Archive for the ‘
teacher performance evaluations ’ Category
We asked readers which Distinguished Educators Council recommendation they thought would have the biggest impact on making Oregon a great place to teach.
42 readers answered:
- Provide meaningful, ongoing evaluations of teachers that contribute to improved teaching practices and increased student achievement. (24%, 10 votes)
- Ensure that Oregon’s teachers can address the needs of diverse students. (24%, 10 votes)
- Ensure personalized professional learning opportunities tailored to teachers’ needs and the students they teach. (21%, 9 votes)
- Emphasize classroom experience and effective mentors in teacher preparation. (17%, 7 votes)
- Establish new leadership opportunities and career pathways for the most effective teachers. (14%, 6 votes)
As you can see, the results were pretty close. Providing meaningful and ongoing evaluations and ensuring that Oregon’s teachers can address the needs of diverse students were tied for the most votes. Below you can read a little about what the DEC is doing to move forward their recommendations: (more…)
Category:
Legislative, teacher performance evaluations |
2 Comments »
Tags: 2013 legislative session, achievement gap, classroom experience, Distinguished Educators Council, education, education policy, leadership, mentoring, Oregon Education, professional development, teacher council, teacher of the year
I love statistics. As a former teacher of AP Statistics and a PhD candidate, I have had the privilege of using (and abusing) statistical analysis with the best of them. As a practicing classroom science teacher, I have had the privilege of introducing a great number of students to the fine arts of backing up an argument or an experiment with adequate data and statistical analysis. Used as a mathematical tool, statistics can be enlightening, even empowering; as a weapon, they are deadly and, as the old joke goes, half of the statistics ever collected are incorrect and the other two-thirds out-and-out lie! (My profound apologies to those readers who live and die by statistics; you know who you are!)
Of all the statistics I have processed in my role as professional educator and advocate for the education profession, the ones I have appreciated the most are derived from instruments like the MetLife Survey of the American teacher. I highly recommend this data set and subsequent analysis to anyone truly interested in an impartial examination of the state of education here in our nation. Much can be learned and inferred from the two-decade plus examination of data collected from teachers and principals throughout the United States. Indeed, twenty-nine years of non-partisan and non-political data has been collected from a “scientific” sampling of educators and administrations. I particularly enjoy executive summaries; they have a tendency to “cut to the chase” and distill out the highlights. This past year, 2012, is certainly no exception, with the primary issues associated with education and educational leadership being concerns that are totally beyond the control of any teacher or principal in her or his academic setting. (more…)
Category:
Chalkboard Project, teacher performance evaluations |
1 Comment »
Tags: administrator evaluations, Allan Bruner, Chalkboard Project, DEC, education policy, math, metlife survey, Oregon Education, ray mcNulty, Senate Bill 290, statistics, teacher evaluations, teacher of the year
Melissa Tooley is a teacher quality and data analyst at The Education Trust. Melissa’s work at the Ed Trust focuses on evaluating and influencing policy to ensure that all students receive the effective teachers they need and deserve. This is part one in a series of blog posts discussing educator evaluations.
My last two blog posts have discussed the importance of design and implementation practices that ensure educator evaluation systems are fair and produce meaningful results. But unless we connect those results to the day-to-day decision making of schools and districts, these efforts will be moot.
Evaluation results should be incorporated into all decisions related to staffing. But it also is critical to have a clear focus on helping teachers improve and to ensure that the students furthest behind are taught by teachers most able to help them catch up. (more…)
Category:
teacher performance evaluations |
2 Comments »
Tags: Chalkboard Project, design, Ed Trust, Education Trust, great teachers, great teaching, implementation, Melissa Tooley
As we get into the swing of the school year, parents and teachers have a lot on their minds. Parents want to make sure their students are getting the best education possible. Teachers will be concerned with a whole new class of students and how they can meet the array of student needs. What they probably are not spending much time thinking about is Oregon’s No Child Left Behind waiver.
When the waiver does rise to the level of interest, controversy is likely to be the cause. Unfortunately, issues that gain public attention as the result of controversy are often much more complicated than the sound bites and talking points capture. This is true of the use of student achievement data in educator performance evaluations—one change of many that will come as a result of the waiver.
One test score should never be used to rate and rank a teacher—no one seriously engaged in the education policy conversation believes that is a good idea. What most of us agree on is that being a successful educator means helping students succeed. Educators, like other professionals, deserve relevant feedback to help improve their craft. Where the controversy lies is in how student learning is measured and how that information gets used. (more…)
Category:
Chalkboard Project, Teacher Effectiveness, teacher performance evaluations |
No Comments »
Tags: Chalkboard Project, education policy, NCLB waiver, No Child Left Behind, Oregon Education, performance evaluations, Sue Hildick, teacher effectiveness
Melissa Tooley is a teacher quality and data analyst at The Education Trust. Melissa’s work at the Ed Trust focuses on evaluating and influencing policy to ensure that all students receive the effective teachers they need and deserve. This is part one in a series of blog posts discussing educator evaluations.
My last blog post reviewed the key components of a well-designed educator evaluation system. But without a strong plan for implementation, even the best-designed systems won’t be game changers for students.
Two factors can make or break an evaluation system’s rollout: how districts and states communicate about the new system, and the type and quality of training they provide to educators on how to deploy the new system. If either is done poorly, states and districts risk alienating educators. And without educator buy-in, no new system can be a strong lever for improving classroom instruction. (more…)
Category:
teacher performance evaluations |
No Comments »
Tags: communication, education policy, Education Trust, educator evaluations, Melissa Tooley, teacher evaluation, teacher training
Melissa Tooley is a teacher quality and data analyst at The Education Trust. Melissa’s work at the Ed Trust focuses on evaluating and influencing policy to ensure that all students receive the effective teachers they need and deserve. This is part one in a series of blog posts discussing educator evaluations.
Thinking back on our own experiences as students, I think most of us would agree that our strongest teachers had a powerful and lasting impact on us. At The Education Trust, we regularly cite research showing that teachers are the biggest in-school factor influencing student achievement. Highly effective teachers are especially important for struggling students: Multiple studies have found that a series of strong teachers can help previously low-achieving students soar academically, while a series of weak ones can lead such students to stagnate. Informed by this research, many states, including Oregon, have begun to create more rigorous systems for measuring teachers’ effectiveness. Such systems can help teachers improve their practice, while helping schools and districts make smarter staffing decisions.
Design
Strong evaluation systems start with a strong design. They also rely on several different pieces of information about each teacher—never just one test score or a single observation—to provide for a more complete picture from which to identify teachers’ strengths and areas for growth. Teacher assessment measures do not need to be exactly the same across districts; however, good systems will share certain vital measures: detailed classroom observations and robust measures of teacher impact on student learning. (more…)
Category:
student achievement, Student Success, teacher performance evaluations |
No Comments »
Tags: administrator evaluations, benefits for teachers and students, education policy, educator evaluations, educator observations, evaluation design, Melissa Tooley, Oregon framework, performance levels, student growth measures, The Education Trust
Last week, Dan and I had the pleasure of hosting a break-out session at REAP’s (Reaching and Empowering All People) Academy of Leadership Innovations.
The academy is an opportunity for 8th through 12th graders to practice their leadership skills and engage with community members around important issues facing the greater community.
We spent our session hearing from the students about great teaching. We started by asking the students to describe their best teachers. Over and over again we heard praise for teachers who care about their students, who know their subject matter, and who are willing to individualize their support.
We then had the students get into small groups and discuss questions related to assessing and supporting great teaching and student learning. There were engaged and animated conversations throughout the room, and when we had every group share out at the end of the session, thoughtful ideas were plentiful. Here are some of the highlights: (more…)
Category:
Chalkboard Project, Student Success, teacher performance evaluations |
2 Comments »
Tags: Aimee Craig, Dan Jamison, educator evaluations, mentoring, Oregon Education, Reaching and Empowering all people, REAP, student feedback, student voice, teacher assessment, teacher evaluations
As a former teacher, principal and assistant superintendent, I know very well that educators can tend to have their own language that makes non-educators’ eyes glaze over. Differentiated instruction, common core, instructional rounds, etc. could all describe a range of activities that have nothing to do with teaching or learning.
Translating the education-ease for a public audience can be a tricky endeavor. We want the public to understand the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the strategy or intervention, but we don’t want to oversimplify the work. Unfortunately, the term ‘educator evaluation’ suffers from an oversimplification. Whether or not the oversimplification is justified in many cases, it is important that we begin to redefine the term.
The term ‘evaluation’ often brings up images of an inspection or other high-pressure situations in which there is a black and white decision made: yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down, raise or no raise, continuation of employment or lay-off. When the evaluation is put in the context of teaching, the assumption is made that teachers are being graded as good or bad. Evaluation can and should be something a lot more than a grade or ranking.
(more…)
Category:
Chalkboard Project, CLASS Project, education reform, teacher performance evaluations |
5 Comments »
Tags: Arne Duncan, CLASS Project, educator evaluation, Kate Dickson, Oregon, teacher evaluation, Teacher Incentive Fund, TIF
T.J. Chandler is the founder of EdZapp, Oregon’s statewide online employment application, and is now the Regional Director of Operations for Netchemia, LLC working with K-12 teacher and administrator evaluations. T.J. was formerly the Director of Business Applications for the New York City Board of Education, and has worked with over one hundred school districts across the country on operational and human capital issues. T.J. holds degrees from Willamette University and Princeton University.
As some celebrate the 10th anniversary of NCLB and others curse it, I ask, “What have we learned from it?” In particular, I am intrigued by certain parallels between evaluating “student achievement” and “teacher performance.”
Some Parallels
Like the discussions 10-15 years ago about students “falling behind” and “dropping out,” policy-makers realize that there is a problem with teacher effectiveness and attrition. The tough part for both problems, of course, is specifying–in meaningful and legally-defensible terms–which individuals are having trouble, and even more importantly how to help them improve.
(more…)
Category:
curriculum, Early Learning, education achievement gap, education reform, student achievement, Student Success, Teacher Effectiveness, teacher performance evaluations, teaching strategies |
1 Comment »
Tags: Danielson Framework for Teaching, EdZapp, Head Start, INTASC, NCLB, New Teacher Project, T.J. Chandler, teacher evaluations, value-added model, VAM, Widget Effect
On Wednesday, January 11, Chalkboard Project successfully held its first virtual brown bag as a part of a series of webinars that will focus on relevant news about education issues in Oregon. It was titled, “Educator Evaluation: How it drives student achievement,” and it featured talks from local, state and national policy experts and educators.
(more…)
Category:
Chalkboard Project, CLASS Project, community involvement, student achievement, teacher performance evaluations |
2 Comments »
Tags: Chalkboard Project, educator evaluation, evaluation teaching, student achievement, webinar
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April 10th, 2013 | Michelle Morico