Teacher Effectiveness: The Whole Picture

The December 2010/January 2011 Educational Leadership hits mailboxes this week. Here's just under half of what's in store:

• Measuring Effectiveness: What Will It Take? Looking at potential benefits and challenges—including promoting team-based, as opposed to individual, accountability—of the new emphasis on measuring teacher effectiveness.
• Raising Teacher Quality Around the World: What can nations learn from one another about attracting and retaining talented teachers?
• Notes from an Accidental Teacher: Carol Ann Tomlinson reflects on her journey to become a teacher and the five professional practices that led her home.
• Leadership, Not Magic: A close-up look at the Teach For America teachers who are closing achievement gaps. 
• Evaluations That Help Teachers Learn: Charlotte Danielson talks about the meaningful conversations about practice that must replace peremptory checklists.
• The Flexible Teacher: Good teaching depends on teachers' ability to respond to the classroom context and to adjust instruction to serve student needs.
• Spend Money Like It Matters: Merit pay must be more than a gimmick if it is going to improve the teaching profession.
• Merit Pay Misfires: Why bonuses tied to student test scores will produce measurement, morale, and motivation problems.
• Once a Struggling Student . . . : Forty-six teachers tell what they learned about teaching from having faced difficulties as students.
• Book Review—Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov: Our good friend Dina Strasser says thumbs up for the strategies but is ambivalent about some of the assumptions.
• Digitally Speaking: Using Social Media to Reach Your Community: Pal Bill Ferriter talks about using social media to share news, celebrate victories, and answer questions about your school.
• From Critic to Catalyst: How to reframe supervision as collaborative inquiry.

Look for the issue online at the top of the month. *UPDATE* The issue is now available online.