be made; (i) understand, employee handbooks, collective bargaining agreements, policy and procedures
manuals, the strategic plan, and student achievement data by each school; and (j) review the district’s
safety and crisis communication plan and suggest changes or adjustments as needed. In summary,
Worthington Schools succeeding requires both public engagement and employees who are engaged, feel
valued, and clearly understand their core business is to educate children and prepare them for higher
education and careers.
Professionalism
What I have done and the process I/we have used to improve/change Worthington Schools Teacher and
Principal Evaluation System.
A great deal of discussion has been devoted lately to educator evaluation systems that examine multiple
measures of teacher and principal effectiveness. Ohio will require school districts statewide to have an
evaluation system for teachers and principals operational by the 2013-14 school year. A driving force in
the push for more comprehensive evaluation systems has been the Race to the Top (RttT) federal grant
program, which is a national movement to rate both teachers and principals. Ohio, a $400 million RttT
award recipient, began developing a statewide teacher evaluation system in 2011, with the passage of its
biennial budget bill, House Bill 153, which mandated a more rigorous teacher and principal evaluation
system. Under HB 153, the State Board of Education was directed to create an educator evaluation
framework based on multiple measures of student success, student achievement, student growth, and
meaningful feedback and support to teachers for improvement, and mandated that, Boards of Education
adopt teacher and principal evaluation policies by July 1, 2013 that align to the framework in
consultation with teachers and principals.
To prepare for the development and implementation of these new evaluation systems, I completed the
Ohio Department of Education’s Principal Evaluation System training with all of my cabinet-level
administrators in 2011. The following year, I encouraged my colleagues to participate in the Ohio
Department of Education’s Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) and Ohio Principal Evaluation
System (OPES) pilot programs. I joined all of our district administrators and several teachers to go
through the OTES training to be credentialed as evaluators. The three-day training included learning the
OTES rubric, strategies to collect evidence, and how to assign a rating based on a teacher’s
performance. In addition to the training, as an OTES evaluator, which is typically only principals- I had
to pass an online credentialing test with my appropriate certification.
As a participating Race to the Top school district and as a member of the district’s RttT and the Teacher
Evaluation System team, we meet monthly to strategically plan and execute the Scope of Work
activities. Members of the team also completed Student Learning Objectives (SLO) training. SLOs are
defined as measurable, long-term academic growth plans that a teacher, in collaboration with his or her
building evaluator, sets annually for students or subgroups of students. In addition, districts that entered
into collective bargaining agreements with their unions before September 29, 2011 (note that
Worthington’s Board entered into a 3-year collective bargaining agreement with our teachers union on
June 30, 2011), must adopt an evaluation system when their current agreements expire. Worthington
Schools had already anticipated that requirement and was prepared.
Even though districts are not required to adopt OTES as long as they develop an evaluation system that
aligns with the state framework, I collaborated with our teacher’s union to craft a Memorandum of
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