Yesterday, in a CoPols back and forth about if and how DPS teachers should be evaluated, I said that if DPS was only relying on CSAP scores to evaluate teachers, DPS is missing the point.
Even as I wrote that, I was skeptical.
Turns out DPS leadership has not missed that point, and has not concluded that CSAP scores is the only way to measure teachers.
Teachers should be graded. Of course, principals and other leadership should be evaluated too. How?
SB191 requires it and defines what that should look like, but does not define how to do it.
Forget the anecdotes – they are not persuasive. I can recall teachers in my own experience who were so well liked by their students, we would have done anything for them. And teachers who were so weak that any performance in the class was based on student effort alone. (Including, of course, that student’s family, peers, and other support.)
Yes principals and other site leadership need to lead. Principals should be able to tell who is performing and who is not. And they should be empowered to work with teachers that are not, and severance teachers when necessary.
Likewise, administration leadership should be able to tell which principals and site leadership are performing and which are not. And they should be empowered to work with principals that are not, and severance them when necessary.
From the Denver Classroom Teachers Association
…in partnership with the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA), the 16 schools that will be piloting the new teacher performance-assessment system called LEAP (Leading Effective Academic Practice), starting in January 2011. …. improving and strengthening our systems of feedback, coaching, evaluation and professional development, with a simple goal of enabling all teachers to be the best professionals they can be. The LEAP system, as designed by teachers and principals, has student achievement at the center, and is focused on developing, recognizing, retaining, and rewarding effective teachers.
To be clear, LEAP is not yet set up to be the SB191 evaluation tool. But it is clear that LEAP could become the evaluation tool that SB191 requires and the kind of tool that every district should be using already anyway.
SB 191 requires .
…evaluation system that would “provide a basis for making decisions in the areas of hiring, compensation, promotion, assignment, professional development, earning and retaining nonprobationary status, dismissal, and nonrenewal of contract.”
Every teacher is evaluated using multiple, fair, transparent, timely, rigorous, and valid methods. The recommendations developed pursuant to this subparagraph (I) shall require that at least fifty percent of the evaluation is determined by the academic growth of the teacher’s students and that each teacher is provided with an opportunity to improve his or her evaluation and level of effectiveness to professional development opportunities. The multiple measures to determine effectiveness of teachers shall include, but not be limited to, measures of student longitudinal academic growth that are consistent with the measures set forth in section 22-11-204 (2) and achievement levels on any statewide assessment in the relevant subject and grade level or any locally adopted interim assessments approved by the state board to assess student academic growth in the relevant subject and grade level.
Teachers achieve “nonprobation status” with three years of a grade “demonstrated effectiveness” and lose it based on two years of “demonstrated ineffectiveness”.
LEAP does not yet include any SB191 type negative consequence for a less-than-effective rating. And if or when it does, perhaps it should be stricter than the two years of demonstrated ineffectiveness just to get probationary status. Perhaps after one year of less than effective, probation and training and other “intervention” to get that teacher back to demonstrated effectiveness.
Perhaps SB191 is too strict and should be modified. The data could persuade me either way, but as a parent, I know when my students have had less than effective teachers, I don’t want to wait two years to address anything. I want it fixed yesterday, before my kids even get there.
Which, of course, begs a discussion to answer the questions What makes a good teacher? principal? How do we measure their performance? What do we do with the measurements?
And how do we account for the fact that in some districts, teachers have mostly students who are native English speakers, well fed and clothed, with solid transportation solutions, who have parents and family that are supportive of their child’s educational and classroom performance. But in other districts, there are gangs, and drugs, and apathetic or absent parents and family, limited and inconsistent transportation and etc and so on.
Clearly “less than effective” staff in the former district could appear to be outperforming even the otherwise “effective” staff in the latter.
The measure is supposed to be “longitudinal growth”. Ie, in a year does the student demonstrate a year’s worth of growth, less than a years’s worth of growth, or even more than one year of growth. CSAP measures that for students (with varying degree of success depending on who you ask).
But even in districts where the students tend to do well on CSAP and show annual growth, it is not hard to find agreement that CSAP is not an ideal measure of teacher performance. However in those districts, not many are too concerned about using it that way.
So how much of the growth is because of the quality of instruction? And how much is just the student?
No one is “worried” about the students who make a year’s worth of progress or more (a topic for another day). And while everyone is concerned about the students who have less than a year of growth in a year -CSAP does not measure how much of the students’ growth or lack thereof can be attributed to the quality of instruction Or at least not well and maybe not at all.
I agree CSAP should not be used for more than it is designed to do and that it should not be used as a sole measure to evaluate teachers. But SB191 does not require districts to use CSAP that way. It requires Districts to come up with evaluation tools and it appears DPS leadership and staff are trying to do that.
