Colorado Education Association Foundation For Teacher Quality And

Programs: The foundation designed a project to facilitate communication and learning regarding essential components and practices for instruction, standards, assessments, and evaluations that will be used to measure teacher effectiveness. The project was designed around answering the question "how do we focus on researched best practices to impact instruction and student achievement? ". The project was built around a statewide effort for a subset of the 14 colorado department of education (cde) identified districts and the 12 colorado legacy integration districts that represent geographically diversified urban, suburban and rural environments. This project consisted of 3 two-day training sessions that were designed to deepen educator understanding of the best practices focused on standards, 21st century instructional practices, quality assessment tools, quality standards, and intervention strategies. The foundation covered the cost of these sessions including the cost of trainers, travel and expenses for participants including hotel rooms and meals, and the cost of the materials used during the sessions. The project provided school-based leadership teams with an in-depth understanding of the colorado academic standards, researched best practices, and the new evaluation system for evaluating effective teachers by developing the three training sessions designed to provide feedback for improvement, deep understanding of practices, standards, and goals for effective teachers and principals. Results of this project can then be used to provide information to all colorado school districts.