges of teachers guaranteed by law and under their collective bargaining agreement. They include the rights to form and organize a teachers' association, to select their representatives, and to bargain collectively. See  Collective Bargaining Agreement, Collective Bargaining Unit.

• Temporary Teacher - a teacher who is filling a position for a specified period of time, whether to fill a vacancy on a short-term basis (one year or less) or for an experimental teaching position with a designated ending date.

• Tenure - an employment status conferred upon a teacher by state law or institutional regulation after successful completion of a probationary period. Tenure provides substantial, but not complete, protection against arbitrary or capricious dismissal and termination, and entitles the teacher to due process procedures and other protections that may not be available to the non-tenured teacher. See  Dismissal, Due Process, Permanent Teacher, Probationary Teacher, Tenured Teacher.

• Tenured Teacher - a teacher who has completed a probationary period (usually two to five years) and is now considered a permanent employee of the school district with all applicable benefits and rights as specified in state law, district policy, and the collective bargaining agreement. See   Collective Bargaining Agreement, Permanent Teacher, Probationary Teacher, Tenure.

• Termination - See Dismissal

• Test (noun)  - an assessment instrument consisting of a sample of items or tasks from a particular domain and that can provide an estimate of performance in that domain. See  Instrument, Measure (noun), Sampling of Performance.

• Test (verb)  - to administer an instrument or implement an assessment process. See  Assessment, Instrument, Measure (verb).

• Test Score Pollution - an inflation of test scores that is the results of practices, usually associated with high-stakes testing, which are designed to increase test scores or performance ratings without improvement of actual performance on the attributes being assessed. See  Coaching, High-Stakes Testing.

• Theory-Based Evaluation - a teacher evaluation approach that is based on certain theories of teaching or of learning. See  Foundation.

• Timeline - a calendar or list of dates showing the evaluation stages and activities, and indicating the dates by which they should be implemented and be completed. See   Frequency of Evaluation.

• Timeliness - coming at an opportune time, or providing information at a point when it can readily inform the teacher evaluation process.

• Track Record - a summary of past events and accomplishments related to a teacher's performance (e.g., education and training completed, conferences attended, awards received by the teacher and/or students). See  Experience.

• Training - the provision of instruction and planned activities to facilitate the learning of specific knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes, and behaviors. See  Coaching, Instruction, Mentoring, On-the-Job Training.

• Transferability - (1) the degree to which the knowledge and skills demonstrated in solving an assessment task can be used in solving other work-related tasks and real-world activities. (2) one of several characteristics used to evaluate assessments. See  Generalizability.

• Transportability - the appropriateness of extending the use of a policy, instrument, assessment procedure, or evaluation system across different teachers, student groups, subject areas, instructional approaches, learning activities, school settings, states, etc. See   Generalizability, Situational Specificity, Validity Generalization Study.

• Triangulation - the attempt to obtain more valid results by using multiple sources of data about one aspect of performance, multiple methods of collecting data, and/or multiple interpretations of the same data. See  Congruence Analysis, Corroborating Evidence, Multiple Measures, Validity, Verification.

• True Score - a hypothetical score that represents an assessment result which is entirely free of error. Sometimes true score is thought of as the average score of an infinite series of assessments with the same or exactly equivalent instruments, but with no practice effect or change in the person being assessed across the series of assessments. See   Error of Measurement, Estimate, Obtained Score.

• Trust - a common understanding of the purpose and potential of teacher evaluation, and a cooperative spirit between the teacher and the evaluator for maximizing the benefits of doing the evaluation. Trust is related to such factors as confidentiality of communication, careful consideration of the accuracy of evidence from such sources as hearsay or complaints, honesty, openness, sharing, and sincerity on the part of both the teacher and the evaluator. See  Credible.

• Unintended Consequences - any unplanned or unanticipated outcomes that occur as a result of implementing an assessment or evaluation. For example, the use of student test scores as part of the teacher evaluation data results in test score pollution practices and more use of teaching-to-the-test activities accompanied by less reliance on the district curriculum guide for planning instructional activities and lessons. See   Consequences, Validity-Consequential Basis of.

• USED - United States Department of Education, part of the executive branch of the United States Government.

• Utility (of Teacher Evaluation System) - (1) the practical value of a teacher evaluation system with respect to such factors as time requirements, logistics, resources needed, costs and benefits, and district and state policies, as well as the technical concerns of validity and reliability. (2) one of four areas of standards in The Personnel Evaluation Standards: How To Assess Systems for Evaluating Educators  by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. This area has five sets of standards: Constructive Orientation, Defined Uses, Evaluator Credibility, Functional Reporting, Follow-up and Impact. See  Accuracy, Administrative Feasibility, Feasibility, Propriety.

• Validation - the process of determining the appropriateness, meaningfulness, and usefulness of a measure, an instrument, or an assessment process, and of the inferences made from the results of it. See   Validity, Validity Coefficient.

• Validity - the extent to which the test scores or responses measure the attribute(s) that they were designed to measure. Several types of validity are described below. See  Generalizability, Validation, Validity Coefficient.
  • Concurrent - the relationship of one measure to another simultaneous measure or variable assessing the same or a related attribute.
  • Consequential Basis of Validity - the assemblage of information on the theoretical and value implications of the way that the results of testing are used, and the appraisal of both the potential and actual social consequences of the testing, including side effects.
  • Construct - the degree of fit of a measure and its interpretation with its underlying explanatory concepts, theoretical rationales, or foundations.
  • Content - (1) the appropriateness of the domain definition and the sampling of content. (2) the extent of congruence between the scope of a content area that an instrument or process claims to cover and what it actually does cover. Both definitions are aspects of construct validity.
  • Criterion-Related - the correlation or extent of agreement of the test score from an assessment with one or more external variables that measure the attribute being assessed.
  • Curricular - the extent to which the items on the assessment or test measure the content of a local curriculum, or the extent of agreement between the test coverage (topics, breadth and depth, skills, cognitive complexity) and the goals and objectives of the curriculum.
  • Evidential Basis of Validity - the assemblage of information about the construct validity of the test scores and measurements, as well as the relevance of the measurement to its applied purpose and its utility in an applied setting. Construct validity, in this case, includes information collected from content and criterion-related validation procedures.
  • Face - the perceived extent of acceptability or legitimacy of an instrument or process to teachers, administrators, policymakers, students, parents, the general public, and other stakeholders concerned with teacher evaluation and the quality of teaching.
  • Instructional - the degree to which the items on a test measure: (a) what is actually being taught, and (b) what the individuals being assessed have had an opportunity to learn.
  • Predictive - the relationship of a measure to performance in a future context such as a new work setting or to the results obtained on a future measure assessing a similar or a different (but presumably related) attribute.
  • Systemic - the negative and positive consequences of testing that should be monitored in order to evaluate the long-range value of the test.

• Validity Coefficient - a measure of the degree of validity, usually expressed as the correlation between the measure in question and another measure or a variable. See   Correlation, Validation, Validity.

• Validity Generalization Study - an investigation of the degree of generalizability or of transportability of a policy, instrument, process, procedure, or evaluation system. See   Generalizability, Transportability.

• Value - an estimation or a measure of the merit and/or worth of a teacher in terms of the intrinsic qualities of the individual teacher (merit) and of the teacher's potential benefit to the school and its students (worth). See  Merit, Worth.

• Value-Added - the change in an attribute or product that can be linked to an intervention. Examples are the change in student test scores before and after completion of a course or the change in the effectiveness of a teacher's classroom management skills as a result of participation in a workshop series on these skills.

• Variable - a behavior, characteristic, or event that can change in value from one context to another or over time, or from one individual or group to another (e.g., gender, fluency in a second language, course units completed, test scores, years of teaching experience). See  Input Variables, Outcome Variables, Process Variable.

• Verification - the process of checking the accuracy of data and information about the teacher's experience, training, performance, and other attributes. See   Accuracy, Audit, Congruence Analysis, Quality Check, Triangulation.

• Weighted Score - a score adjusted by such factors as the importance of the attribute assessed to teaching performance, or the reliability and validity of the assessment from which the score was derived, or a combination of such factors. See  Composite Score, Configural Scoring Rule, Preponderance, Synthesis.

• Wisdom of Practice - that which a teacher learns about teaching through direct experience and/or shared, detailed descriptions of teaching (e.g., case studies).

• Work Sample - an assessment method that uses actual and typical on-the-job activities or tasks (e.g., asking a teacher to write a report to parents on a student's progress during the past semester). See  Surrogate Task, Task, Work Simulation.

• Work Simulation - a surrogate or imitation of a work sample task (e.g., asking a teacher to list what features he/she would look for when grading student book reports and to provide the scoring rubric). See  Simulation, Task.

• Worth - the system-related or extrinsic value of a teacher to the school and its students. For example, being able to speak Spanish could be of high worth in a school that does not have enough Spanish-speaking teachers, whereas being able to coach basketball may be of low worth to the school if there are already several teachers who can coach basketball. Knowing Spanish and being able to coach basketball still reflect teacher merit and have value, and may or may not have worth at another school or at another time in the same school. See  Merit, Value.

Glossary References

Agencies and Associations with resources related to teacher evaluation.