Evaluating the evaluation tool in education

In a matter of months, every school district in Missouri must have in place a sound instrument for evaluating their teaching staff. That mandate comes from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in Jefferson City, which has laid out a protocol to be followed in formulating such a tool.

At Tuesday night's meeting of the Board of Education, Dexter Supt. Dr. Thomas Sharp introduced a draft that will will now be analyzed, critiqued, edited, and finally adopted by the local school system.

Gone are the days when a building principal schedules a visit to a classroom and spend 30 minutes or so evaluating his/his teaching skills, summing up those skills on paper and later conferencing with the teacher to go over the findings.

It's a much more complex process these days, and it's getting ready to become even more complex.

"This is a big, big, deal in education," Sharp told the board. "We have to have a policy in place for teacher evaluations and it has to show the seven essentials that are listed by DESE."

Sharp reminded board members of the push in recent months to evaluate classroom teachers solely by their students' performance, a potential practice to which he is vehemently opposed.

"I've said repeatedly that to evaluate a teacher in that manner only provides you a snapshot -- a one-day picture -- of a student's performance. You have to have other criteria besides a state assessment in order to get a more balanced picture of how well students are learning in that classroom."

With that thought in mind, Sharp presented his draft of Dexter School District's potential evaluation tool.

It has been the task of Sharp of the past several months to develop the evaluation instrument, utilizing guidelines presented by DESE and recommended by the office of Tom Mickes, the district's legal representation. Mickes has long been regarded in the state of Missouri as the primary source for recommended changes in school policies. Those guidelines are the foundation of the instrument that was presented first to the board on Tuesday, and then to the district's certified staff on Wednesday.

"Using that as a key, I've put together an instrument has that has 19 criterion in it. Each of the criterion has six different levels of descriptors to describe the level of evaluated performance."

Sharp defines the bread and butter of the potential teacher evaluation tool. "Under professional commitment, there are three different criteria -- certification, creating lessons, and overall work habits."

Under "Professional Practices," Sharp explained, "they plan education strategies, they encourage development of student goals, they communicate with students and parents, they maintain a positive classroom environment, and they utilize the district's curriculum."

Professional Impact, Sharp said, involves demonstrated student performances. Measured under that realm are the student's active participation, the student's demonstration of knowledge of the subject matter, the demonstration of positive interaction with each other, student enthusiasm, and self-directedness.

"All this is to be discussed with administrators and teachers," Sharp said, "and some of these criterion are conditional."

The measurement of academic performance on unit tests is also recommended in Sharp's draft.

"That's a valid measurement of student performance based upon a classroom lesson," he said.

The term, "validation" is one that pops up often in discussing the development of a comprehensive evaluation tool.

"Tests have to have some kind of educational measurement tool in order to establish the validity of the results you're getting as a teacher," Sharp stated.

Although the verbage within the draft may appear to some to require a significant amount of paperwork, Sharp said that's not the case.

"We're not asking teachers to do a lot more work. Certainly, in order to use test results generated by the teacher, you have to have some confidence and validity in the instrument that you've created, and we'll be talking about that more and more -- valid measurement instruments."

The drafted evaluation tool also addresses diagnostic testing, which Sharp said can also be used to "substantiate to the evaluator and be presented by the teacher to indicate that their students are learning."

Dexter's Certified Teachers Association (CTA) will be bringing suggested changes and/or additions to the table in the immediate future as administrators and certified staff meet to develop a final version of the evaluation tool.

"Again," Sharp reminded board members, "this is a very, very, big deal academically and is not something to be taken lightly. We have to have an instrument in place that meets the required state measurements."

The new evaluation process will be implemented at the start of the 2014-15 school year.