As reported in the Cumberland Times-News, Maryland education officials and a diverse group of organizations including the Public School Superintendents Association of Maryland, the Maryland Association of Boards of Education, the Maryland State Board of Education, and the Maryland State Education Association announced a partnership Friday to develop an important part of teacher evaluations. As described,

The agreement, which focuses on making teachers and principals more effective, comes as states struggle to develop new teacher evaluation systems and work to implement student achievement into the reviews. . . the groups signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on forming measurable goals that educators and their supervisors develop and agree on at the start of each school year. The goals, which are known as student learning objectives, are aimed at a specific group of students over a set period of time. They are a key factor in Maryland’s new teacher-principal evaluation system.

For more information, see the full study from the Times-News and the Maryland State Department of Education’s Press Release. The MOU can be found on the Maryland Association of Boards of Education website.