[pnh102]

I wonder if there are other ways to measure teacher performance outside of test results of students? I don't think it is fair to a good teacher to teach in a bad school and then be judged as a bad teacher because the students in the bad school aren't exactly willing participants in the learning process.

Likewise, you can put a mediocre (or even a bad) teacher in a good school and most likely the standardized tests will show the teacher to be "good."

I prefer testing teachers for competency in their subjects instead.

[American Silver Eagle]

I wonder the same thing. I guarantee that a bad teacher with a good class will do way better than a good teacher with a bad class.

[NonValueAdded]

It is true that you don’t want to rank the teacher based on the crumbling foundation built by all those that came before. BUT, when you entrance then exit test the teacher’s students and calculate the delta, you have a better measure of teacher performance. Plus you can discount the likely limited achievement of those with poor entrance scores to mitigate the legacy penalty.