TAP's Elements Multiple Career Paths Ongoing Applied Professional Growth Instructionally Focused Accountability Performance-Based Compensation Bibliography TAP Outcomes Legislation Understanding Value-Added Teacher Quality Resources The Working Group on Teacher Quality
Instructionally Focused Accountability
The TAP Teaching Skills, Knowledge and Responsibilities Performance Standards are the backbone of TAP’s Instructionally Focused Accountability element. These standards were developed based on education psychology research focusing on learning and instruction.
The research for this element includes the following:
- Daley & Kim (2010) validate the strength of TAP’s evaluation system in differentiating effective from ineffective teaching; producing classroom evaluations and value-added student growth evaluations that are correlated with and complementary to each other; providing useful information to enable teachers to improve their practice over time; and contributing to an increase in the retention of effective teachers as compared to ineffective teachers.
- Odden, Milanowski & Youngs (1998) argue that the challenge of creating an effective teacher accountability system is to improve the quality of teacher instruction, and thereby raise student achievement. To do this, Odden and Clune (1998) instruct states and school districts to identify the knowledge and skills that a teacher needs to teach successfully, and then create standards and rubrics to measure teaching performance.
- The criteria for the TAP teaching standards came from both experimental design studies and correlation studies that used valid and reliable achievement tests in classrooms (see Schacter & Thum, 2004).
- TAP reviewed instructional guidelines and standards developed by numerous national and state teacher standards organizations and from this information developed its own set of standards for teacher accountability. The work reviewed included guidelines and standards developed by:
- The Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC)
- The National Board for Professional Teacher Standards
- Massachusetts' Principles for Effective Teaching
- California's Standards for the Teaching Profession
- Connecticut's Beginning Educator Support Program and
- The New Teacher Center's Developmental Continuum of Teacher Abilities.
- The work of Danielson (1996) served as a valuable resource for defining the teaching competencies at each level of teacher performance.
- The teacher responsibility rubrics were designed based on the work of Rowley (1999) and various teacher accountability systems including:
- Rochester (New York) Career in Teaching Program
- Douglas County (Colorado) Teacher's Performance Pay Plan
- Vaughn Next Century Charter School (Los Angeles, CA) Performance Pay Plan and
- Rolla (Missouri) School District Professional Based Teacher Evaluation.
Margaret Spellings,
Former U.S. Secretary of Education
"TAP lets teachers move up a career ladder while staying in their classrooms . . . The program also rewards teachers who make a real difference in the classroom by improving student performance. When we treat teachers better, students perform better."