A study paid for by the U.S. Department of Education will try to determine whether teacher teams outperform individuals.
The study being conducted in Tennessee by three universities — Vanderbilt, Brown and Harvard — will match teachers who are weak in particular areas with teachers who are strong, based on that state's evaluation system.
The statewide experiment at 1,453 schools will look for ways to harness the new system for measuring teacher performance. States, including Georgia, are required by the federal government to implement teacher evaluation systems.
Georgia is using a mix of administrator observations and student test results to score teachers. The $5 million grant to study partnerships could be relevant to Georgia, since teachers have been telling Gov. Nathan Deal’s Education Reform Commission that new teachers need mentors to carry them through their early years in the classroom. The commission is expected to issue formal recommendations in December that could become law next year, if the General Assembly takes them up.
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