Questions about your evaluation?

A number of faculty members have expressed concerns about their most recent evaluation to LNEA teachers' rights' representatives. I had the opportunity to attend a training by Sue Pressler, whom I understand has also trained district and building administrators, and I would like to share some of the information I gleaned from that session. If you were there, please feel free to add your comments!

Just as we design rubrics when we want kids to know what quality work looks like, the rubrics of "Framework for Teaching" (FFT) are designed to show us what quality teaching looks like and aid administrators in discussing our work with us.

Ratings of "basic" are not "bad" ratings. There's nothing wrong (according to the trainer) with being in the basic category. Furthermore, if your teaching assignment or the curriculum changes, you can expect to go back to basic. A 30-yr veteran should have exemplaries but NOT necessarily in everything. Ratings that are "exemplary" across the board should mean you are not only very experienced and accomplished at teaching what you're teaching, but also practically a candidate for canonization!

The professional appraisal system is designed to focus on teacher growth by emphasizing reflection on our teaching and by encouraging discussion among teachers and their supervisors about what constitutes good teaching. Our professional development and PLC or other collaborative work should be intricately meshed with the evaluation process. Evaluation should not feel like a "hoop" that we must jump through, but a natural part of the improvement process--and we all have room to improve.

The LNEA members who participated in the development of the evaluation system were striving to ensure that it met the quality standards described by KNEA at http://www.knea.org/profession/qualitystandards.html. The evaluation system is part of the negotiated agreement, so we would like to hear your suggestions about how to strengthen it and ensure that it is put into practice in a manner that helps teachers improve.

If you are interested in this topic, here are two related resources that you may want to review:

"Improving Student Learning Requires District Learning," by Robert Rothman in Kappan, September 2009, pp 44-50.

"Creating Strong Evaluation Systems," by Peg Dunlap in KNEA Issues, October 2009, pp 4-5.

Ginger Riddle