education policy
Two Truths and a Lie: Let’s Break the Ice of Educator Evaluation
You probably have engaged in the game Two Truths and a Lie as a team icebreaker and we wanted to try our own version… see if you can spot the lie among the truths regarding educator evaluation: Statement A = Truth Since 2010 school districts in over 44 states and D.C. have been implementing educator […]
Go From Ordinary to Extraordinary
A Post by Amy Tepper and Patrick Flynn “My powers are ordinary, only my application brings me success.” Sir Isaac Newton. In the last chapter of our new book Feedback to Feed Forward: 31 Strategies to Lead Learning, we highlight extraordinary practice of several districts and administrators. In that same chapter we provide six challenges […]
A Message to PEAC: TEVAL Should Promote Reflection*
*A follow up to my previous post – Connecting Teacher Action with Student Outcomes. This morning I attended a meeting of the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC). PEAC, charged with leading Educator Evaluation in the state of CT, began conversations today on the weighting associated with the current components of educator evaluation. It has been long […]
Connecting Teacher Action with Student Outcomes
“Growth” has been one of the more elusive words in educational jargon over the past few years. Its use triggers reactions from so many due to ill-fated or, better put, poorly constructed attempts to connect it to educator evaluation. Anyone who has read or spoken with me in-depth knows that I do consider student outcomes […]
CT Court Decision Can Help Reshape Educator Practice
A Sense of Hope for CT Education Listening to today’s news on the car ride to school with my son, a sense of tremendous optimism for CT education came upon me. In a decision that could fundamentally reshape public education in Connecticut, the state was ordered on Wednesday to make changes in everything from how […]
Accuracy will Never be Enough in Educator Evaluation
What answer do you think you will get when you ask the average teacher which they would prefer: Have an evaluator observe and tell them what they did during the lesson? OR Have an evaluator help them understand how what they did during the lesson represented strengths in helping students learn, and to point out […]
Making Sense of Educator Evaluation
As an educational community, it is time to reconsider our current approach to educator evaluation. Changes made over the past five years have turned performance review into a series of events strung together to monitor either teacher or leader performance within a school. This narrow definition has been promoted by well-meaning policy makers and reinforced […]
