The New America Foundation is tackling one of the most important topics in early education, how to improve teacher evaluations, with a new initiative-discussion that’s not only worth watching, it’s worth joining.

So far, the impressive effort includes a new 24-page report “Watching Teachers Work” on how observational tools can improve teaching in early ed, a panel discussion and an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times last week.

How do we halt the teacher-bashing, as President Obama urged in his State of the Union address, and still improve the quality of teaching? The answer is to radically change the evaluation conversation. A focus on watching teachers work — on how they actually interact with students — is long overdue. Several of these observation tools have the potential to bring some coherence to two worlds that are often seen as separate – the world of early learning before kindergarten and the world of K-12.

– “More on Observing Teachers, PreK-12.”  Early Ed Watch, 6/30/12.

One of the most important elements of this campaign is that it features a voice sometimes left out of education reform debates: individual teachers.

This discussion is just getting started. So head over to New America’s Early Education Initiative and join it.

Fresh Economic Analysis of Early Ed: Economist Tim Bartik has been on a roll lately, tackling key topics in early learning with a series of often short stories on his blog InvestinginKids. Some of Bartik’s recent insights include:

• “Given the many problems with our K-12 educational system, what’s the point of adding early childhood programs?”
• “Which businesses should be interested in ‘the business case’ for early childhood programs?”
• “Do early childhood programs represent too much government intervention into the role of parents?”