Current State of High Stakes Teacher Evaluation for Special Education Teachers

Overview & Synopsis

Education reform legislation has led to an upwelling of mandatory teacher evaluation for all elementary, middle school, and high school educators, including those who teach special education. While this reform effort aimed to improve overall teacher effectiveness and student learning outcomes, the teacher evaluation for special education is a retrofitted version of the general education teacher evaluation model and yields little meaningful information and increased stress levels for both the special education teacher and their evaluator. Before this problem can be rectified, the barriers standing in the way to a meaningful special education teacher evaluation need to be identified. This article examines existing literature related to special education teacher evaluation to identify those barriers, so progress can be made to improve the delivery of special education instruction and outcomes for students with disabilities.