New teacher evaluation system...the devil's in the details

On January 16, City Council Chairman Vincent Gray organized a full-day hearing on the state of human capital development in DCPS. National experts and eloquent DCPS teachers testified for 11 hours before the full Council. Councilmembers heard different perspectives, but a powerful critique emerged of a lack of support for high quality teaching in the school system, and a teacher work force largely on their own under very difficult conditions. We offer here, and to the right, snapshots from some who testified before the council because it was a day of tremendous insight about what to do and what not to do in the system’s reform effort.

National author and researcher, Thomas Toch, who has studied the strengths and weaknesses of evaluation systems across the country, warned of the dangers of tying teacher evaluation to student test scores. Jason Kamras, who is developing the new evaluation plan for DCPS, should take heed. Rather,

“Evaluations should be based on clear, comprehensive standards of strong teaching practice that have emerged in recent years. And they should encompass multiple observations by multiple evaluators, with a substantial role going to teams of trained school system evaluators free of the inclinations to favoritism and conflicts of interest that have plagued evaluations by principals-and that led to the rise of credential- and seniority-based pay scales in public education 80 years ago.”
“… Most school systems waste millions of dollars on random workshops rather that focusing on improving teachers' specific strengths and weaknesses, because they evaluate teachers so superficially that it's nearly impossible to learn what teachers are good at and what they need to improve.”
“...Comprehensive evaluation systems signal to teachers that they are professionals doing important work, and in so doing help make public school teaching more attractive to the sort of talent that the occupation has struggled to recruit and retain.”

For the full testimony see the link to the right.

DCPS Reform -- getting the conversation right

We liked the posting today on Eduwonkette's blog shown as a link on the right here because it makes some of the same points about New Yorks reforms that we make below in relation to DC.

Three of us from the "Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform" initiative met with Special Assistant to the Chancellor Jason Kamras and Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson Dec.18 to share our concerns about important reforms being designed in DCPS. Our bias -- that system support for improvement in the quality of teaching and learning is needed. But we aren't sure the focus is there yet in Rhee's reforms. The meeting was candid, and concrete. Among the suggestions we made:
1. Efforts to re-design the teacher evaluation system needs to utilize national experts to get it right, and needs to be collaborative to ensure buy-in. A credible, not secretive, process is crucial.
2. Recent involvement of AFT with the WTU and DCPS is a step forward.
3. There needs to be a "framework" that defines skillful teaching that teachers and administrators can study and that gives the whole conversation about the quality of teaching and learning legitimacy and serves as the basis for evaluating teachers.
4. Professional development needs to stop being random acts in each school. We need a comprehensive program of professional development that promotes a clear conception of what good teaching looks like. Teaching is rocket science.
5. The symbolism of the Chancellor with a broom and the emphasis on cleaning house is demoralizing to the best teachers, in part because it is absent a clear definition of what good teaching is.
6. Downtown DCPS must own some responsibility for the demoralizing lack of improvement in the conditions of teaching and learning -- eg: discipline and truancy issues, instability in student enrollment that charters and school closings have exacerbated, schedule mismanagement, materials of instruction deficits.
7. Equating the quality of teaching with student test scores on the DC CAS is insulting to teachers, and amounts to accountability to a proxy for learning rather than the act of teaching and learning itself.
8."Red and green" salary schedules make no sense and has become a distraction and an obstacle to reform aimed at improving teaching and learning.

We look forward to further conversation with Henderson and Kamras. Multiple eyes, ears, and voices will be needed to help get it right.