An aggressive education reform has pushed teacher accountability to the forefront when promoting or even keeping teachers from year to year. More emphasis is being placed on standardized testing as a means of ranking educators.

As such, the state of Missouri recently developed a new tool for evaluating those tasked with teaching tomorrow's leaders. A pilot project involving 159 schools will use test scores to see how much students grow academically with each teacher, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

The method, which is called value-added analysis, could potentially draw distinctions between teachers. For example, the test analysis could find that one grade school educator increased the reading skills of their students by two grade levels, while another made minimal gains.

"Holding teachers accountable is really something that needs to be done," Karla Eslinger, an assistant commissioner for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, told the news provider. "All aspects that lead to high performance need to be reviewed."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that job opportunities for elementary teachers are expected to increase by 16 percent over the next seven years.

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