Teacher evaluation has been a hot topic for the past few years. Schools—both public and private—are starting to change the way they not only evaluate teachers, but how they hire, provide professional development, and establish their leadership systems.
Changes Making News Nationwide
Making headlines in New York and across the nation is a system experts call “value-added evaluation.” This process attempts to measure teachers' roles in student lives and student learning over the course of a year via test scores and other performance measures. Critics—including many teacher unions—argue that this sort of evaluation does not provide a full picture of student growth, and that the statistical models used for the measures are not designed to evaluate teachers. Other states and cities are considering systems based solely on student test scores.
A number of esteemed organizations—including The New Teacher Project and The Gates Foundation—are also working earnestly on the problem of teacher evaluation, suggesting their own models and criteria. What these various models have in common is a desire on the part of parents and administrators to hold teachers accountable for their performance. The question remains: What should be measured or evaluated? And does any of this have any impact on student learning?
ISM’s Role in the Debate
ISM has not been a quiet observer during this national discussion. Over the past two years, our 21st Century articles have envisioned the future structure and needs of private schools. We’ve recommended that teachers receive annual evaluations—and that the primary role of academic administrators (such as Division Heads) is expanding the capacity of teachers through coaching and mentoring.
Most recently, we published several articles in I&P about the teacher evaluation processes, including a template for teacher evaluation, and there are several more articles scheduled to be published over the coming months. These articles serve as the basis for several Webinars, including the currently running Teacher Evaluation Series. The evaluation templates and tools we’re recommending include hot-off-the-presses recommendations from our recently concluded survey, The ISM Student Experience Study (SES).
The Research on Student Performance, Satisfaction, and Enthusiasm
SES is a fresh update of a landmark ISM study that ran for six years from 1989 to 1995, The ISM International Model Schools Project. In the school year 2010-11, we conducted a one-year partial replication of the original study, this time with eight private-independent schools from a full range of possible grade configurations, religiously affiliated and secular, single-sex and coed, and boarding and day. The full report of the study’s methodology, outcomes, and recommendations can be found in the ISM Research area; the report is accessible only to Consortium Gold Members. For nonmembers, there is an upcoming Webinar, “Research Outcomes: The ISM Student Experience Study,” which will review the research as well as discuss purposes and uses of the findings. The key findings of SES are built into all of ISM’s new evaluation tools and recommendations. Those findings are simply but powerfully this: Teachers and schools that provide predictable and supportive learning environments for students increase student performance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm.
ISM’s Teacher Evaluation Model
The model that ISM recently published is based on these findings. By reflecting on a school’s unique mission, culture, values, and the research-proven variables of predictability and supportiveness (as confirmed by SES), a school can base its entire faculty model—from hiring, to evaluation, to professional development, to pay for performance, to performance improvement and selective retention—on “Characteristics of Professional Excellence.” These characteristics (or performance traits) define teacher excellence at your school. The school can use these characteristics to form interview questions, induct/orient new faculty, evaluate faculty on these characteristics, encourage professional growth, and counsel (and sometimes terminate) faculty who are lacking these characteristics. The new teacher evaluation template puts the evaluation aspects of the broader system into effect in a way that is designed to increase engagement, collaboration, and professional growth of both the teacher and the coach/evaluator.
Looking Forward
ISM looks forward to publishing The ISM Teacher Evaluation Book late this spring. This book will also serve as the basis for our Summer Institute course, “Attracting, Developing, Rewarding, and Inspiring Faculty,” to be held in Philadelphia, July 15–19.
Additional ISM resources of interest
ISM Monthly Update for Human Resources Vol. 9 No. 4 New Year: A Time to Think About Performance Evaluations
ISM Monthly Update for Human Resources Vol. 10 No. 2 Rethinking Faculty Performance Evaluations
ISM Monthly Update for Division Heads Vol. 9 No. 6 Can Evaluation Really Drive Faculty (and Student) Performance?
ISM Monthly Update for Division Heads Vol. 9 No. 5 The Teacher Evaluation Stalemate in New York
Additional ISM resources for Consortium Gold Members
I&P Vol. 37 No. 2 A 21st Century Teacher Evaluation Model
