What is the Danielson Framework?

Charlotte Danielson is an educational researcher who has devoted her career to

determining what effective teachers do: She researches teacher practices and
behaviors that lead to student success.
Danielson put her research findings into a framework in a book called Enhancing
Professional Practice. The book was meant as a teacher reflection tool: She meant for
teachers to reflect upon their own practice and look for areas of achievement and
growth.
Many states and schools began using the Danielson Framework for evaluation, as
federal and state laws began to require the use of research-based evaluation tools in
new evaluation systems.
Although Danielson herself did not originally intend for her framework to be used for
evaluation, she now helps develop evaluation tools for her framework (she says if
people are going to use it anyway, she wants to limit the misuse as much as possible).
It is important to remember that the framework does come from research of what
effective teachers do.
It is also important to know that Danielson uses the framework as a GROWTH tool.
She says that teaching is such a difficult, complex task, that we can never have it
perfectly achieved at an excellent level at all times. She says we can only visit
Distinguished once in a while -- we cant live there. Even in evaluation, the framework
is meant for teachers to self-reflect and have a growth mindset.
In the framework, Danielson has 4 levels of rating. Illinois requires us to use the same 4
levels, but using different labels:

Level 1
Level 2
Danielson Unsatisfactory Basic
Language

Level 3
Level 4
Proficient Distinguished

Our
Unsatisfactory Needs
Proficient Excellent
Language
Improvement