MEANINGFUL EVALUATIONS

Policy Action: Develop Meaningful Teacher Evaluations and Make Them Count

Illinois has one of the weakest teacher review and develop- ment systems in the country. By statute, Illinois teachers need only be evaluated every other year, and these evaluations do not consider a teacher’s impact on student achievement. In fact, in Chicago Public Schools, 93 percent of teachers who are evaluated receive “excellent” or “superior” evaluations, while 87 percent of schools did not issue a single “unsatisfac- tory” rating between 2003 and 2006.14

As a result, teachers rarely receive useful and timely feedback about what they can do to improve, rarely are evaluations used as a basis for targeted professional development and, perhaps more disturbingly, a teacher’s actual performance has nothing to do with whether or not they receive tenure, whether or not they earn or renew certification, or how they are com- pensated. Accordingly, evaluations are largely meaningless.15

Base teacher evaluations on performance, including the ability to promote student achievement. The National Council on Teacher Quality recommends that a teacher’s ability to promote student achievement be a preponderant criterion in evaluating teachers.17 The state should require districts to regularly use substantive, performance-based teacher evaluations that assess teacher effectiveness based, among other things, on how well they drive student achievement.

The state needs to require frequent evaluations (at least annually for novice teachers) and provide a model evaluation instrument that is based on clearly defined stan- dards, student performance, and classroom observations.17

Finally, the state will need to train administrators in any new teacher evaluation system, and hold them accountable for using it effectively. This should include ensuring that evaluations result in a range of teacher ratings. Unless school-level performance suggests otherwise, it will rarely be the case that the majority of teachers in a school earn either superior or unsatisfactory ratings.

Link professional milestones to job performance. Unlike virtually every other profession, where performance drives management, decisions related to teacher certification, tenure, compensation, assignment, dismissal and layoffs are not linked to classroom performance. This needs to change.

First, the move from initial to full certification, and the decision to grant tenure, should be based on performance, not the length of time one has been a teacher.

Second, Teachers who fall consistently short of performance standards should be supported to improve. If they do not, they should be dismissed. Though all teachers should be accorded fair due process rights, teachers whose performance is truly sub-par and who cannot improve can no longer be protected and allowed to remain in the profession.

Finally, layoff and transfer decisions should be based on performance history, rather than seniority which, except for the first few years of teaching, has been found to be generally unrelated to effectiveness.18

Click here for "Teacher Preparation"