Due to the coronavirus pandemic, teachers, principals, and students have had to quickly adjust to distance learning or e-learning. Although data were gathered before the pandemic, the results of the spring 2020 release of Volume 2 of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) offer insights about teachers and principals that may help us better understand the challenges they are experiencing now and about how to support them.

Right now, teachers must navigate additional challenges to accommodate the coronavirus pandemic and school shutdowns. For Teacher Appreciation Week 2020, we are honored to showcase the ingenuity, creativity, and care that teachers are bringing to their virtual classrooms, and to families and communities, as shared by AIR’s experts.

How does the U.S. education workforce compare to other countries in terms of demographics, attitudes, and beliefs? Do they spend more time on instruction and other tasks than international educators? AIR provides technical and substantive support for the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), which provides a barometer of the profession every five years. AIR Principal Researchers Matthew Clifford, Ebru Erberber, and Lisa Lachlan discussed TALIS 2018 key findings and policy and practice implications from a U.S. perspective.

AIR assists states and districts in providing high-quality, comprehensive support for teachers to help them become more effective. Educator development is one approach to retaining highly effective educators in the profession.

In an effort to develop a balanced and valid system, states and districts increasingly have moved toward using multiple measures in educator evaluation. This guidance document focuses on the use of teacher peer-evaluation as an alternative measure, including background information, information on its use in teacher evaluation systems, and recommendations, resources and references to support districts in their decision making and implementation of peer evaluation.

In an effort to develop a balanced and valid system, states and districts increasingly have moved toward using multiple measures in educator evaluation. This document provides guidance regarding the use of student surveys, including benefits and limitations of their use, summaries of vendor-developed student surveys and how they have been used in other contexts, and guidance around implementing surveys and using student perception data effectively.

In an effort to develop a balanced and valid system, states and districts increasingly have moved toward using multiple measures in educator evaluation. This guidance document focuses on the use of teacher portfolios as an alternative measure, including background information on portfolios, information on their use in teacher evaluation systems, and recommendations, resources and references to support districts in their decision-making and implementation of this measure.

In an effort to develop a balanced and valid system, states and districts increasingly have moved toward using multiple measures in educator evaluation. This guidance document focuses on the use of teacher self-evaluations as an alternative measure, including background information on self-evaluation, information on its use in teacher evaluation systems, and recommendations, resources, and references to support districts in their decision-making and implementation of this measure.