Teacher Evaluations From The Teacher's Viewpoint

In a May, 2008 report by the Education Sector titled Waiting To Be Won Over there is an interesting and revealing question: exactly what do teachers think of formal evaluations. The graphic here illustrates a significant problem. In this chart 41% of the teachers viewed formal observations as a 'formality'. When I look at the evaluation forms and the standards they are based on, it's quite obvious why they would think so. The language in the standards/indicators and on the forms is very frequently so vague as to be unverifiable.

Only 26% viewed the evaluations as 'useful and effective' - just 1/4 of the teachers!

But what I found most interesting was the 32% that saw formal evaluations as 'well-intentioned but not helpful'. To me that indicates that both parties - administrators and teachers - had hoped that the evaluations would serve a good purpose, but were disappointed.

The reason for these disappointing numbers is twofold: the problematic language in standards and the subjective nature of most evaluations. To illustrate, here are three standard/indicator statements taken from a large district's teacher evaluation/professional development document:

"Students initiate and take responsibility for their own learning."  Not only is this a stretch to view this as within the responsibility and power of the teacher to invoke, but this is not a behavior that is observable through the series of classroom observations nor through a paper-trail of student work.  It's a wonderful value, but unusable as a basis for teacher evaluation.

"Teachers connect new knowledge to prior learning."  This can be observed by looking for statements or assignments that directly make the connection between a students prior knowledge and the lesson at hand. Data can be collected on both the teacher's statements and the student's statements and questions.

"Teachers make the lesson objectives and learning targets clear for students in advance of the lesson."  This too can be observed by tracking statements made by the teacher; questions, statements, and errors made by the students; and the response by the teacher to student errors. However, the phrase '...in advance of the lesson' make this a bit more narrow - this is a standard to be accomplished before the lesson begins, and does not account for the changes that need to be made during the typical lesson. Of course, making the goals clear before the task begins is very important, but there will also be a need for objectives and targets to be adjusted as a result of feedback during the lesson.

The key to all this is that the language in standards/indicators were initially written as general guidelines, and are now being used as the basis for evaluations. There is a serious need to revisit the standards and rethink/rewrite them into evidence that can actually be gathered. It's not fair or reasonable for either the administrator nor the teacher when the objectives and goals of their behavior isn't clear. 

With clear standards, written in observable terms, and objective tools for collecting the data, the subjective nature of the process is diminished. When the objective data is presented to teachers, I predict the numbers in both the 'formality' and 'well-intentioned, but....' categories will significantly decrease.