Straight up conversation: Teacher eval guru Charlotte Danielson

There's been a heavy emphasis of late on teacher evaluation, with states and districts making it a pillar of their efforts to rethink tenure, pay, and professional norms. States and districts have adopted systems that rely heavily on observational evaluation to complement or stand in for value-added metrics. In many cases, they are turning to celebrated edu-consultant Charlotte Danielson's "Danielson Framework for Teaching." Just last week, Danielson was in New York City with NYCDOE chief academic officer Shael Polakow-Suransky to discuss NYC's reform efforts (NYC is using Danielson's framework as it designs new teaching standards). The Consortium on Chicago School Research is currently in the midst of a two-year review examining the adoption of the Danielson Framework in Chicago. The first report, released last year, termed the Danielson Framework "a reliable tool for identifying low-quality teaching" and said it "has potential for improving teacher evaluation systems." In light of all this, I thought it worth chatting with Charlotte about some of the ins and outs of teacher evaluation and what cautions or advice she might have for practitioners or policymakers.