Teacher Evaluation to Enhance Professional Practice

Charlotte Danielson, Thomas L. McGreal

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781416615828
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teacher evaluation--a term that brings fear, anticipation, stress, anxiety, or even boredom to the hearts of teachers and administrators everywhere. How can we reinvent teacher evaluation so that it really makes a difference--so that everyone in school benefits from it, so that teachers and administrators learn from it, so that students succeed as a result of it? The bad news is that many schools and districts seem to be stuck in old ruts, involving The Observation, The Behavior Checklist, and The Conference. The good news is that many districts have paved the way for teacher evaluation to actually become professional development, by using a three-track evaluation system:

* Track I, for beginning teachers, promotes growth and new learning through mentoring, frequent observations, and support systems.
* Track II, for tenured teachers--that is, most teachers in the system--promotes professional learning experiences through self-assessment, goal setting, data collection, formative evaluations, study groups, action plans, and evaluation in which teachers play an active role.
* Track III, for tenured teachers needing assistance, focuses on remediating difficulties and recommending further action.

More good news: Through concrete examples, useful forms, and assessment tools, this book provides a clear roadmap to effective teacher evaluation systems that combine quality assurance with professional development for all teachers.

Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.

Chapter 1

A Flawed System

As the Prologue shows, the experiences of Karen and Charles—and many other teachers and administrators—signal some of the pervasive problems with today’s teacher evaluation systems. Though well intentioned, these systems are burdensome and not helpful for teachers who are looking to improve their practice. Nor do they assist administrators in making difficult decisions regarding teacher performance. We see six main areas of deficiency in current teacher evaluation systems.

What’s Wrong?

Outdated, Limited, Evaluative Criteria

Many evaluation systems in use today were developed in the early to mid-1970s and reflect what educators believed about teaching at that time. Current systems rely heavily on the documentation of a small number of “observable behaviors,” such as “writing the learning objectives on the board,” “smiling at students as you greet them,” and the like. Hence, Karen will be sure, in her observed lesson, to do all the things she “should” do, so Charles can check them off on his list.

This generation of evaluation systems is grounded in the conception of teaching that prevailed in the 1970s, and many are based on the work originally done by Madeline Hunter (e.g., Mastery Teaching, 1982). The research on student learning that accompanied these systems relied on the only available measures of student achievement: norm-referenced, machine-scorable, multiple-choice tests of fairly low-level knowledge. But our goals for student achievement have evolved—we are now interested in more complex learning, in problem-solving, in the application of knowledge to unfamiliar situations. Further, recent educational research, particularly on the nature of the brain and how it learns, has made it clear that we need new approaches to teaching and, therefore, to the description and evaluation of teaching.

This is not an indictment of earlier models; indeed, they represented the best of what was known at the time. Like other professions, however, education is built around a conception of practice based on current and emerging research findings; as those findings suggest new approaches, pedagogical practices must also move forward.

Therefore, because educational research has advanced over the past 25 years, and classroom practice is following suit, the evaluation of teaching must reflect these newer techniques. The evaluative criteria used should represent the most current research available; and we need to make provisions, as time goes on, to revise those criteria to reflect current findings. For example, teachers might be asked to demonstrate that their students are successfully achieving the state’s content standards, or that they are teaching for understanding (rather than merely rote learning).

Few Shared Values and Assumptions About Good Teaching

As the conception of learning and hence good teaching has gradually shifted from a “behaviorist” to a more “constructivist” view, in line with emerging research, many educators have developed their own personal views of what constitutes good practice. In some cases, teachers have been more inclined to embrace the new approaches than have been their administrators; in other cases, the reverse has been true. Karen is not sure what Charles considers a good lesson; she is inclined to play it safe and keep the students in their seats during the observation. The system in place in the school does not leave room for discussion of these matters. In any event, Karen and Charles have never discussed this; for all either of them knows, they might agree on a more complex view of teaching than that reflected in their evaluation form.

But the district has never forged a common language to describe teaching, one on which everyone in the district can agree. Nor does the district’s evaluation system support teachers and administrators’ having professional conversations that would be a learning experience. As a result, teachers can only guess at the values and assumptions about good teaching on which their performance will be judged.

Lack of Precision in Evaluating Performance

Most evaluation systems depend on a single dichotomous scale, such as “satisfactory,” “needs improvement,” and the like. Some evaluation systems, on the other hand, have attempted to incorporate “rating scales,” that is, scales from “1” to “4” or levels representing “low, medium, and high,” or “needs improvement, satisfactory, and outstanding,” or “seldom, frequently, and always,” or similar headings. Though offering a promise of greater objectivity and specificity than a simple checklist of whether certain behaviors were observed or not, such systems typically fall well short of their potential, because there is little agreement on what constitutes a “level 3,” or “medium,” or “satisfactory” performance. That is, one person’s “satisfactory” might be another person’s “outstanding.” We don’t have, in other words, the equivalent of the “anchor papers” or “benchmarks” used in evaluating student work against rubrics.

Further, several factors prevent the full use of the rating scale, if one exists. First, given the culture surrounding evaluation in many school environments, most teachers expect to receive all “outstandings” on their evaluations, regardless of the actual quality of their teaching and the definition of “outstanding.” Anything less, particularly for experienced teachers, would signal a serious deficiency. This has come to be known as the “Lake Wobegon Effect,” named for Garrison Keillor’s (1985) fictional town in Minnesota where “all the children are above average.” Second, in some school districts, administrators are reluctant to be completely honest in their evaluations of teaching. Occasionally, an administrator concludes that a teacher is not functioning well in the current school but may believe that the teacher could perform successfully in a different environment. Alternatively, a principal may not honestly believe that a teacher could perform any more successfully in another school, but would like that teacher removed from her staff without enduring the trauma of a dismissal. A transfer will be difficult to arrange, however, and will be difficult to sell to the other administrator, if the teacher has received poor evaluations. Hence, many administrators are less than candid in their assessments of teaching; in their hopes of having the teacher transferred to another school, they will write a positive evaluation. This practice is sometimes dubbed “the dance of the lemons.”

Finally, in many situations, teachers have little trust in the ratings given. Although all teachers want the highest rating, and believe that their careers will be damaged if they don’t receive it, they believe that administrators reserve the highest ratings for their friends or protégés. The integrity of the entire process, then, may be seriously compromised by a perception of favoritism.

Hierarchical, One-Way Communication

Most evaluation systems are characterized by top-down communication, in which the only evidence of teacher performance is that collected by an administrator during classroom observations. Typically, a principal or other supervisor conducts an observation, takes notes, writes up the observation, and provides feedback to the teacher on her performance. In the absence of clear evaluative criteria, this feedback is likely to be highly idiosyncratic, and may or may not be of value to the teacher. Further, depending on the relationship between the school district and the teachers’ association, the climate surrounding evaluation may be essentially negative, with a prevailing perception on the part of teachers that the real purpose of the exercise is one of “gotcha,” in which administrators look for opportunities to find fault. But even when the climate is positive, the teacher’s role is essentially passive; thus the teachers don’t do anything.

No Differentiation Between Novice and Experienced Practitioners

Teaching, alone among the professions, makes the same demands on novices as on experienced practitioners. The moment first-year teachers enter their first classrooms, they are held to the same standard—and subjected to the same procedures—as their more experienced colleagues.

Most other professions build in a period of apprenticeship. No one would expect a prospective surgeon, straight from medical school, to take charge of a complex operation. Nor would a new architect be asked to design, single-handedly, a large office building. Yet the job of teaching for a novice is identical to that of a seasoned veteran (sometimes harder); and the procedures used to evaluate them are identical. When the principal arrives to conduct an observation of a novice teacher, she holds the very same checklist as that used for experienced teachers.

It is important to remember, however, that from the standpoint of the public, it is not unreasonable to expect a skilled level of teaching in every classroom. After all, a student should not receive an inferior education just because he or she is assigned to the class of an inexperienced teacher. The school district’s implied contract with the public ensures that all teachers exhibit at least a certain level of skill.

In the case of teachers, the state’s responsibility (through its licensing procedures) ends with the guarantee of minimum competence; after that, it is the role of each school district, through its procedures for teacher evaluation and professional growth, to ensure excellence. And it is in everyone’s collective interest that all teachers perform at a high level; teachers in a school, even more than architects in a firm, work as a team to ensure the learning of all students in that school. Although the school district must ensure that all teachers (including beginning teachers) have at least a certain level of skill, the procedures used might be somewhat different for novices than for their more experienced colleagues.

Limited Administrator Expertise

Many teachers are more expert regarding their work than the administrators who “supervise” them—more knowledgeable about their discipline, current pedagogical approaches, or the developmental characteristics of the students they teach. Many administrators, especially those whose background is in the humanities, would be hard-pressed to spot content inaccuracies in a chemistry class. Similarly, administrators’ knowledge of introducing equivalent fractions to 4th graders, or developing writing skills, may be weak; and they may not be familiar with the proper use (or possible misuse) of graphing calculators in a mathematics classroom.

It is true that all teaching environments share important characteristics, and that a thoughtful and well-trained observer can recognize these characteristics (or their absence) in a variety of settings. But knowledge of content, of content-related pedagogy, and the approaches to learning displayed by students at different developmental levels, are highly relevant to teaching. Teachers may well be more knowledgeable in these matters than the administrator who evaluates their performance; this fact undermines the evaluation process, contributing to the perception that it has little value. As the Prologue makes clear, Karen does not expect to learn anything useful from Charles as a result of his observation and evaluation of her lesson-indeed, she believes, perhaps rightly, that his knowledge of 4th graders and their learning is virtually nonexistent.

The Result?

A combination of these factors—limited administrator expertise, little shared understanding of what constitutes good teaching, low levels of trust between teachers and administrators—lead to a culture of passivity and protection. Teachers are unlikely to be honest about any difficulties they may be experiencing if they fear that “problems” will be described on the final evaluation document as “deficiencies.” Such an atmosphere is not a safe one for taking risks; the culture surrounding evaluation is not one of professional inquiry. Moreover, because teachers may not honestly respect the administrator’s expertise and, therefore, do not expect to learn from the evaluation process, they have little incentive for admitting to difficulties that may only be held against them. In addition, the feeling that “nothing can be done” saps energy from other projects within the school that require people to think in new ways.

Thus, we see Karen doing whats near-universal in schools: She performs a “canned” lesson for the evaluation observation, a lesson designed to demonstrate all the “behaviors” on the checklist and one in which the students may have been coached before the observation. This may be the same lesson that was taught for the past five years of observations, and it may be a good lesson. But the administrator is unlikely to learn anything about the teacher that he did not know previously, and the subsequent conversation is unlikely to be professionally rewarding for either the teacher or the administrator.

Because of the factors described here—unclear or inappropriate evaluative criteria, limited administrative expertise, one-way communication—current teacher evaluation is a meaningless exercise. It yields little of value to either the teachers or the schools in which they work, simultaneously feeling like a gotcha to the teachers while consuming a great deal of administrator time. Some of these reasons are structural; some are cultural. But either way, neither Karen nor Charles will derive much benefit from participating in the ritual called “evaluation.”

Of course, it can be worse. In some situations, the culture surrounding teacher evaluation is so poisoned that there is no trust between teachers and administrators; and teachers believe that administrators use the evaluation system to get rid of people they dislike. The system itself can contribute to this phenomenon, if administrator judgments need not be based on specific evidence, if the system does not permit teachers to present their interpretation of events, and if the environment surrounding evaluation does not permit genuine and professional conversation about teaching. If a system allows an administrator to dole out low ratings, with no justification and no opportunity for teachers to respond in a substantive manner, the system is worse than meaningless; it is punitive and damaging.

School districts have little incentive, however, to change the situation. After all, except where the atmosphere is truly poisoned, no one (none of the adults, at least) is being harmed by the evaluation practices in place. People go through the motions, they follow the procedures, and there is a piece of paper to put in the human resources file at the end of the year. The ritual is essentially meaningless, with little good resulting from it. We believe educators can design better systems.

First Principles: Why Teacher Evaluation?

Virtually every public school district, by order of state law or regulation, has a formal procedure for the evaluation of teachers. The system typically consists of one or two observations of teaching by a supervisor, who writes up his findings, provides feedback to the teacher, and completes an evaluation for insertion in the teachers personnel file. Serious deficiencies may be addressed through the process and can lead, if procedures are carefully followed, to dismissal. That, however, is extremely rare.

The traditional approach to teacher evaluation is no longer adequate. One factor fueling the shift has been an expanded understanding of learning, and what constitutes good teaching. Another factor has been the promulgation, by professional organizations and many states and large school districts, of content standards for student learning. As these entities specify what students should know and be able to do, school districts have an obligation to ensure that their teachers be able to help students meet the higher standards. This interest in student learning has heightened interest, at all levels, in teacher performance.

The movement to adopt (or develop) content standards for student learning has its parallel in new approaches toward the evaluation of teaching. As educators learn more about teaching, in all its complexities, schools face the challenge of ensuring that all teachers are able to perform at those high levels (see box, “The Purposes of Evaluation”). In addition, a number of states have adopted teaching standards intended to guide local practitioners in the design of their evaluation systems. Although these standards are frequently stated too globally to translate directly into criteria for evaluation, they can provide a helpful context for local efforts.

The Purposes of Evaluation

As Donald Haefele (1993) points out, a clear sense of purpose should govern the design of a teacher evaluation system. He identifies the following purposes that must be served, arguing that a system should

• screen out unqualified persons from certification and selection processes;
• provide constructive feedback to individual educators;
• recognize and help reinforce outstanding service;
• provide direction for staff development practices;
• provide evidence that will withstand professional and judicial scrutiny;
• aid institutions in terminating incompetent or unproductive personnel; and
• unify teachers and administrators in their collective efforts to educate students.

Formative Versus Summative

It is clear that the list of purposes in the box can be divided into two broad categories: those purposes defined as summative (for the purpose of making consequential decisions) and those defined as formative (for the purpose of enhancing the professional skills of teachers). Screening out unsuitable candidates, dismissing incompetent teachers, and providing legally defensible evidence are all summative functions; providing constructive feedback, recognizing and reinforcing outstanding practice, providing direction for staff development, and unifying teachers and administrators around improved student learning are all formative. The two principal purposes of teacher evaluation, then, are (1) quality assurance and (2) professional development.

The relative importance of these two aspects of evaluation are significantly different for different groups of people. Legislators and policymakers tend to value the summative purposes, those of quality assurance and accountability. They make the point that public schools are, after all, public institutions, supported by taxpayer money, and that the public has a legitimate interest in the quality of the teaching that occurs there. It is through the system of teacher evaluation that members of the public, through their legislators, state officials, local boards of education, and administrators, ensure the quality of teaching. A parent, in other words, in entrusting the education of a child to the public schools, has a right to expect a certain minimum level of performance.

Educators, on the other hand, tend to think that teacher evaluation should be designed for the purpose of professional development and the improvement of teaching. Experienced practitioners argue that professional dialogue about teaching, in a safe environment, managed and led by teachers, is the only means by which teachers will improve their practice.

Serious Incompatibilities?

Not only do different individuals and groups disagree about the relative importance of the two main purposes of evaluation—quality assurance and professional growth—but some even argue that they are incompatible with one another. Some educators say that accountability requires a strict line of command, a fixed hierarchy. It must be evident to everyone where the buck stops, and whose job it is to do what. Evaluations are judgments; they are assessments of teaching, and they must be made as objectively as possible. They must also be made fairly, with no appearance of favoritism toward individuals based on friendship or bias grounded in irrelevant matters. Even if teachers organize and conduct the evaluations, as in peer review systems, the lines of responsi...