The State Board of Education gave final approval Monday to guidelines for evaluating teachers and administrators in Missouri schools.

School districts can adopt the state model or design their own system, incorporating the approved principles.

"Quality teachers and school administrators are key to improving student performance,” said Commissioner of Education Chris L. Nicastro. "The evaluation principles are designed to provide support and guidance to educators throughout their career in order to increase student achievement."

State law requires each school district in the state to evaluate the educators employed by the district.

Several hundred teachers and school administrators from throughout Missouri were involved in the development of the evaluation principles and the state's model educator evaluation system. More than 100 school districts, including several charter schools, pilot tested the model system during the 2012-2013 school year.

The seven Essential Principles of Effective Evaluation include:

• Using research-based performance targets aligned with the state model teacher and leader standards.
• Establishing performance indicators across differentiated levels for educators specifying expectations at all levels of practice.
• Aligning the evaluation process with an educator's probationary period to provide for an appropriate accumulation of performance data.
• Using student growth in learning, based on a wide variety of performance measures, in the evaluation process.
• Assessing educator performance on a regular basis and providing feedback teachers and administrators can use to improve their performance throughout their career.
• Ensuring evaluators are highly trained so that evaluation ratings are fair, accurate and reliable.
• Utilizing the evaluation process to guide school district policies that impact the development of educators and student learning.

Preparing and supporting quality educators is one of the primary goals of the Department's Top 10 by 20 initiative, which calls for Missouri to be among the top 10 performing states in education in the nation by the year 2020.