• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts

The Educators Room logo

  • Start Here
    • Impact Statements: Teacher Expertise
    • Newsletter
  • Browse Topics
    • Content Strategies
      • Literacy
      • Mathematics
      • Social Studies
      • Educational Technology
      • ELL & ESOL
      • Fine Arts
      • Special Education
      • Popular Topics
        • Teacher Self-Care
        • Instructional Coach Files
        • Common Core
        • The Traveling Teacher
        • The Unemployed Teacher
        • The New Teacher Chronicles
        • Book Review
        • Grade Levels
          • Elementary (K-5)
          • Middle (6-8)
          • Adult
          • New Teacher Bootcamp
          • Hot Button Topics
            • Menu Item
              • Principals' Corner
              • Charter Schools
              • Confessions of a Teacher
              • Interviews
              • The State of Education
              • Stellar Educator of the Week
            • Menu
              • How to Fix Education
              • Featured
              • Ask a Teacher
              • Teacher Branding
              • Current Events
  • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout- An 8 Week Course
    • Becoming An Educational Consultant
    • Teacher Branding 101:Teachers are The Experts
    • The Learning Academy
    • Books
    • Shirts
  • Education in Atlanta
  • Teacher Self-Care
  • The Coach's Academy
menu icon
go to homepage
subscribe
search icon
Homepage link
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts
×

September 3, 2014 Featured

Shifting Our Mindset Around Teacher Evaluations

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Jon Alfuth

  • A Playbook for Building Common Core Support Among Teachers - October 8, 2014
  • Shifting Our Mindset Around Teacher Evaluations - September 3, 2014
  • A Profession for My Generation - August 19, 2014
  • The Difference Between Calculation and Mathematics - August 5, 2014
  • Four Little Tips to Transform Your Classroom - August 5, 2014
  • Just the Facts: Charter High School Performance in Memphis, TN - July 30, 2014
  • Tennessee Education's Perception Problem - July 9, 2014
  • Irrational Fears Prevent Real Common Core Progress - June 30, 2014
  • Performance Based Tests Take the Guesswork Out of Assessing - June 4, 2014
  • Teaching and the Off-Season - May 27, 2014

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]

courtesy Connected Principals

courtesy Connected Principals

During my first two years teaching I have to admit that I often thought of myself as a bad teacher. But fortunately I had an incredible mentor in my instructional facilitator, Ms. Hampton. When I had a bad observation, she gave me constructive feedback and encouraged me to improve my teaching with specific advice targeted at my weaknesses. And when I had a good observation, guess what; she did the same thing! Her coaching prowess showed itself when I was rated as a level four (out of five) teacher through our district's evaluation system in my first year teaching.

Regardless of my performance, Ms. Hampton never viewed me as a finished product. To her, I was always a work in progress who had the potential to continually improve my craft. She embodied what I think our teacher evaluation systems should seek to accomplish. They need to help struggling teachers improve and push good ones get better.

Too often, however, these systems are used solely as a sifting and winnowing tool to separate the “good” from the “bad.” Evaluations are used to fire “bad” teachers while doing little to push the “good” to improve our craft. And when we do receive feedback through these systems, it’s not as helpful as Ms. Hampton's. More often than not it comes in the form of a static designation like “effective” or “ineffective,” or in one-off salary bonuses. While both of these types of feedback have some utility for the education profession, they do little to help individual teachers improve our craft.

This begs the question; why are teacher evaluation systems designed this way? I believe that by in large American teacher evaluation systems are based on a false notion of teacher ability that’s been around as long as our public education system – the myth that teaching is a gift that some have and some do not. This idea pervades our society and governs the way we think about our country’s teachers.

Fortunately, research is dispelling this myth and demonstrating that teaching is not a gift, but is in fact a skill to be nurtured and developed in teachers over time. Educators like Doug Lemov have identified common techniques of great teachers and codified them so that they can be replicated by others.  Writers like Elizabeth Green of Chalkbeat have begun promoting research at schools like Michigan State and Stanford that suggests that teacher is an acquired skill, rather than an innate talent.

This mindset shift suggests that instead of using evaluation systems to sort teachers by a static measure of effectiveness and designating them “good” or “bad”, teachers should all be viewed as works in progress that carry within them the potential to someday become a great teacher. Adopting this new mindset carries with it two profound implications for how teacher evaluation systems should be used in America.

First, it suggests that we need to stop using teacher evaluation systems primarily for removing “bad” teachers. Indeed, it suggests that we drop the moniker "bad" all together! Instead, we need to use evaluation systems to help struggling educators improve. If it’s true that teaching is a skill to be learned, then the primary purpose of teacher evaluations should be about supporting teachers and helping them continually grow in their abilities.

Make no mistake – I’m not advocating for rubber rooms, the dance of the lemons or making it impossible to fire a teacher with a consistent track record of poor performance. What I am advocating for is a system that views teachers as, well, teachable. We all have the capacity to improve and should never be viewed as a finished product.

Second, it suggests that our evaluation system must be designed to push our best teachers to new levels of excellence. Great teachers also need continual development just like struggling teachers, but all too often opportunities like this don’t exist for great teachers. To fix this we need to couple our evaluation systems with new pathways for growth like teacher career ladders to give our best teachers new outlets for their skills.

There’s also a financial incentive to adopting this new mindset for teacher evaluations. It costs thousands of dollars to replace struggling teachers, some places as much as $17,000 per teacher! By contrast professional development costs about half that. If we consider that thousands of teachers leave the profession every each year in America, it should be apparent that our existing evaluation policies are costing us millions annually that could be better spent elsewhere.

Using evaluation systems to help teachers improve rather than removing and replacing them isn’t just a good idea philosophically - it can help alleviate some of the difficulties faced by cash-strapped districts across the country.

I do sincerely believe that we need to reform the way we evaluate teachers in America. We need a system that includes multiple measures of accountability including student performance (though what that looks like should be open to debate), classroom observations and measures of content knowledge. But the idea that great teaching can be taught carries with it profound implications for the way that we use evaluations in America. We need to stop targeting our systems towards removing bad teachers and start talking about growing all teachers. This is going to require a mindset shift on the part of policy makers and the public, but it’s a mindset shift that could transform teaching and student learning in our country. For the sake of our kids, we can't afford not to adopt it.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailInspirational Educator: Deborah R. Gerhardt Default ThumbnailTowards Working Constructively with Politicians Default ThumbnailWant to Fix Schools? Give Teachers More TIME! Default ThumbnailAre You a "Justa" ?
« Teaching Ferguson: Resources for High School
Yes, Teacher Leadership is for you! - A TER Book Review »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

The Educator's Room was launched in 2012 to amplify the voice of educators. To date, we have over 45+ writers from around the world and boast over twelve million page views. Through articles, events, and social media we will advocate for honest dialogue with teachers about how to improve public education. This mission is especially important when reporting on education in our community; therefore, we commit our readers to integrity, accuracy, and independence in education reporting. To join our mailing list, click here.

What we do

At The Educator's Room, we focus on amplifying and honoring the voice of educators as experts in education. To date, we have over 40 staff writers/teachers from around the world.

Popular Posts

  • Want to Keep Special Education Teachers? Try Mentorship
  • An Idaho teen who won his school board election has a message for educators
  • Moving Beyond Diversity to Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging: Lessons from a Sunday Sermon
  • Ask the Educator's Room: What do I do if a student won't stop lying?

Featured On

Buy Our Books/Courses

How to Leave Your Job in Education

Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout

Using Your Teacher Expertise to Become an Educational Consultant

Check out our books on teaching and learning!

The Learning Academy

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Accessibility Policy

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Services
  • Media Kit
  • FAQ

 

Copyright © 2021 The Educator's Room.