Including Students With Disabilities and English Learners in Measures of Educator Effectiveness

Source: Educational Researcher 42(4): 234-241. May 2013.

This essay aims to provide an overview of the challenges of accounting for students with disabilities (SWDs) and English learners (ELs) in the evaluation of mainstream teachers.

The authors focus on the two prominent indicators of teaching quality—classroom observations and value-added scores.

They describe each indicator and outline the specific challenges related to the inclusion of SWDs and ELs in mainstream teacher evaluation.

The authors then suggest recommendations for states and districts to ensure that teacher evaluation systems adequately and fairly account for these students.