Supervisory Platform and Evaluation System

Today, teachers strive for the creation of positive and influential learning environments for all students. Moreover, they aim at increasing children’s chances of succeeding. They constantly re-evaluate their teaching strategies for educational improvement of students. Teachers create supportive and respectful school environment that makes students strive for more prosperous and eventually rewarding lives. According to Deborah Tannen, the teacher’s encouraging and

First of all, continual feedback allows teachers to self-reflect on best practices. For example, a teacher can target his/her areas of weakness in order to grow professionally and gain further insight of best practices. Another benefit, of teacher evaluations is higher student success rates. These, for example, are measurable through district assessments and state standardized assessments. If a teachers success rate has significantly improved through modification of practices, T-TESS has served its intended purpose. Finally, yet another benefit of teacher evaluations is the fact that the educator is an active participant in his/her evaluation process. For example, through goal setting, the educator is allowed the opportunity to decide where he/she want to grow. Through the evaluation cycle and the communication therein, the appraiser and educator both take greater responsibility in understanding and meeting established goals. Finally, at the end of the process, student growth is an indicator of a well-developed and integrated evaluation system. These are but a few of the many benefits reaped from an evaluation systems such as T-TESS (TEA,

As schools across the nation look for a uniform method to evaluate teachers’ performances, concerns about both methods are highlighted. NYC is using the Danielson Framework to evaluate teachers this year; some concerns have been brought up by administrators and the teachers union. In the piliot program it was noted by one administrator that “some of her teachers are not scoring as high on the rubric as she would expect — precisely because the rubric expects the same general characteristics in all grades” (Cromidas, 2012). This is because in the Danielson Framework the observer is looking for weather a teacher is doing the behavior or not. Check mark - there is no distinction between a new teacher and a veteran teacher. The other thing that administrators are noting that the “practicing observing teachers using Danielson had proved to be time-consuming” (Cromidas, 2012). It is recommend that they observer spends a number of informal observations lasting at least 15 minutes in the classroom before the official observation and that the report be turned around in 48 hours to the teacher.

Teachers are able to target the learning gaps by developing a plan of action based on the needs for our students. Verbiest (2014) and Hershkovitz (2015) argue data is used to tailor (how we sever students, how we offer support, types of support, what resources we need to invest on, whether we take a student to students needs with our school psychologist) instruction for students in all content areas in an effort to increase student achievement. As a result, the school can provide specific professional learning, support, and resources to teachers based on the needs and areas of weakness of our students (Fox, 2001). As lifelong learners, teachers recognize that their professional practice continues to evolve as they reflect and act on new information. If teachers have information that helps them confidently identify the root of educational challenges and track progress, they can more readily develop action plans that will have a positive impact on their students’ achievement (Halverson et al.,

Just like in any other profession or aspect of life, there are many myths that threaten education in public schools. Many people believe that teachers are the most important influence in a student’s academic achievement. In reality, educators have a very little influence in student achievement compared to other influences in the students’ lives that is out of the teachers control. It has been proposed that teachers don’t need to go to school to learn how to educate, they just need knowledge of the subject matter. This could be extremely destructive to student learning because they would not have the proper skills to instruct a classroom. Another common misconception is that instructors in

Darling-Hammond, L. (2013). Getting teacher evaluation right: What really matters for effectiveness and improvement. Teachers College

The issue of teacher shortage today is continuing to grow. The effects of the achievement gap are reaching the teachers, not just the students: “...good administrators and teachers, who are doing their best under difficult circumstances, will be driven out of the profession…,” (Boyd-Zaharias 41). The achievement gap is part of the reason teachers feel they are underpaid, which happens to be one of the leading cause in teacher shortage considering, “Teachers were paid two percent less [than comparable workers] in 1994, but by 2015 the wage penalty rose to 17 percent,” (Long). Being a teacher requires passion in order to stay in the field, especially if the money in teaching is decreasing. Money is an important aspect for people when it comes to their careers, therefore, fewer people want to become teachers. This lack of teachers and the lack of college students studying to become a teacher leads to unqualified teachers and larger classroom sizes (Ostroff). Both of these causes are eventually affecting students’ learning environments. I chose this issue in education for my project because I have personally felt these effects, and I know others who have as well. As a future educator, I want to see better wages and better benefits, but this can only happen with qualified, passionate teachers. I plan on being one of them, and I plan on sparking a change. I am a future educator fighting to end teacher shortage.

1). Consequently, teachers need training and support through professional learning communities (PLC) as they “…have proven to be a cornerstone of effective teaching and, in underperforming schools, a catalyst for improvement” (Farbman, Goldberg, & Miller, 2014, p. 10). As a result, my plan proposes following Claudet’s model of a change agent (2011) by inspiring stakeholders to become collaborative partners in remedying academic gaps. It begins with the faculty analyzing student data scores to prioritize topics, designing a timeframe to meet goals, and identifying the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Once this is determined, several teachers would attend summer or fall training sessions to develop strategies to address the learning needs of low-achieving students because “…collective leadership has positive effects on student achievement” (Barth, 2001, p. 12). The trained teachers would provide monthly PLC activities to cultivate developmental and cultural instructional strategies, analyze student progress, share successes, and problem-solve concerns. Measurement of the effectiveness of the training occurs through staff participation, observations, and classroom formative and summative assessments, as recorded through the software programs provided to the teachers at the beginning of the

“Our educational goal [is] the production of caring, competent, loving, lovable people” . The students found in the schools across the United State are the future of America. They are the doctors, teachers, business people, lawyers and many other roles, that will be out in the workforce in the years to come. What they learn in school will impact them immensely; it is the responsibility of a teacher to give students the best education in order to ensure the common good of the future. It is essential for students to not only learn content matter, but also the skills to enable them to participate in a democracy. Due to standardized testing, the emphasis of education has become on score and rankings rather than learning. A standardized test does not look at the whole student, the scores provided are on a very narrow aspect of education. In the classroom, there are countless ways for teachers to assess the student as a whole person not as just a score. Standardized tests scores should not be the sole criteria for determining a student’s academic achievement.

For the purpose of this research activity, I wanted to focuses on Missouri and California. I have worked at both states, and have found both states to have their own systems for evaluation teachers, but at the same time they are very similar. Both states, like many other states, agree that our previous evaluation systems have not helped teacher grow to their potential. Both evaluation systems as set in place to help teachers grow, improve their practice, allow them to grow professionally, and overall enhance student learning. The purpose of having an evaluation system is to ensure we see higher student learning. Both states aim to use their evaluation process with helping teachers become professional educators who can have the tools necessary to work on student academic growth.

Across the United States, policymakers determine evaluation systems for public school educators. Used as a tool for increasing teacher effectiveness and accountability, teacher evaluation systems vary from state to state as determined by individual state departments of Education. According to Sergiovanni & Starrat (2002), the role of the evaluation process is important in developing teachers’ instruction, which should contribute to academic achievement of students. Evaluation should provide meaningful feedback to teachers, to improve instructional practices and support learning (Kelley and Maslow, 2012).

Everyone wants to go to a school that has high academic achievement and good test scores. In recent years, schools have increased pressure on the teachers to make sure that their students have good test results. These scores have an impact on a teacher’s effectiveness evaluation, salary, and job stability. This trend has caused some teachers to start “teaching to the test” rather than teaching to the individual student’s needs. All schools are not equal; they may have different demographics and resources that can affect test results. If one school has assets such as books, calculators, and computers their test results may be higher than a school who cannot afford it. If a school cannot provide students who need extra help and there are no tutors or specialist available, then they may score poorly on standardized tests.

Student ratings can provide teachers, administrators, and researchers with valuable information about the learning environment and instructional practice, and have become a critical component in policy efforts to assess and improve teaching. Seventeen states and many large municipalities including Chicago, Illinois, Memphis, Tennessee and Denver, Colorado include student ratings as a key component in formative and summative teacher evaluation plans (Partee, 2012). Several other states and municipalities, including Los Angeles, are in the process of developing or piloting student surveys for future use in teacher evaluation (Phillips & Yamashiro, 2013). Advocates note that students are natural observers of their classroom environments, have extensive and rich knowledge of their teachers, and that student ratings can be predictive of important outcomes, such as student academic and socio-emotional development. In addition, student ratings are relatively easy and cost-effective to collect, particularly in comparison to structured classroom observations, (Rothstein & Mathis, 2013; Rowan & Correnti, 2009; Balch, 2012) which are perhaps the most widely used method for collecting data about instructional practice (Rowan & Correnti, 2009; Partee, 2012; Pianta & Hamre, 2009; Taylor & Tyler, 2012; Martínez, Taut & Schaaf, 2013).

Furthermore, there are many factors that have strong influences on student learning gains, including the influences of previous teachers, tutors, family resources, family mobility, the quality of curriculum materials and class size. (2013 Economic Policy Institute). In fact, factors other than the teacher account for roughly 85-90% of the variation in students’ test scores, while teachers account for only 10-15% of the variance in scores (Strauss 2012). Therefore, handing teachers high ratings merely if their students have high test scores would create many miscalculations of teachers’ true capabilities. An example of this can be shown from the

Teacher evaluation has long been in need of an overhaul for both teachers and administration alike. Just like the educational system is no longer focused on the industrialized method of teaching (where every kid receives the same instruction the same exact way), teacher evaluation can no longer be focused on one snapshot moment of teaching. In the past teachers have been evaluated on a single moment within their classroom. The evaluation focused on a variety of topics across the state but never has focused on the improvement of the teacher. The principal would evaluate the teacher; the teacher would get the results; teaching would go on without much focus on what the teacher could or should improve, or where to go for help if needed. In August 2015, North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (DPI) set out to standardize teacher evaluation across the state to improve student achievement. The purpose of the new guidelines was to create a unified system to build high-quality teachers from evaluations and not just licensure alone. According to the ND Teacher Evaluation guidelines, the purpose of evaluations should provide: continual improvement of instruction and student outcomes; meaningful differentiation of performances; the use of multiple valid measures including data; evaluations of teachers on regular basis; provision of clear, timely and useful feedback; use results to inform improvement of teachers’ overall performance and personal decisions (Baesler, 2). The