Across the country, policymakers are experimenting with various strategies for improving educator quality and student achievement. These strategies include new approaches to educator evaluation, compensation, and other human resource policies.

On June 28, 2011, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) adopted new regulations for the evaluation of the state’s educators. At the same time, Massachusetts received a Teacher Incentive Fund Grant and is piloting compensation reform in two districts. In addition, three Massachusetts school districts are involved in the Human Resources Pilot Project to redesign all their human resources policies. SRI is using a rigorous, mixed-methods approach to provide ESE with timely and usable feedback to improve implementation of the three initiatives.