Measuring excellence in your child's teachers

There's a lot of hoo-ha going on in the press at present about Julia Gillard's intention to introduce financial rewards for excellence in teaching.  The main topic of debate seems to be how to measure excellence with any sort of accuracy.  Parents are constantly interested in the standard of their child's teachers, too, but the yardsticks they use are many and varied.

So for what it's worth, here are my views on getting a clear impression of a teacher's performance, along with some personal anecdotes about teachers I have known- excellent, and not-so-excellent!