This twelve minute video of Anthony Bryk from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is one of the best things I’ve seen about teacher evaluation. Among other points, he compares summative teacher evaluation with teacher improvement.
I learned about it from Matthew Di Carlo at The Shanker Blog, a “must-read” blog for educators.
It is (Mostly) About Improvement from EdWriters on Vimeo.
I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Effective Student & Teacher Assessments.
Finally, another voice saying the same message! I’m the retired director of the Willamette University Graduate School of Education and have focused on the level of feedback teachers need to improve throughout my career. I developed the Data-Based Observation Model and have written software to gather objective data while observing teachers, not the typical judgmental scale tools used with Danielson and other rubrics.
Providing useful and welcome feedback to teachers in the form of objective, non-judgmental data on such things as teacher talk vrs student talk, response to misbehaviors in the class, amount of student reading/writing time, etc, etc is actually quite easy. When the teacher has the data on what they do and what impact it has on student academic behaviors they have the baseline and record of improvement that we’re really after.
I’m very pleased that Tony Bryk is leading the discussion in this direction. When teachers spend their time reacting to evaluations that are general in nature, rubrics notwithstanding, they are being distracted from what everyone desires – improving their skills. The Data-Based Observation Model treats teachers as intelligent and capable professionals, and engages them in their own process of self-directed professional growth.
If anyone would like to discuss this approach further, please contact me.
John L. Tenny, Ph.D.
eCOVE Software
john@ecove.net