Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 4:75-90, 1990 ,~ 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Manufactured in the United States of America At-Risk and Expert Teachers: Some Thoughts About Their Evaluation DAVID C. BEREINER Arizona State University, College of Education, Tempe, A Z 85287 For some time I have held two slightly inconsistent views about the evaluation of teachers. I believe that we have enough knowledge about the teaching/learning process in schools to create a valid evaluation system for identifying teachers whose students will succeed or fail to do well academically. In addition, I believe that formal evaluation systems have no useful role to play with teachers that are highly experienced, with reputations for being expert. The beliefs behind these two views are explored in this article. My experience in classes has convinced me that teachers, like students, can be "at- risk." There are teachers who, for a variety of reasons, are in danger of having a "bad" academic year. A bad academic year for a teacher will be narrowly defined. It will mean lower than expected achievement for a class of students, as measured by the performance of those students on a standardized achievement test. A teacher may be having personal problems at home, such as a sick spouse, child, or parent. Or a teacher may be in the midst of a divorce or a financial crisis. A teacher in a particular year may have two emotionally handicapped children in the class, and/or three learning disabled children, while in the past few years that teacher was assigned few if any such children. Children with special needs can require enough extra attention to throw off a normally proficient teacher, making teaching in a particular year substantially more difficult than usual. A teacher may also have a new principal, new texts, or new colleagues; or new children and parents may have entered the attendance area for the school. Each of these factors usually requires teachers to change their customary ways of behaving, and some of the changes may negatively affect the achievement of the students in their charge. It may also be true that a teacher is "burnt out," unmotivated, and withdrawn from the life of the school and of his/her students, too often merely trying to get through another school day. Finally, though in my experience much more rare, are the teachers that are genuinely mediocre or, worse, actually incompetent. In every case, the teachers' classes, the students they are charged with educating to their fullest, can be at risk. Their students may be predicated to perform poorly on measures of achievement that year. The concept of risk is heard often in these times. It is one of those overused words that takes on different meanings in different