A national study by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found
that effective teaching can be measured, adding weight to the
arguments of those who support using students’ test scores to
evaluate a teacher’s performance. The results come as the clock
is ticking on a teacher evaluation deal between New York City’s
Department of Education and its teachers’ union, with
negotiations stuck largely over this issue of “value-added”
metrics. “We are confident that we can identify groups of
teachers who are comparatively more effective than their peers
in helping students learn,” the researchers said. “Great
teaching does make a difference.” The report was released by the
Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, which relied on
3,000 teacher volunteers from New York City and five other
public school systems, including Denver, Colorado and Charlotte-
Mecklenburg, North Carolina. The $45 million, three-year project
sought to answer a nagging question: do some teachers seem more
effective just because they have higher