Beyond pass-fail: New WA educator evaluations

While their students can earn anything from an A to an F for their school performance, nearly every American teacher gets one of two grades - unsatisfactory or meets expectations - and almost all earn a passing grade.

That is about to change in Washington and many other states where more nuanced teacher evaluation systems are being developed, at least partly in response to the federal Race to the Top competition for school dollars.

Last year, a handful of Washington school districts were given money and help to update both teacher and principal evaluations. Washington did not get money from the federal government to help pay for this or any other education reform idea, but the legislature and the governor wanted school districts to go ahead with this school reform effort.

To give teachers and principals more useful feedback, the new system will grade them on a four-point scale. Eight school districts and one coalition of smaller districts in eastern Washington are piloting new evaluation systems this spring and during the next school year.

The pilot districts are Anacortes, Central Valley Spokane, Kennewick, North Mason, North Thurston, Othello, Snohomish and Wenatchee. The coalition includes Almira, Davenport, Liberty, Medical Lake, Pullman, Reardan-Edwall, Ritzville and Wilbur.

A total of 55 districts applied to be part of the pilot, said Michaela Miller, who coordinates the evaluation project as well as the National Board Certified Teachers program for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

All Washington districts are required to adopt new systems in the 2013-14 school year. This is the first time in about 25 years that the state has set new statewide criteria for teacher evaluations and the first time a statewide system has been set up for principal evaluations. The pilot sites are scheduled to finalize their evaluation rules in March.

Last year, the legislature decided eight criteria must be used to evaluate teachers, but specific descriptions explaining what these criteria mean and how to tell if an individual has succeeded has been left up to individual districts. The criteria: High expectations, effective teaching practices, recognizing individual student learning needs, focus on subject matter, safe and productive learning environment, use of multiple student data elements to modify instruction, communicating with parents and the school community, and collaboration.

So, for example, one district has decided that for the category of high expectations, an "accomplished" teacher would consistently monitor and adjust student goals based on their student achievement data, which may include test scores in some districts.

The vagueness of the legislature's instructions, leaving much room for interpretation by individual school districts, has made the process more difficult for the districts, said Charlotte Danielson, an educational consultant from Princeton, N.J., who was hired by state education officials to guide districts through the process.

"I don't think anyone gave them a heads up about what they would need for a viable system," Danielson said. Viable means a system that allows individual principals to evaluate teachers both accurately and consistently, no matter who is doing the evaluation. She said the key is developing a system that could withstand legal challenges.

After meeting with representatives for the pilot districts for the first time, Danielson said she was impressed with their efforts and expected the testing sites would move toward more consensus, in part to help make training more cost-effective.

One of the unique elements of this effort in Washington state is the involvement of teachers and their unions in helping define what makes a good or a great teacher.

Fourth grade teacher Lindsay Ehlers has been teaching for 10 years in the Central Valley School District in Spokane County and has always gotten an evaluation of "meets expectations." Does that mean she's a good teacher?

"I don't think it matters if you've been teaching one year or 10 year or 20 years, there's always things you can refine and do better to help kids," said Ehlers, who teachers at Liberty Lake Elementary and is on the committee putting together a new four-level evaluation tool for Central Valley.

Ehlers said one of the best parts of creating a new evaluation system is that it has forced the administration to be specific about what good teaching looks like. She said it will also help teachers reflect on their work and have more concrete goals for where they should be going.

"I'm sure there will be some teachers that this is a not a growth experience for," Ehlers acknowledged.

Ann Randall of the Washington Education Association, the statewide teacher's union, said the project has been a positive experience because of the design work being done in each individual school district. She hopes the state won't decide to adopt one model and force every district to conform.

"Just adopting somebody else's model wholesale isn't going to be as effective," Randall said.

OSPI's Miller said the process hasn't been easy, but the districts have found the hard conversations were worth having.

"It's not that everybody's singing 'Kumbaya' around this," she added.

----

Online:

Teacher-Principal Evaluation Pilot: http://tpep-wa.org