D.C. Launches Rigorous Teacher Evaluation System - 0 views
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Alan Edwards on 02 Oct 09Bill Turque's article in yesterday's Washington Post feels like a balanced view about a controversial plan. It definitely relates to some of the issues we've been chatting about in and out of our classes. These issues of teacher evaluation, standardized tests, teaching methods, and unions is important for anyone teaching in DC.
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DCPS will use a team of expert teachers to evaluate the teachers in 2 of the 5 evaluation sessions. They will look for active student engagement, diverse teaching methods, and teachers who work to create a safe learning environment for their students. I think that it's great that teachers will be a part of this evaluation process because great teachers have opportunities to give the best advice for these teachers. Moreover, the experts would have a degree of independence from the school's administration and union influence.
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Rhee is investing $4 million in the system, called IMPACT, which will also assess teachers against an elaborate new framework of requirements and guidelines that cover a range of factors, including classroom presence and how carefully they check for student understanding of the material. But IMPACT is likely to be another flash point in Rhee's turbulent relationship with local and national teachers union leaders. They say that growth statistics are too unreliable to include in performance evaluations and that the new assessment system -- which the District can legally impose without union consent -- is an instrument to identify and remove struggling teachers, not a means to help them improve.
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This year only reading and math teachers in grades 4 through 8 -- fewer than 20 percent of the District's 3,800 classroom instructors -- will be evaluated on the basis of growth on the annual District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System, or DC-CAS. Student value-added will account for half of their evaluation.
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To allay teacher concerns that assessments will be tainted by personality clashes with principals, IMPACT will employ a corps of third-party "master educators" to conduct two of the classroom observations. The District's old system, like those in most other cities, required fewer classroom visits and left them largely to school administrators, who often had neither the time nor the expertise in subject matter to render fair evaluations, educators say. The master educators, who do not report to the principals, have backgrounds in the teachers' subjects.
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IMPACT documents suggest that no nuance will be left unexamined in the 30-minute classroom visits. Observers are expected to check every five minutes for the fraction of students paying attention. Teachers are supposed to show that they can tailor instruction to at least three "learning styles" (auditory, visual or tactile, for example). They can lower their scores by "using sarcasm that visibly hurts or decreases the comfort of one or more students." Among the ways instructors can demonstrate that they are instilling student belief in success is through "affirmation chants, poems and cheers."