Teacher Evaluation and Student Achievement in Elementary Education

Abstract

Historically, the state of Missouri has utilized the Performance-Based Teacher Evaluation (PBTE) system developed by Dr. Jerry Valentine from the University of Missouri (Valentine & Harting, 1986). The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 mandated more rigorous accountability standards for state education systems (Moe, 2014). The 2012 revisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provided to Missouri by the U.S. Department of Education relieved the original mandates of the NCLB Act (MODESE, 2015a). However, added were provisions for teacher and administrator accountability which required evaluation of research-based principles of effective instruction (MODESE 2015a). In this study, the researcher reviewed one evaluation system, the Network for Educator Effectiveness (NEE) teacher evaluation system, to determine if a correlation existed between principal evaluation data and student perception data of specific classroom teachers in relation to student performance on state assessments. Of the six research questions included in the case study, the data generated for question three with a bivariate correlate for the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient for the NEE Evaluation Indicator 4.1 principal’s evaluation and student survey data for Indicator 4.1 revealed the best line of fit with r = .63. The significance output of p < .01 was the greatest significant correlation of the study. These data indicate both the students and the principal recognize the teacher’s level of implementation for Indicator 4.1 (teacher instructional strategies leading to student problem-solving and critical thinking). No other correlates were found to be significant for this study.