Student Learning Objectives (SLO)

This handout from the Rhode Island Department of Education provides criteria and guidance for a strong SLO.  Educator and evaluators will find this guide helpful as they write or review and approve SLOs. 

The Rhode Island Department of Education developed this guide to provide educators strategies for writing and revising SLOs.  The guide provides the steps necessary to writing an SLO in Rhode Island and best practices based on their first year of implementing SLOs.

Data provide a way to assess what students are learning and the extent to which students are making progress toward goals. In this paper, What Works Clearinghouse describes how data can provide educators with the information to make instructional changes to improve student achievement. The paper includes a list of recommendations for effectively using data to make instructional decisions.

The Race to the Top Reform Support Network developed a toolkit designed to help states, districts, and schools implement student learning objectives (SLOs). This toolkit provides a step-by-step process for developing SLOs and includes examples from other districts and states that have already implemented SLOs. The paper concludes with links to resources and materials on SLOs from other states and districts.

The New Teacher Project conducted an evaluation study of the pilot RISE evaluation system in Indiana. This report focuses on implementation challenges and successes experienced during Indiana’s pilot year.

Incorporating student growth measures into educator evaluation systems is particularly challenging for teachers of non-tested grades and subjects. This paper provides an overview of possible measurement tools and approaches for non-tested grades and subjects and discusses some technical challenges with each of these approaches. It also recommends that states consider broadening student learning objectives as a framework for incorporating student performance into educator evaluations.

This report from American Institutes for Research describes the benefits and challenges for implementing student learning objectives (SLOs) as student growth measures for educator evaluation. For each challenged identified, the paper provides some possible solutions from other states and districts implementing SLOs.

In order to support SLO implementation and sustainability, states and districts can provide resources for teachers, evaluators, and student learning objective (SLO) leaders to improve the quality of SLOs, the rigor of assessments, and consistency of scoring. American Institutes for Research outlines the importance of these resources and the various implementation supports in this paper. The paper provides details on the implementation elements needed to support the rigor, comparability, and sustainability of the SLO process.

This study from the Center for American Progress conducted teacher interviews from one district implementing a new teacher evaluation system. The study examined how teachers view the evaluation system and whether their views vary by performance level. It also explored whether and how the evaluation system influenced teaching practice. 

This report from American Institutes for Research provides guidance on how to successfully use student learning objectives (SLOs) in performance-based compensation systems. The report introduces SLOs and provides strategies for supporting the rigor, comparability, and sustainability of the SLO process. In addition, the report describes the SLO process for two performance-based compensation systems in Denver and Austin.