Educator Evaluation: an Open Letter from Superintendent Jon Sills

November 13, 2014

Submitted by Jon Sills, Superintendent, Bedford School Department

Bedford Schools Logo (This is the first of a multi-part series on education reform, state and federal mandates, and their various impacts on the Bedford Public Schools)

Today, the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), will have published the educator ratings that resulted from the first full year of the New Educator Evaluation System’s (NEES) implementation across the Commonwealth.  While Bedford boasts many exemplary teachers and administrators, none will be so described in these ratings.  Our teacher ratings will be 97.7% Proficient, 1.6% Needs Improvement, and .4% Unsatisfactory.  This article will explain what the NEES is all about, how Bedford is using it to strengthen teaching and learning, and why, this year, we have chosen not to use the Exemplary rating.

As a Race to the Top state, Massachusetts was awarded $250,000,000 dollars in 2010 (of which Bedford received roughly $18,000) in exchange for complying with a series of requirements including, but not limited to, the creation and implementation of an educator evaluation system that includes an assessment of the educator’s impact on student achievement as one indicator of educator progress.

Educator Evaluation applies to all educators in a school system, and is composed of two major components: an assessment of the educator’s professional practice and an assessment of his/her impact on student achievement.  Each educator (teacher, counselor, administrator) identifies professional practice goals for the two year cycle (for professional status educators) or one year cycle (for pre-professional status educators) and, with his/her evaluator, develops a plan for meeting these goals.    After assessing the educator’s progress towards his her professional practice goal attainment and his/her performance relative four standards (Curriculum, Planning and Assessment; Teaching All Students; Family and Community Engagement; and Professional Culture), the evaluator rates the educator as Unsatisfactory, Needs Improvement, Proficient or Exemplary.  The evidence is derived from a series of short unannounced observations, announced observations where applicable, a variety of artifacts and student (or in the case of administrators, teacher) feedback.

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The educator is also evaluated based upon two to three years of student achievement data from a minimum of two sources (MCAS test scores where administered) and/or District Determined Measures (DDMs), which are common assessments chosen or developed by the district (in our case, by our teachers and administrators together).  Compared to many states that have put most of their eggs in state level standardized assessments, Massachusetts has built a more flexible approach.  Its various advisories also encourage teachers to develop team goals wherever possible, to promote collaboration and group “ownership” of student achievement, and to frame evaluation as a educator growth model.

Positive as this approach is, the new educator evaluation systems proliferating across the nation today stem from an education reform philosophy which, in my opinion, is seriously flawed.  Effective school improvement proceeds from a capacity building rather than a compliance oriented focus, and from organizing educators around a common sense of purpose, equipping them with the necessary resources, and tapping into their collective capabilities to share strategies and solve learning problems- not from holding the threat of exposure or dismissal over their heads by coercive accountability measures.

A key tenet of this philosophy is differential rewards for “exemplary” educators.  The BPS rejects this approach for a number of reasons, not the least of which is our overriding belief in the power of collaboration.  When some teachers are paid more than others, erosion of the team ethos inevitably occurs.  This is the reason why the Bedford Teachers Association and the administration chose, at least for the first year, not to rate any educators as Exemplary.  Secondly, across the state, schools have no clear agreement on what this rating means.  Some schools are reporting as many as 80% of their teachers as Exemplary, while others are reporting under 1%.  For Bedford, this issue is fraught with difficulties, however, since we believe that many of our educators are indeed exemplary.  In a different context, we would have no issue with acknowledging such distinctions, but the literature that has accompanied Race to the Top and similar accountability philosophies, is quite clear about using such distinctions to introduce differential pay.

We, of course, believe in educator evaluation and we believe that student achievement data is absolutely essential to educator teams making the ongoing modifications in their instruction that will ensure that all students achieve at high levels.  But there is a fundamental difference between this internal use of data and its use as an accountability instrument.

But given that the New Educator Evaluation System is here to stay, Bedford has implemented our own approach wherever possible, to facilitate not only individual teacher growth but the improvement of the whole system.  In the next Education Series installment, I will describe how Bedford is using Educator Evaluation to promote coherence and collaboration, high levels of achievement for all students, and classrooms that encourage intellectual risk-taking and reflection.

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