The Importance Of A More Effective Type Of Teacher Evaluation System

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.

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

Educational policies guide professional practice. By developing policies, agencies determine appropriate courses of action to aid individuals in applying a set of procedures in a systematic and equitable manner. My essay describes the Spotsylvania County Public School’s (SCPS) policy on Teacher Evaluation and traces its roots through the various levels of regulatory entities. In order to provide a rich context, pertinent case law and applicable literature in terms of the topic is also presented within the essay.

After reading the report, one could characterize current teacher evaluation practices as little more than missed opportunities to increase the effectiveness of teachers and assure that the best teachers stayed in front of students. Practitioners generally agreed with the premise of the critique, and confirmed the identified evaluation weaknesses as both common and wide-spread among school districts. Using teacher effect research and the validity of value-added measures as a platform, and armed with the belief that the sample practices were representative of those in districts across the country, the authors of The Widget Effect urged educational leaders and policy makers to implement specific teacher evaluation reforms, many of which informed (or mirrored) those becoming increasingly prevalent in federal and state

In 2013 the Englewood public school system adopted the Danielson framework to evaluate teachers. Prior to the Danielson framework teachers we evaluated through a district created evaluation system. The change to the Danielson evaluation too was very tumultuous as the administrator as well as the teachers had to become acclimated to the new method. Unlike the previous measurement tool Danielson divided teaching practice into four domains. Each domain address different aspects of teaching practice that once achieved is supposed to resulting in more effective teaching and higher student academic achievement. Each domain has a level

Countless of students are not being educated as well as they should be. The article argues, the wrong test can ineffectively evaluate quality of strong teachers. Therefore, those teachers become penalized. Whereas, the wrong test can fail to identify a weak teacher. As a result, the student is who suffers in the end. Secondly, the article discusses three primary purposes for the educational testing’s; compare, to instruct, and to evaluate. Comparison allows the educational system to identify score differences among students, whereas instructional testing is an ongoing evidence of a student’s level of achievements. Lastly, evaluation is to determine the quality of teachers. So, if the tests are appropriately implements, students can benefit. However, comparison has dominated the American education system.

Education reform takes on different forms depending on the goals of reformers. However, most will agree their ultimate goal is to positively impact student achievement. Changes in public education continues to increase teacher accountability, as well as, update curriculum standards and standardized tests. The teacher evaluation system is one focus of recent initiatives. While district implement new teacher evaluation methods, skepticism surrounds its effectiveness, in improving teaching, and comprehensiveness, in assessing the multi-faceted role a teacher plays in the lives of students. I have experienced the good, bad, and ugly of the teacher evaluation system of Shelby County.

Assessment is a tool that begins and ends successful teaching. At the beginning it establishes what is currently known and at the end it establishes what has been learnt as the result of the planned curriculum.

In the state of South Dakota, the legal requirements of the state and school districts when it comes to supervision and procedures, expectations align with both. The state of South Dakota has adopted the Teacher Effectiveness Model along with any district that is state accredited. This model is based on the Danielson framework, which consists of 22 components, clustered into domains one through four (Danielson, 2007). According to this model, teachers from year one to year three are evaluated at least annually and those teachers year four and beyond are evaluated at least every other year. The state formed a work group made up of teachers and administrators who developed an evaluation instrument that will not only be a tool for administrators to use, but also for teachers.

One Sturgeon Bay High School teacher by the name of Nicole Herbst, works as an educator in the art department, and was open to give her opinion on student-teacher evaluation as well as her concerns. Mrs. Herbst, like many others, brought up the worry of students not taking the assessment seriously. However, she acknowledged and supported the idea, that if the examination was done in the right way, it would be valuable. When asked, should high school students be able to evaluate their teachers? Mrs. Herbst answered with, “Yes, they should be allowed to, but as long as it is set up with different questions, criteria, and the teachers are given the rubric first, that's what we did with college professors. That way, it is fair for the students to think about different areas to score them on, as well as to show what strengths and weaknesses there could be in order for the teacher to get feedback on what could be working or what is confusing with their teaching style. Also, if the teachers know what they are getting graded on, like we should offer for the students, it helps to know what the teachers should professionally focus on more. It helps if the grading is in a survey style and rating system with areas to offer specific comments versus just one flat grade in order to truly be effective.” Her

She uses her training in education to examine data from assessments to identify weak spot in services and programs to create evaluation in improving these. She has learned how evaluation data can be applied and the importance of applying it to make improvements and identifying weak spots in services or programs. While she has experience in doing many types of evaluations like process, outcomes and impact, she prefers to do process and impact evaluations to create change or improvements and track their progress.

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).

The focus of this paper is to analyze the supervision and evaluation of teachers at my Catholic school, and suggest a model program that better meets the needs of all teachers, regardless of their years in service. My experience teaching at the same school over the last 15 years indicates that supervision and evaluation of teachers is either a perfunctory task, or designed as a “gotcha” activity. In either case, there is never the expectation that the teacher and the administrator will collaborate to ensure teacher professional development, and no one would call it a meaningful process. Research shows that teachers do not become better teachers based on passive participation in an evaluation process they do not value. Charlotte Danielson (2010) argues that professional growth occurs only when teachers engage in “self-assessment, reflection on practice and professional conversation.” (p. 38).

It is possible for accurate feedback to be a powerful resource in efforts to improve teaching and learning. Nevertheless, feedback that classifies the observed practices incorrectly is likely to involve a considerable opportunity cost for teachers as well as students (Iqbal, 2013). Notably, in 2009, a report by the name The Widget Effect was released by The New Teacher Project (TNTP). The report exposed the prevailing teacher evaluations as both infrequent and largely subjective (Jerald, 2012). Similarly, the attention towards the effectiveness of teacher evaluation is fairly new after decades of using teacher evaluation tools that have been noted to provide little or no useful information regarding the technical core of teaching (Harris, Ingle and Rutledge, 2014). Consequently, the tools often yielded inflated performance ratings that would not be taken with the seriousness necessary to inform basic personnel decisions (Jerald, 2012). It was observed that, despite relying mostly on direct observations made on teachers’ practices, they provided little, if any, useful feedback that can inform teachers’ improvement (Jerald, 2012). Thus, in adopting new evaluation system, there is a common problem in school systems as to the way to ensure that the observers’ coaching and feedback are free from significant classification errors and are largely based on judiciously accurate judgment regarding a lesson.