Page 26 - Leadership Matters February 2013_3140b78f.pub
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This was also noted by The Next Generation of
Teacher Evaluation Systems study as a challenge. In
my work with teacher evaluators, I recommend that
they schedule these formal and informal observations.
What gets on an administrator’s calendar gets done.
By scheduling observations the administrator can
dedicate the time needed to do this work. An average
school administrator (in my informal polling of
administrators as I have trained over 1,500 in Illinois)
indicates about 23 teachers per evaluator. An
evaluator would need to conduct 23 x 10 or 230
observations in an evaluation cycle. Assuming all
these teachers are tenured this would be 230 out of
the 360 possible attendance days in a two year time
period, or less than one day.
However, good evaluation systems would include
a reflective conversation with each teacher after each
informal and formal observation. This increases the
number to 460 obligations out of 360 days. Assuming
the administrator would not be able to observe or
meet on 10% of the days this leaves 460 obligations
out of 324 days or .75 or one per day. Remember,
about 8 of the 10 observations are informal which
amounts to 10 or 15 minutes each.
To arrive at a joint decision on how to
summative rate the teacher using professional
practice and student growth
A real sticking point will be when the joint
committee decides to determine how the final rating
will be calculated. The law says that for professional
practice the rating “Shall quantify the relative
importance of each portion of the framework to the
final professional practice rating.” This can be done
using mathematics or using words but I think districts
need to be aware of the Danielson FFT key concept
that Domain 3, Instruction, is the heart of the
frameworks and Component 3c, Engaged Learning, is
the heart of the heart of the frameworks. This domain
and component need to have high importance for
professional practice.
Combining professional practice and student
growth will add a high degree of difficulty to the
summative rating. There has been no final guidance
from ISBE or the Performance Evaluation Advisory
Council on how to do this. Most districts are waiting
for some type of state model or recommendation. This
calculation will be vital to the acceptance and trust
placed in this new evaluation paradigm.
Predictions on future changes to this
evaluation process
It is extremely hard for a teacher evaluator to
script all that is happening within a classroom for
informal or formal observations. I predict teacher
evaluators will use video to record the actual teaching
as well as use the video in the reflective conference
with the teacher. In addition, the district can make a
video library of effective teaching to show new
teachers and teachers needing improvement.
It is difficult for high school administrators to
evaluate content knowledge of the teaching if they are
observing teaching in a field that they do not have a
professional educational background. For example,
how does an evaluator judge content in a foreign
language classroom when only the foreign language
is spoken? Or, judge the content in an AP Calculus
classroom? This stresses the need for peer
evaluators. Peer evaluators will need to go through
the pre-qualification training as administrators but they
could provide excellent evidence on content
knowledge. These peers would need to be teachers
who had previously been rated as Excellent.
Student input for grades 6 through 12 would
provide valuable information the administrator could
use. Illinois has developed a climate survey titled
“5Essentials” and the questions asked in this survey
could be very helpful for the administrator to use when
rating student-teacher relations, expectations, etc…
In conclusion there are many unsettled issues that
need to be resolved before full implementation of
principal and teacher performance evaluation
systems. Collective bargaining issues, how to
calculate and use student growth measures, the
collective interpretation of what “Distinguished/
Excellent” means, more Danielson training for both
administrators and teachers, change in the daily
routine and job function of building level
administrators and finally determining how to calculate
the final teacher summative rating.
SB 7: Growing pains
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