Teacher evaluation systems and practices

Teacher evaluation is a controversial topic. It is often thought by the general public and even some educators that once a teacher rises to a certain level there is little incentive to alter practices based on current research or training and even more alarming the ability for an administrator to terminate a teacher's contract can be difficult.

According to surveys of parents and administrators, incompetence in the teaching profession has become a major concern (Bridges 1984). On one occasion 45% of polled public school parents felt that some teachers in the local schools should be fired. In another survey school administrators estimated that 5 to 15% of their teachers performed unsatisfactorily. Yet dismissal of tenured teachers for incompetence is still relatively rare. (Ellis, 2003, p.1)

Evaluation can be seen as a mere formality put in place to ensure less questioning about funding. "...evaluation procedures risk becoming meaningless exercises for the majority of teachers who are already performing at or beyond the minimal level (McLaughlin, 1990; Searfoss & Enz, 1996). (Weiss & Weiss, 2003, p. 1)

The public views teacher evaluation as a major problem in the school system today (Soar and others, 1983). Common methods for evaluating teachers, such as measurement tests of teacher characteristics, student achievement test scores, and ratings of teachers' classroom performance, have been ineffective. (Barrett, 2003, p.1)

The proposed solution, rather than focusing on the legal strength of schools and districts to dismiss ineffective educators surrounds increasing incentive for improvement, and improving evaluation and training procedures for both successful educators and those possibly on the margins of low levels of success in the classroom.

A first step is for administrators to adopt and publish reasonable criteria for teacher performance. Not only do these criteria encourage teachers to excel, but failure to meet such criteria may provide a legal basis for dismissal. The second step is for administrators to develop a process for determining whether a teacher has adequately satisfied the criteria. (Ellis, 2003, p.1)

Ellis then goes on to express the importance of intervention and input from teachers about their specific needs and goals.

After defining a teacher's problems according to specific standards of acceptable performance, principals should work with the teacher to establish objectives and strategies for improving the teacher's performance. Future teaching behavior should be monitored carefully and measured against these objectives using observation, regularly scheduled evaluations, and continuing feedback to the teacher. (Ellis, 2003, p.1)

Though this particular example, in the above document, includes accountability for poor performance as a formative tool for teacher evaluation the concept of the development of effective and useful evaluation guidelines should be addressed through positive collaboration with educators, administrators, and student outcomes. Teachers themselves sometimes even express the lack of accessibility to prior evaluations and concern about the ability of the assessment as a research tool to improve their skill as a teacher. The importance of teacher input on the process of teacher evaluation will be discussed in this work.

Recently the Po Dunk School District teachers attended a Continuing Education Seminar presented by Po University on the subject of teacher evaluation, their use and their importance. Areas under evaluation during the seminar were: the rational, purpose, criteria, uses, planning, and organization of a teacher evaluation program. The area administrators, namely the principals of all the district schools wish to involve the teachers input on issues regarding their own evaluation process, and how it might be added to or changed to better meet the needs of teachers in their professional growth process. One of the most useful outcomes of this seminar was a compilation of ratings effecting the impact teachers feel certain questions have upon the usability of teacher evaluations as outcomes-based tools.

Based on the outcomes of the closing survey this work will serve as a research guide to explain through a literary review the outcomes of the teachers seminar process. The attendees were offered a group of eleven questions on teacher evaluation, which they ranked according to their greater understanding of the impetus and needs of the evaluation process. Of the eleven questions five were ranked highest by the teachers and teachers were assigned the responsibility, in small groups to discuss and then research the questions for better understanding and also as an outcome guide for their seminar experience.

This work is the compilation of the seminar assignment and will be distributed to attending teachers, principal organizers and also Po State presenters for use as an outcome guide for both understanding about teacher evaluation and also to serve as a work in progress for future organized continuing education seminars to be attended annually by a group from each district in the region rotating through the region at an interval of five years. In which case, every five years the program will be offered to the same teachers who will then be given information based on the outcomes of the class before them and who will then build a curriculum for the class that follows.

The five questions ranked highest and chosen for further research and discussion by the attendees are:

What are the characteristics of effective teaching?

Why is teacher evaluation important?

How do the results of the evaluation help you?

What methods are used to evaluate teachers?

What are the factors that influence teacher evaluation?

After the initial ranking of the original eleven questions, and the identification of the five most crucial questions small groups were then each assigned one of the five questions to research and discuss along with relevant and inclusive research material for their task. The results of those discussions and the group research follow.

Research and Discussion Outcomes

Group One

Group one's research question is: What are the characteristics of effective teaching? The discussion preceding the group research revolved around issues of time management and student outcomes. The group contended that curriculum and tools are only as effective as the ability for the teacher to express the curriculum's messages in such a way that students are offered the proper environment, time and tools for the learning of the information offered.

Each member of the group first offered suggestions and real life examples of effective time management and environment development that have aided their abilities to engender realistic and goal oriented outcomes from their students. Teachers also gave examples of ways in which they have been required to be flexible to the needs of students and their variety of learning styles and intuitive to ways in which changes can be made to improve outcomes. Recognizing needs through careful observation of daily as well as scheduled student assessment tools and evaluating the outcomes goals and the input of parent and student suggestions is crucial to an outcome-based learning environment.

The group then moved on to assess the offered research and chose those examples among the documents they were offered which best answered their question and best described the experienced-based data they collected in their discussion. The teachers in group one chose to discuss and evaluate the five core principals of teaching excellence as identified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)

Teachers are committed to students and their learning,

Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students,

Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning,

Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience, and Teachers are members of learning communities. (Harman, 2003, p.3)

Using these five guidelines teachers further discussed the ways in which their real life teaching experience and the guidelines actually interplay to make them better at what they do and further help them self-evaluate according to these standards of teaching excellence. The group's conclusion is that like the NBPTS they would prefer any future teaching evaluations to follow the guidelines presented in these five areas and be used as a general rule to determine teaching excellence.

Group Two

Group number two's question is: Why is teacher evaluation important? The introductory material within the seminar gave some seed information for the answer to this question that also serves as a springboard for this discussion. The group discussion revolved around the ideas that correct and effective teacher evaluation processes ensure teaching excellence and offer intervention for teachers who have fallen behind or need further guidance to improve their skills as teachers and build better student outcomes.

Though the teachers themselves did not feel that poor teaching was as prevalent as the introductory examples of public opinion may express they did feel that because teaching in the compulsory education system is a cumulative process, as each student can excel or fail at each step of the process teacher evaluation based on student outcomes is crucial to each teacher that will follow the career of the student and therefore the overall success of the student.

In other words the group wished to stress that making sure that each link in the system is strong will better ensure the future success of all students. "The NBPTS recognizes that students learn by constructing new knowledge built on prior understandings..." (Weiss & Weiss, 2003, p.2) Though most teachers in the group expressed their personal confidence in ability to assist students to learn information they may have missed the year before, due to student individual development or some missing peace within the teaching skills of the previous years teacher, they feel that teacher evaluation is a way to reduce the incidence of remedial learning. (Hawley & Valli, 2003)

They also wanted to stress that some concepts are so fundamental that the student who is left behind in them could potentially be behind for their entire school career regardless of time and intent of teachers. Additionally they expressed personal concern with the time it takes to assist students with moderately remedial learning yet also concluded that in the past the time has been well spent as often times concepts reiterated for students who may have already sufficiently learned them still help all the students and may even assist students who the instructor was unaware of remedial standing on a subject. The secondary educators within the group found a passage about time management within one document to be particularly important for reference to teaching remedial and/or individualized work.

The typical secondary school teacher must teach five classes a day for 180 days a year. Assuming an average class size of 25 students, a teacher typically deals with about 125 students each day in five classes, usually with three preparations and sometimes more than one discipline. A review of the research on effective instruction indicates the key concept is individualization. Teachers cannot deal meaningfully with every student every day under this traditional schedule. (Carroll, 1994, p. 2)

Though the challenges may be different at the elementary levels, as classes stay in the same location with the same teacher all day there is arguments that the same is true of the time situation as different challenges of teaching younger less experienced students, more fundamental concepts is still relevant to serious time constraints.

The teachers also stressed that the last resort importance of teacher evaluation processes is to provide a legal precedence for the removal of teachers who are simply ineffective and fail to show improvement through successive training and interventions. (Ellis, 2003, p.1) The teachers' research reiterated their discussion topics as can be seen by the citations within the discussion section.

Group Three

Group three's question: How do the results of evaluation help you? Is probably the most subjective of the five questions but is also considered integral as the initial overall discussion within the seminar reiterated that understanding the ways in which teachers are effected by the evaluation process gives a better idea for what part of the process is effective and/or ineffective. The results of this question are integral for the determination of future best practices in teacher evaluation.

The initial group discussion of coarse cited that the evaluation process offers an outside perspective for ways in which the individual teacher might improve his or her style and expression of learning. The teachers also expressed that outcomes based on student performance on standardized works sometimes seem like the only way they can truly judge their own performance, the teachers feel that this is particularly true of situations where students do not express concerns or where students do not show signs of success or failure in other forms of evaluation. (Weiss & Weiss, 2003) Though the teachers acknowledge that outcomes standards on student performance should be a crucial component in the assessment process, the teachers feel that appropriate individual teacher evaluation process gives them an opportunity within the teaching year to improve or alter patterns before a year end standardized exam seals the fate of the students already moving forward into the next grade or even the next educational setting. (Weiss & Weiss, 2003) The teachers within the district wanted to stress the student portfolio review process that has recently been implemented, is proving the most effective way they have seen so far to help students and teachers, in real time to deal with evaluation material.

Group Four

Group four's question: What Methods are used to evaluate teachers? Was partly answered by group three's discussion of standardized testing and also in part by the general introduction to the seminar. Yet, it is clear that teachers I the Po Dunk District appreciate a new outcomes-based evaluation tool that is being used by their schools as a tool to both evaluate student performance and also teachers performance. Student portfolios are now a widely accepted way to demonstrate actual performance through the term and they are also used as an integral part of the teacher evaluation process.

Though the process can be lengthy a teacher from a single higher grade within the school spends several weeks reviewing the compilation of student portfolios for the class as part of the teacher evaluation. From this review the teacher gets a general impression of the overall class progress, thus eliminating an evaluation based on only the best or the worst examples of student work and ensuring that the whole class is generally at the level they need to be for the period of the term they are in. From this the teacher then takes notes and writes suggestions based on specific examples and compiles their findings for the school principal, who then performs a standard employment evaluation, including classroom evaluation in addition to the portfolio process. Because the process is so crucial and so appreciated by each individual teacher the process is performed three time per semester and clearly falls under the guideline associated with the NBPTS standards and those imposed by new ideas of education improvement.

A by combining clinical supervision, teacher evaluation, and inservice education, on one hand, and incentive programs and innovative instructional leadership, on the other, administrators can increase the likelihood of attracting and retaining competent and devoted professionals in their classrooms. (Ellis, 2003, p. 1)