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A new report from Stanford University researcher Linda Darling-Hammond details what the components of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system should look like at a time when such assessments have become one of the most contentious debates in education today. Much of the controversy swirls around the growing trend of using students' standardized test scores over time to help assess teacher effectiveness. This "value-added" method of assessment - which involves the use of complicated formulas that supposedly evaluate how much "value" a teacher adds to a student's achievement - is considered unreliable and not valid by many experts, though school reformers have glommed onto it with great zeal.

Virtually everyone agrees that teacher evaluation in the United States needs an overhaul. Existing systems rarely help teachers improve or clearly distinguish those who are succeeding from those who are struggling. The tools that are used do not always represent the important features of good teaching. Criteria and methods for evaluating teachers vary substantially across districts and at key career milestones-when teachers complete pre-service teacher education, become initially licensed, are considered for tenure, and receive a professional license.  A comprehensive system should address these purposes in a coherent way and provide support for supervision and professional learning, identify teachers who need additional assistance and-in some cases-a change of career, and recognize expert teachers who can contribute to the learning of their peers. This report outlines an integrated approach that connects these goals to a teaching-career continuum and a professional development system that supports effectiveness for all teachers at every stage of their careers.

For the second time, the state's labor relations board has ruled that the city must accept mediation in its teacher evaluation talks with the United Federation of Teachers. The board, the Public Employees Relations Board, first decided in March to heed the UFT's request and appoint a mediator to broker negotiations about teacher evaluations in the 33 schools that until December had been receiving federal School Improvement Grants. But the city appealed the decision, arguing that it was no longer planning to negotiate a separate evaluation system for just those schools. Now the board has affirmed its stance and once again ordered the city into mediated talks with the union.

The breakthrough experiment in New Haven offers a glimpse of an education future that is less rancorous. It's a tribute to the savvy of Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and as shrewd a union leader as any I've seen. She realized that the unions were alienating their allies, and she is trying to change the narrative. New Haven may be home to Yale University, but this is a gritty, low-income school district in which four out of five kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Eighty-four percent of students are black or Hispanic, and graduation rates have been low. A couple of years ago, the school district reached a revolutionary contract with teachers. Pay and benefits would rise, but teachers would embrace reform - including sacrificing job security. With a stronger evaluation system, tenure no longer mattered and weak teachers could be pushed out. Roughly half of a teacher's evaluation would depend on the performance of his or her students - including on standardized tests and other measures of learning. Teachers were protected by a transparent process, and by accountability for principals. But if outside evaluators agreed with administrators that a teacher was failing, the teacher would be out at the end of the school year.

Appearing with union officials in the Capitol, Governor Andrew Cuomo called the agreement "a victory for all New York State." Diane Ravitch, an education expert and professor at New York University, doesn't like the deal at all. Under the deal, 60 percent of a teacher's evaluation will be based on subjective classroom observations by the principal or other school officials, and up to 40 percent will be based on student scores on statewide standardized tests. In an email to me, Ravitch said, "40% is too much, in my view" and "evaluations should be conducted by experienced professionals." She said the plan could result in unfairly low evaluation scores for teachers dealing with students who are not prepared for standardized tests (for example, students with learning disabilities and those who are not proficient in English).

The union for Los Angeles teachers has suspended its legal challenge to a pilot evaluation program that includes using standardized test scores as part of a teacher's performance review. The union also reserved the right to reactivate the case should talks with the district sour. A joint statement released by L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy and United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher said the two sides agree that current teacher evaluation procedures need improvement.

At the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, we read with sympathy Michael Winerip's column on Monday about the grassroots protest across the state by principals who are supposedly being trained in how to do performance evaluations of teachers and other administrators. As Mr. Winerip pointed out, of the 658 New York State principals who had signed a letter protesting the evaluation system, 18 were from New York City schools. In New York City, the so-called training by the state has yet to begin for a majority of our 1,700 principals and 3,000 assistant principals.

Nearly every D.C. teacher offered the chance to forego some of their classroom evaluations chose to do so, under a new incentive program for top teachers. D.C. Public Schools introduced a pilot program in the fall that allows teachers rated "highly effective" on their Impact evaluations for the past two years to skip three of their five classroom observations if they perform well on the first two

In the long-simmering debate over how to judge the quality of New York State school employees, there is one thing all sides agree on: a system should be in place. The sticking point has been agreeing about how to do it. There is the fight between New York City and its teachers' union over the parameters of an evaluation system that must be put in place in 33 struggling schools. And there is the fight waged in court by the state teachers' union, which sued the Board of Regents last year over its interpretation of a law on teacher evaluations.

Regarding teachers' unions with a certain distaste, maintaining the belief that they exist to champion inadequacy, is now virtually required for membership in the affluent, competitive classes, no matter an affiliation on the right or left. Over the past two weeks, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have aggressively pushed for phasing in a new, more rigorous teacher evaluation process - with tens of millions of dollars in state and federal aid to schools at stake - they have deployed a rhetoric of enmity, one meant to suggest that the state's teachers' unions are committed to keeping talentless hacks in jobs they can't handle. As the governor put it on Monday, "Our schools are not an employment program." What has been lost in these performances of reproach and imperiousness is the extent to which the city and state, and the related unions (the United Federation of Teachers in the first instance and New York State United Teachers in the second) are generally in agreement over how classroom evaluations ought to be held and what, in fact, constitutes sound teaching. As it happens, the state union was at work devising substantive evaluation reform more than a year before Mr. Cuomo even took office.

New York State's education commissioner threatened on Tuesday to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to struggling schools in New York City and nine other districts statewide if they do not prove by Saturday that they will carry out new evaluation systems for teachers and principals. Officials and union leaders in each district must first agree on the details of the evaluation systems, like how much weight students' standardized test scores will have on the annual ratings that teachers and principals receive. Compromise has thus far proved elusive.

I should be a cheerleader for the New York evaluation system for educators known as the Annual Professional Performance Review system, or A.P.P.R. I am the principal of a very successful high school where students get great test scores. I have a wonderfully supportive superintendent. My personal "score," in all probability, will be high. The right question to ask, however, is not whether this evaluation system is good or bad for adults, but rather whether it is good or bad for students.

South Side High School Principal Dr. Carol Burris has co-authored a letter, signed by two thirds of Long Island's public school principals and a growing number of educators from across New York state, asking state education Commissioner John B. King Jr. and the Board of Regents to delay and change a new teacher evaluation plan that links educator ratings to student test scores. The letter, co-authored with Sean Feeney of The Wheatley School and sent on Nov. 2, urges the state to use school-wide achievement results in evaluating teachers and principals, pilot and adjust the system before implementing it on a large scale and use performance "bands" - not numbers - to rate education professionals.

Scores of public school principals in New York are fighting the state's new educator evaluation system, which ties the evaluations and pay of teachers and principals to how well students do on standardized tests.

School administrators gave 99.4 percent of all Pennsylvania teachers "satisfactory" ratings during the 2009-10 school year, the latest data available from the state Department of Education show. But, said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality: "That kind of teacher evaluation system tells you almost nothing." The state's teacher evaluations "give no consideration to teacher effectiveness and include no objective measures of student performance," Jacobs said. The nonprofit, nonpartisan council, partly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, recently gave Pennsylvania an overall grade of D+ for progress on policies to support and measure teacher effectiveness and an F for efforts to rid schools of ineffective teachers. That could change. State education officials are trying to convince legislators to change the Pennsylvania school code to allow for more comprehensive teacher evaluations, a move teachers unions tentatively support.

Deborah Gist, Rhode Island's Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, has implemented some major reforms since assuming her role in 2009. She has raised the score required to pass teacher-certification tests and allowed a superintendent to fire all of the teachers at a school that was resisting reforms. Perhaps most notably, she has overseen the implementation of a new teacher-evaluation system. The Hechinger Report recently interviewed Gist about her state's new approach to evaluating teachers.

As a veteran teacher, I cringe when I hear politicians say that current evaluations do not include student learning as a factor. When my principal observes my class, he will witness student learning in many forms. For example, he might see me call on a student who has been struggling. Perhaps that student will not be able to answer the question perfectly, but he will be able to do it far better than he would have at the beginning of the period. My principal is a veteran and knows learning when he sees it. I trust his judgment. The new evaluations hinge on a flawed notion of student progress. This will lead to their downfall.

"A group of expert researchers have published a new collection of articles about teacher evaluation and high-stakes testing and their consequences. The collection appears online in the Teachers College Record. It is called "High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation: High Cost, Big Losses.""

"By year's end I will have entered 8,892 data points into my district's data collection systems - Gradebook and Reading 3D. This data is from homework, assessments, and report cards. Which of these 8,892 data points are the important ones? I mean, which of these data points will count towards my evaluation? And what problem are you trying to address by including student assessments into teacher evaluations? "

Warwick Valley School District leaders are suggesting sending students home an hour early once a month so teachers and principals can implement a new state law requiring staff evaluations. Administrators say they need the extra time to train and certify evaluators, develop a new data analysis process and conduct evaluations under the new state Annual Professional Performance Review regulations.