A new report titled “Teacher Evaluator Training and Certification: Lessons Learned from
the Measures of Effective Teaching Project,” was based on the collaborative work on
video-taping and scoring over 23,000 lessons across 3,000 classrooms for the MET
project. The report makes a series of recommendations for evaluator training, including:
* The best training for evaluators is authentic scoring practice. Principals and
other evaluators need the opportunity to score real lessons, in real time, and get
* Any training program must include exemplar videos of classroom sessions that have
been pre-scored by instruction experts.
* Evaluator training must focus on both accuracy and consistency. Accuracy and
consistency are not synonymous—multiple observers can agree on a teacher’s
performance, yet they can all be wrong.
* Training for observers must prepare them to understand the difference between bias,
interpretation, and evidence.
* Principals must be trained on both high-end and low-end teacher performance.