Experienced principal Carol Burris describes how she evaluates teachers at South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York.
I am tired of reading that “teacher evaluation is broken” and therefore teachers need to be evaluated by points and student test scores. The idea that evaluation is broken comes from “the Widget Effect”, a report created by Rhee’s New Teacher Project. It claims that teachers are rated satisfactory/unsatisfactory, with nearly all being in the first category.
I have never used that rating system in my 13 years as principal. Nor have any of my colleagues on Long Island. It is used in New York City. New York City is large and important, but it is notevery district. That rating system could have been changed through collective bargaining, if the mayor and UFT had the will to do so.
I cannot tell you what every principal does, but I can speak to what I do and it has worked to build a great school.
First, there is a difference between the supervision of instruction and evaluation. Evaluation is summative and judgmental. The clinical supervision of instruction consists of the observations, short and full period, written and not, the conversations and meetings with teachers about students and curriculum, the review of lesson plans and student assessments. It is that important space where the principal and teacher meet to talk about teaching and learning. It is where teaching is reflected upon and improved. It should NOT receive numbers….unless you want to destroy its effectiveness. This will all change with APPR.
My assistant principals and I meet twice a week for several hours and we review our observations of teachers. We make sure that we are consistent in our feedback. We keep a recordof instructional concerns to make sure that we are not sending mixed messages and that we are concentrating not on trivia, but on what is most important. We identify teacher strengths and discuss how we can have the teacher share those strengths with colleagues. This is the most important part of our job. We do most of the professional development for our teachers, often teaching those sessions along with teachers.
Evaluation, in my school, for tenured teachers is a narrative report issued at the end of the year.In that report, the teacher reflects on the goals she chose to develop that year. She and the supervisor choose goals for the following year. She lists professional development activities and ways in which she engaged with students. The assistant principal or I sum up what we saw when we observed. We list strengths and areas for improvement.
If the teacher is struggling, she is placed on intensive supervision. If that occurs, the next year she is observed formally at least four times, lesson plans are reviewed in greater detail, there are frequent meetings that focus on instruction and planning, a teacher mentor may be assigned etc. The point is to give greater support. It works. Teachers get better. Most need to be on it for a year, some for a few years. We have had teachers ask to continue informally after the process ended. It is very time consuming for the principal, but it is time well spent. In the very rare cases when a teacher digs in and does not improve, there is a process called 3020a.
Supervision and evaluation for untenured teachers are far more extensive. There are at least four observations. There is mandated professional development. The first year, they are assigned a mentor teacher. The teachers in my building are very collegial—they work closely together on the development of plans, units and assessments. They provide great support to new teachers.
I do not give tenure easily—it must be earned. Because of our commitment to equity, our school is not an easy place to teach—we do not hide struggling or reluctant students in low-track classes.
There are teachers who are not a good fit—although they may be successful somewhere else. Evaluation forms for untenured teachers are complex and lengthy. There are four categories for each dimension on which they are evaluated, and we provide narrative to back up the rating. No numbers are assigned. Although we may mention their students’ scores, it is not part ofevaluation. It is a thoughtful summation of the teacher’s work. By carefully monitoring to whom we give tenure, we have built a very strong faculty
.
I have no desire to have more power to dismiss tenured teachers. It is my job to make sure that they are serving students well, and if they are not, to address it. All of the tools are there. Although perhaps it makes sense to make the 3020a dismissal process shorter and less costly, it should never be easy. Tenure protects educators from the whims of political school boards.Teachers can give students grades fairly without having to worry that their parents are powerful people. It gives them the protection to speak the truth when it might be unpopular. Tenure helps build community in schools and that is very good for students and families.
I am very proud of my teachers. Nearly every one of them signed the principals’ letter against APPR, despite repeated pressure not do so. Not one has removed his or her name. They know they are more than a number. They know what being evaluated by test scores will do their school and their collegial relationships. Our teachers are true professionals. I think most teachers and principals are.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I taught in Westchester County, New York, for 35 years (retiring in June 2011). I was on the faculty of two high schools and served as department chair in the second of those two. In both schools, working with several administrative teams, I nearly always found administrators working in the collaborative, supportive way described in Carol Burris’s excellent and reassuring post. This does not mean that I found all these administrators equally visionary or thoughtful or smart, but I found them all supportive and, when necessary, willing to rid the school of those who couldn’t rise to the its standards or fit its culture. I rarely saw weak teachers tenured. I saw a few tenured teachers eased out. I agree that “[a]lthough…it makes sense to make the 3020a dismissal process shorter and less costly, it should never be easy.” / With all this in mind, I was struck by a recent New York Times’ article celebrating the fact that, last year only 50% of teachers up for tenure actually received tenure in the NYC schools. (Many were granted a 4th year to pursue tenure.) The Times was convinced that this showed a rising standard of excellence. But this ignores a fact widely understood in public schools: That a teacher should not be invited back for a third year unless he or she is clearly on the track to receiving tenure. In 2010, according to the Times, 80% of candidates received tenure–a fact the article bemoaned, though 80% seems a little low to me.
This is how it should be. A year ago in my district in Idaho evaluations were so arbitrary and punitive that our local made a strong case for uniformity and fairness. One principal even had the audacity to inform his staff that their performances might be a little lower than what they expected because he needed to be able to show growth the following year. At my high school our new principal had gotten the “be tough” message from one of the other principals, and the whole evaluation process, if you could even call it that, was unfounded. Some teachers received one sentence in the commendation section of the instrument and four paragraphs of recommendations that were not based at all on observation. The evaluation forms were placed in our mailboxes with no follow-up. Just “sign and return.”. Needless to say, our union was up in arms.
Fortunately, Idaho is required this year to adopt an evaluation following the Charlotte Danielson framework. Perhaps it was this or the convincing voices who complained to the superintendent and board members. At any rate, the district had to redesign the process and well as the evaluation form, and I had the good fortune to be selected for a district evaluation committee of union members from each of six schools and their principals. Because the Danielson Group has the framework as a free download and because their related publications are easily purchased, my union members and I were more apprised of the new protocol than any of the principals by the time we first met as a committee last May.
We now have a real process–goal setting, observations both informal and one formal, pre- and post-observation meetings as well as a document/form we created together, and real opportunities for feedback and dialogue with our principals. In addition, over the summer at the administrative retreat, they worked on evaluation alone. And the get-tough guy in my building admitted humbly and with candor to his staff before school started how he misjudged things. You could feel the relief rising in the room. And subsequent faculty meetings and the individual interactions with our principal have been nothing but positive. Some of us are waiting to see how different things will be, but I am very optimistic that my evaluation this year just might mean something.
Carol,
No doubt by your thought expressed here and in many prior posts you understand what the teaching and learning process entails. And I applaud you for standing up against the idiocies that are foisted upon you and from which you have to try to “shield” your staff. I would like to point out a few assumptions under which you work that don’t seem to be questioned (remember I’m a certified Mr. Teachbad “difficult” teacher).
One of those assumptions is the supposed need for teachers to be in a constant state of “improvement” and, secondly, that an administrator is the one best suited to determine what a teacher “need” to do so. Are engineers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, wildlife biologists, etc. . . required to have these yearly written “improvement” plans? NO! What is so different about teaching that we are supposedly in need of “improvement” so much so that one has to have a “professional development plan” in place every year.
HOW INSULTING to me as a professional teacher to have an administrator with far less experience (usually less than five years teaching experience) telling me to implement various practices without even consulting with me the effects of said practices on my classroom and then judge me, a teacher of 19 years, on the idiocies they have foisted upon me. Not only that, but said administrator has no clue whatsoever about my subject area and what it takes to teach and learn a second language and become bilingual (I teach Spanish but it could be most any subject that the administrator has no clue about). Yeah, the administrator knows what best for the teaching and learning process in my classroom, rrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhhttttttt! as Bill Cosby used to say.
Over the years I have made it a point to sit down with my supervising principal and outline what I do in my class and why I do what I do. You know most of them have sat quietly, hoping to get a phone call so that they could excuse themselves from learning what it is I do and why I do it. But they do a “drive through” or come and sit in class for all of a half hour and then judge me. Bovine excrement. Yeah, I need those “educational leaders” like I need a hole in my head.
Another assumption is that teachers have “tenure”. No, we don’t. We can get, oh thank the powers that be, due process rights after five years here in the Show Me State, but if we switch districts one still has to teach at least three to get said rights again after having obtained them prior. Tenure is a totally different concept/privilege.
“I do not give tenure easily”, great. It is “yours” to give. It is that kind of thinking that rubs a raw nerve in me. You hold the power!!!! Hot damn. Until we all realize that these hierarchical power trips are counter productive and that administrators are only attempting to do one part of the job that needs to be done in the teaching and learning process that public education should be we’ll not do as an effective job as could be done without such thinking. I would hope that by the time a due process right decision is made it should be pretty clear cut whether a person is cut out to be a teacher or not. If one makes it to that point and has shown his/herself to be an adequate teacher it shouldn’t be a question of whether a principal “thinks” that person is qualified because by getting to that point (at least three years minimum) the teacher has already proven his/her merit, if not then the administrator hasn’t done his/her job and they’re the one that should be counseled and or let go.
I have masters in education administration and have been certified to be an administrator (haven’t kept it updated) but I realized very early on in that process that in being an administrator and having to implement various schemes I wouldn’t be able to because I could see the harm that said schemes (NCLB, RaTT, PBTE, etc. . . ) would inflict not only on the students but also teachers. Couldn’t and can’t do those things. But many, if not all, administrators are willing to compromise in that regard, hell it pays better than being a teacher, I can’t. The best (maybe one or two over the years) administrators were/are the ones that realized the need to protect teachers and students from these idiocies that are foisted upon them.
Can’t wait to make up some cockamamie professional development plan for this year again.
Duane
Duane
It is too bad that you have not worked for or with an administrator like Dr. Burris (above) or the department chair (Del) above. Knowing the both – I can attest that as you can tell from their posts – they have very high PROFESSIONAL standards. The have high expecations for administrators and teachers – expectations for planning and pedagogy that reach children – all of them. I am sure they are not waiting for the phone to ring when meeting with a teacher – and I am sure they know their craft – and yours – quite well.
Missouri’s five year tenure is actually too long. It was too easy for teachers to get entrenched and for administrators to offer “one more chance.” And, perhaps if the state had a standard bar – a high bar – of teaching standards as do others – the inconsistencies from district to district wouldn’t be as problematic. Or, if National Board Cerfication were recognized.
There are good evaluation systems and bad ones. There are purists who think no test scores should be used for evaluation (although we have been doing that for, well, forever as we monitor student learning and if a teacher “gives” all “A’s” every semester or all “D’s and F’s” – well – that gets into evaluation.
But the best systems are those like the dialogue and efforts for consistency as described by Dr. Burris and the scrutiny and high standards established by professionals like Del above.
This principal is making an exceptional effort to implement a rational supervision/evaluation system. The problem, however, is that principals/assistant principals usually do not have enough time to effectively supervise/evaluate teachers.
In most schools, the principal/teacher ratio ranges from 1:25 to 1:200. Adding assistant principals reduces this ratio to perhaps 1:12 to 1:50. Even if the principals/APs did nothing but supervise teachers, these ratios would still be too high for effective supervision. Of course, the principals/APs spend most of their time performing duties other than supervising teachers — hiring, budgeting, reviewing curriculm issues, meeting with parents, attending school events, dealing with central administration, meeting with students, disciplining students, attending disciplinary or special ed hearings, and preparing for these many tasks.
At most, these principals will have time for the occasional 15-to-60-minute observation. However, such observations do not give the observer sufficient information to form a reliable opinion regarding the teacher’s overall performance. For example, if the observation is announced in advance, it’s likely that the observed lesson will be more thoroughly prepared than the typical lesson. Even if the observation is unannounced, the teacher may have a well-prepared lesson held in reserve to use if/when an unannounced observation occurs. And, even if teachers never use specially-prepared lessons during observations, the number of lessons observed is such a small percentage of the teacher’s total lessons taught that the observed lessons are unlikely to accurately represent the quality of the teacher’s work.
Another difficulty with the occasional-observation approach is that the observer usually will not have sufficient information regarding the student mix in the observed class to fairly evaluate the teacher’s performance — particularly in schools with large numbers of “problem” students who are not evenly distributed among teachers or even among a teacher’s classes. And, in the secondary grades, it’s likely that the observing principal/AP lacks subject-matter expertise in the subject being taught.
Of course, given that many schools do not have APs and that, in any event, the APs report directly to the principal, there is little/no independent check on the principal so the occasional-observation approach is extremely vulnerable to principal bias, either for or against a particular teacher.
These weaknesses inherent in the occasional-observation approach are why the public believes — accurately — that school systems often retain poorly-performing teachers and why teachers believe — accurately — that, when school systems discharge teachers (or constructively discharge them by constant hassles), it is often for arbitrary or invidious reasons (i.e., personality or philosophical conflicts with the principal).
The corporate school reform answer, of course, is high-stakes-testing and/or eliminating tenure/due-process protection. However, high-stakes-testing is even less reliable than the observation approach, particularly in the low-SES-area schools where there are so many variables beyond the teacher’s control that impact students’ test scores. And, given the defects in the evaluation systems, eliminating tenure/due-process greatly increases the danger that good teachers will be discharged.
The answer is to 1) limit the use of the occasional-observation and student-test-score approaches to identifying teachers possibly in need of greater supervision/evaluation; and 2) apply a peer-review system (using expert teachers who do not report to the involved principal) to provide intensive/extended supervision/training/evaluation of those teachers identified as possibly poor performers. A peer-review system (called “PAR”) has been used for over 10 years in Montgomery County, MD (a large mostly suburban district near DC) with great success — over 500 teachers discharged (or resigned in lieu of review), few challenges to the discharges, union supports the program, no high-stakes-testing, and teachers retain full tenure/due-process protection.
Would you also say that TRANSPARENCY is essential? For example, what if there was a way to “look over teachers’ shoulders” while they prepared lessons and interacted with students? Then, we would NOT have to depend so much on observations!
It is bureaucrats and politicians, along with Bill Gates, who are creating systems they know nothing about. Regarding Dr ho’s question, if that means we should be using cameras to ‘spy’ into classrooms, NO! Would be my response to that idea.
Frequent or routine videotaping of teachers might address some of the problems with the occasional-observation approach, but the other problems would remain. And, who’d sit and watch all those videotapes? The perfect answer from a HR perspective is to create first-line supervisors — as opposed to the principal-manager — for teachers (as exist in most organizations employing large numbers of professionals). This would be tremendously expensive and would conflict with the traditional education model of the solitary teacher. The peer-reveiw approach — where teachers identified as possibly being poor performers receive the equivalent of first-line supervision for a limited time period — provides the required first-line supervisor but minimizes the cost by limiting the number of teachers subject to supervision and the duration of the supervision.
Videotaping with cameras is so “20th century”! Instead, I’m suggesting “21st-century” teaching using technology such as social media to document teachers’ research during lesson preparation and their interaction with their students’ learning. Here’s a post which explains it further:
http://blog.learnstream.co/post/13970257934/moreas
Of course, to maximize the transparency will require a dramatic shift in our teaching model from “sage on the stage” to “guide by the side”!
Thank you for posting this, Diane. As a principal, I appreciate hearing the voices of fellow principals on your blog from time to time. In the current stormy climate, my navigation skills are continually being put to the test. Having other “mentors” out there helps.
I’m with Duane. How many principals are truly educators and how many are really clueless middle managers taking orders from downtown? How many principals became principals because they didn’t like working in classrooms or knew that they’d never be good at it? How many principals have any real clue about what teachers are doing in their classrooms or care, except to see whether the numbers are improving? And so how many principals see as their mission to support their teachers rather than simply to demand higher performance from them?
There are some great principals, and I’m sure Burris is one of them, but I don’t think most are, and the system as its set up in most districts does not support the hiring and development of more of them. And the idea that so many good teachers are subjected to their too-often perfunctory, clueless, or politically motivated evaluations, and theirs alone, no matter what the rubric, is doing more to drive good teachers out of the profession than weeding out the few bad teachers who ought not to be in the classroom.
Labor Lawyer, I’m a PAR proponent as well. I’ve had a mix of good and bad administrators over my career, but even when I’ve had good ones, I’ve developed more as a teacher from collaborating with excellent colleagues, not from receiving advice from strong principals.
Tennessee’s RTTT-inspired TEAM evaluation system suffers from the weaknesses you cite in the occasional observation/test-score-based approaches. This year as a teacher with a professional license, I’ll be observed twice–once in the fall for an announced observation and once in the spring for an unannounced. During the announced visit, I’ll be evaluated for planning and instruction. The planning portion involves a tedious lesson plan template I don’t use at any other time all year. In the spring, I’ll be evaluated for classroom environment (some of the rubric’s descriptors can’t possibly be determined in one observation) and instruction again. Besides these official observations, it’s unlikely an administrator will drop in for a casual observation.
But, of course, the TN Dept of Ed loves themselves some value-added. To point out the flaws in value-added’s reliability and validity is heresy. That’s why the Dept of Ed’s review of the TEAM evaluation had over a page dedicated to blaming inflated observation scores as the reason for the disparity between teachers who scored a 1 on observations (.02%) and those with a value-added score of 1 (15.9%). (The report didn’t harp on the disparities at Level 4 or 5. In fact, a greater percentage of teachers had 5 value-added than 5 for observation.) I’m afraid that some evaluators this year who don’t understand the instability of value-added may feel compelled to make a teacher’s observation score closely align to his or her’s value-added score from last year.
I share the same concern, and there is evidenced this very behavior in the HISD school district in TX. Download the PDF and read for yourself.
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1096
I am acquainted with situations where the principal of a school has had no experience even teaching in a school with the grade levels in which they have become responsible. Does this make any sense? There are many differences between elementary, middle and high school teaching techniques expectations, and operations.
Interesting comments…..there was a time when administrators were required to be teachers (that was the case when I received my license). I think that rule should be reinstated. Principal originally referred to the ‘principal teacher’. I believe that part of the administrative certification process should be demonstration of excellent teaching. PAR is an excellent model as a supplement, especially for a teacher who needs assistance. I am sorry that some of you have had experiences with less than stellar principals. In all fairness, when I taught, I had colleagues (teachers) give me excellent advice, and others give me advice that was awful.it is the person and their skill, not the title that makes a difference.
Why can’t this be the case in every school district?…so many lack equity!
“…there was a time when administrators were required to be teachers (that was the case when I received my license). I think that rule should be reinstated. Principal originally referred to the ‘principal teacher’.”
Yes. There is a bigger principal-quality problem than there is a teacher-quality problem, IMO. And going back to the idea that the principal is the principal teacher rather than a number-crunching business executive would go a long way toward redressing that problem.
Nevertheless, each state should develop a long-term plan to improve teacher quality and professionalism. They should want to attract the best people and to retain them. That means paying them at a level commensurate with their education and professionalism, but it also means making fundamental changes in the way teachers are recruited and trained for careers in the classroom. And it means developing more effective ways of enhancing professional development and collaborative support among teachers. The current evaluation and accountability systems in place in most states are useless and counterproductive, systems that serve bureaucratic needs, not the real needs of individual school communities.
My one totally positive experience with evaluation was when I was part of a pilot project using peer evaluation. It was a collegial, collaborative experience of teacher helping teacher. We observed each other’s classes after setting up parameters together of what information the observed teacher was interested in receiving. It was as useful to the observing teachers as the observed. Administrator evaluations were generally positive but were more like being given grades. It was never a very helpful experience, and I especially despised the process of random administrators “walking through” that came into vogue in more recent years. The goal seemed to be some sort of perverted cat and mouse game. People had always walked in and out of my classes freely especially during my resource years. It was only when it became an”official” evaluation technique that it became oppressive. These little out of context tidbits would pop up in an evaluation that never would have appeared in the past. Since the gap between these “observations” and the final written report could be more than a month, it was often difficult to remember the occasion.
OMG!! Did someone write that Danielson was a better model for evaluations??? Tennessee principals are giving U ratings to excellent lessons because the teacher didn’t follow all the Danielson principles. Danielson believes that one-size fits all lessons. Nothing can do that. It also has components (or at least they were added to some NYC turnaround schools, that can render a teacher ineffective if one student does not look engaged.
There are so many programs out there, and even the good ones need tweaking. Tennessee is now seeing the errors of their ways, but it may be too late for teachers.
Very interesting and helpful. Now who on earth thinks a bureaucrat can do this better?