“The EAA believes that effective teachers are the most important factor in determining student achievement,” says Jeremy Vidito, Chief Administrative Officer at the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan (EAA).

We have to say, we agree.

That’s why TeachBoost is proud to announce its partnership with the EAA to serve as the district’s performance management system.

EAA was created to turn around the academic performance of Michigan’s lowest-achieving schools. The district leadership is focused on research based practices which empower school leaders and focus on teaching and learning. The district credits a large part of its turnaround efforts to its unique learning structure, which includes a longer school day and year, as well as an emphasis on developing expert teaching staff.

This idea that teachers have the greatest impact on student success—an idea supported by well-documented research—prompted the district to seek out a web-based system for streamlining the teacher development process and supporting their instructional leaders. They launched a competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) process and selected TeachBoost at the conclusion of a thorough review of performance management tools in the industry.

“The EAA is committed to providing teachers regular feedback and coaching to improve teacher efficacy. TeachBoost provides the flexibility we need to achieve our goals.”

—Jeremy Vidito

Vidito outlines the district’s threefold goals as follows:

• Customize the TeachBoost platform to match EAA’s teacher and school leader evaluation system.
• See weekly use of the platform by teachers and observers to track observations and evaluations.
• Use the data collected from observations to drive professional development.

Perhaps most exciting is how the district will measure success: EAA is working to connect the dots between teacher satisfaction and student achievement. “We want teachers and leaders to report greater satisfaction with their performance management system on the Insight Teacher Survey,” says Vidito. “We expect this to lead to high performance from students.”

TeachBoost is excited to bolster EAA’s upward trend in student success, and to empower the district’s instructional leaders to develop their team to its greatest potential.