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Charter Schools and the Teacher Evaluation Trend

The teacher evaluation landscape is changing around the country in the wake of efforts to connect performance ratings and job retention to multiple measures, including the level of student learning. For leading charter schools, the efforts are fundamental. But evaluation methods and implementation remain a work in progress as new state laws on evaluation take effect and educators and policy makers wrestle with how to achieve the best results. This feature of the National Charter School Resource Center monthly newsletter focuses on the experience of the leader of a top-rated Boston, Massachusetts-area charter school using teacher evaluation, and the perspective of a former teacher at that school who helped survey teachers in the state and prepare a report about the principles that should guide evaluation. Resources are included to further pursue the topic.

Many states have adopted new requirements for teacher evaluations since the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top grant competition, which began in 2009 and included consideration of whether states' applications included reform of teacher evaluation systems. A range of complex issues are in play in devising effective evaluation systems. What evidence should be used to determine effectiveness? What qualifies evaluators? What are the repercussions? The impact on charter schools varies. In Pennsylvania, for example, the charter schools have been exempted from the new teacher evaluation law that factors in student performance, an issue reported by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in July 2012. In New York, charter schools that did not accept Race to the Top state funds can opt out of the state evaluation system and stick to their own methods, an issue reported by the Albany Times Union in November 2011.

In Massachusetts, which was awarded $250 million in the Race to the Top competition, charter schools, like other public schools, are required under the state's new regulations to adopt, adapt, or revise the new evaluation system.

The evaluation system is being phased in; it started in 2011–12 with certain low performing schools as well as schools that volunteered to participate, followed by schools participating in Race to the Top for 2012–13, and then all schools by the 2013–14 school year. According to the regulations, evaluations must be filed with the state, but whatever the results turn out to be for individual teachers, the law considers them personnel files that will not be subject to public disclosure under open records requirements.

Evaluations must have a plan that includes at least one goal for improving practice and at least one goal for improving student learning. The system accommodates "developing educator" plans, for example, a teacher without professional teacher status; "self-directed" educator plans that provide up to a two-year review cycle for those rated proficient or exemplary; "directed" plans for educators in need of improvement that cover time frames of a year or less; and "improvement" plans covering at least 30 days, but no more than a year for educators rated unsatisfactory.

Multiple measures of assessment are required to reach one of four ratings: exemplary, proficient, needs improvement, or unsatisfactory.

Evaluation standards for both teachers and administrators cover curriculum, planning and assessment, family and community engagement, and professional culture, and include "frequent unannounced visits to classrooms" as an element for administrators. Educators are responsible for collecting information, such as evidence of student learning and proposed improvement goals, and providing the information to the evaluator.

Regarding evidence, the system prescribes specific categories of measures to be used in evaluation. For example, the regulations note that student achievement measurement must include, where available, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) Student Growth Percentile and the Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment (MEPA).

Exemplary educators whose impact on student learning is "rated moderate or high shall be recognized and rewarded with leadership roles, promotion, additional compensation, public commendation or other acknowledgment," according to the regulation. High impact means learning "significantly higher than one year's growth relative to academic peers," while moderate "indicates one year's growth relative to academic peers," according to the regulation. Schools can supplement the state's system with elements that are consistent with the plan.

Evaluation Approach Evolves for Massachusetts Charter School Leader, Teacher

Prospect Hill Academy is a Boston, Massachusetts-area charter school that has received the state's top performance rating. The K–12 school with an enrollment of 1,137, located on three campuses, is adopting the state's new evaluation framework because it closely reflects the school's existing system, Head of School Jed Lippard said in an interview with the Resource Center. Lippard said that one of the key new issues is to "systematically think about student performance in relation to teacher evaluation. All the other pieces we've been doing in some way shape or form."

There is, however, something the school does that the state's rubric does not do, namely, go beyond the performance of individuals to consider the broader school context. "Our core model of adult learning and professional development is what we call collaborative inquiry, which is teams of teachers systematically looking at data together and assessing impact on instruction," Lippard said. "That's our MO and there is nothing in the rubric that the state has authored that holds teachers accountable for engaging in that process."

Evaluation in isolation has the potential to undermine teamwork and the overall performance of the school, according to Lippard, who described nuanced circumstances of how implementation of systems plays out.

"The traditional model is teachers shut their door and do their own thing and some are great and some aren't and most are in the middle," said Lippard, a former charter high school English teacher who now is President of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. "But what we don't want to have is a bunch of great teachers working independently without any sense of responsibility to the whole. It is essential with a K–12 school that there is both horizontal and vertical integration."

Lippard said that recognizing the importance of linking teacher evaluation to outcomes for students is easier than finding the right way to document it and preventing the pursuit of narrow metrics from shutting out diverse learning. The pattern has been to "monolithically" rely on standardized test scores, which Lippard calls problematic. "When the policymakers and press look at school level data, that's the only measure that they are really interested in. Good schools are the schools that have high MCAS scores and bad schools are the schools that have bad MCAS scores," Lippard said, referring to Massachusetts's standardized test.

The application of standardized test results to individual teachers presents its own challenges. Students in Grades 3–10 take the MCAS, which covers mathematics and English skills. According to Lippard, about 30 percent of the staff is involved in mathematics and English instruction. "What do we do for the foreign language teachers? What do we do for the science teachers, the social studies teachers, school counselors, the art teacher, the PE teachers? None of them are captured by this fixation on standardized test scores," Lippard said.

Charter schools, with fewer layers of administration, may be better positioned to adjust to the changes, but "it's a lot of work," Lippard said. "My hope is that we think about this from the standpoint of authentic assessment and not just standardized testing."

Fairness requires reliability not just in methods but in the consistency of those handing out the ratings. "I think there is this myth of objectivity when it comes to rubrics—once we have articulated what it looks like to be performing at each of those levels for each of the standards—that the work of evaluation takes care of itself," Lippard said. "That's just not true."

It is a dynamic process. "When new people come in and other people leave it creates a need to re-norm ourselves," Lippard said, adding that the school has borrowed from the "grand rounds" of medical education to help accomplish the goal. The school rotates its academic leadership meetings among the school's three campuses, allowing opportunities for observation by principals of teaching at different levels and greater confidence in equity of assessment.

A "faculty cabinet" at each of the campuses provides a vehicle for feedback from teacher leaders. "No matter how hard we try to operate from a we perspective there is always some level of us versus them," Lippard said. "There is a hierarchy." Feedback played a role as Lippard strived to carry out his governing board's desire to institute a plan to provide higher compensation for the best performers. Lippard said the mandate came when he moved from his principal post at the high school to the head of school in 2006 and it "made me cringe" at the time because of his belief that money does not drive most educators and he "didn't want to create a system that created barriers to collaboration."

"I've done an about-face," Lippard said. "I do believe that our best teachers should get paid more. I don't think they need the carrot of some additional money to work hard and do right by kids, but rather as a reward."

Lippard, "quietly and without a whole lot of fanfare, at the end of each year," solicited nominees from the administrative team for those deserving of a bonus and a special thank-you for going "above and beyond." But intent and impact diverged, according to Lippard. The faculty cabinet "made it very clear" that they felt the effort was "totally cryptic" with unclear criteria and that it could be viewed as a means for leaders to "snuggle up to their favorite colleagues." Lippard said they were right. In response, the next iteration of the program will be linked to the new evaluation system and that exemplary teachers will receive performance pay. "That's what teachers on the faculty cabinet asked that we do and that's what we've committed to do," Lippard said. Room will remain to reward someone who does not necessarily meet the formal criteria, but may still be worthy based on a unique contribution, such as taking on an additional class to cover for an extended absence of a colleague that enables the school to avoid hiring a substitute who is unfamiliar with the school. "This is our growing edge right now," Lippard said.

Evaluation should be done "with and for teachers, not to them," Lippard said, adding that the process needs to be focused on an "adult learning opportunity to get better at something you are deeply committed to." But Lippard's bottom line goes unaltered. "If we have teachers that are not meeting the needs of kids, we fire them. Period."

Jeff Vogel spent nine years as a high school history teacher at Prospect Hill Academy and, as a 2012 Boston, Massachusetts fellow at the teacher support and policy organization TeachPlus, was a lead writer of A Great Evaluator for Every Teacher: 5 Ways to Ensure That Teacher Evaluations Are Fair, Reliable, and Effective. The report was based on surveys of teachers in schools in the state that were the initial users of the new state evaluation system. The report expressed support for the principles of the state's evaluation system to differentiate the quality of teachers. The report also recommended that those implementing the evaluation system ensure that teachers understand it before they are evaluated, and that evaluators undergo rigorous training and certification, have the necessary time and support for the task, and that teacher feedback is used throughout the process.

The survey of 112 teachers showed a range of reactions among teachers when it came to their evaluators and, in some cases, almost annual turnover in principals and assistant principals, according to Vogel. "Teacher A said my evaluator was amazing. I really improved my students' scores because I was taught four new strategies to teach reading," Vogel said in an interview with the Resource Center. "And then teacher B said evaluators didn't even go through the process of trying to help me, let alone actually provide good ideas." Vogel said that at his own school he was evaluated every year. Goals were set, supervisors were consulted, data were collected on progress, and plans were modified to accommodate changes in circumstances. Vogel said that when he started at the school the evaluation system was not working well. "People felt that they were being placed into rankings that they felt could not be fully justified," Vogel said. Vogel said the school adjusted to a system where teachers are paid based on years of experience, but with some variation based on teaching quality. "That has been the middle ground," Vogel said, adding that the school has strived to ensure that the evaluations are reliable and " match our own intuition about what we know regarding different teachers' abilities and performance." Vogel said that the high quality of evaluators at the school diminished concerns about fairness.

There was no set percentage of the evaluation that was tied to student achievement data. Having a specific percentage makes sense to help ensure reliability and consistency, according to Vogel, although it raises questions about how to accommodate teachers whose programs are not the focus of standardized tests? "As a history teacher, what's the appropriate quantitative data to assess me?" he asked. "I taught AP classes. You could use those scores. I taught several that weren't AP." It is a practical question, he said, that "people are facing all over the country."

News

U.S. Department of Education Awards Grants Totaling $14.4 Million to 2 CMOs

Awards totaling more than $14.4 million to "support high-quality charter schools in more than 25 communities across the country" were announced September 27, 2012 by the Education Department. The announced grants were $4.1 million to Democracy Prep Public Schools for the first two years of a five-year grant and $10.3 million to the KIPP Foundation for the first two years of a four-year grant.

Federal Teacher Incentive Fund Awards More than $31 Million to Aid Charter Schools

More than $31 million was awarded by the Education Department under its 2012 Teacher Incentive Fund to help charter school organizations to "improve pay structures, reward great teachers and principals and provide greater professional opportunities to teachers in high-poverty schools," the department announced September 27, 2012. Read more.

Resource Center Webinar Focuses on Blended Learning Models, Changing Roles of Staff

A September 13, 2012 webinar hosted by the National Charter School Resource Center focused on blended learning and the many models for combining online and traditional teaching methods as a way to increase efficiency and boost student achievement.

During the hour-long webinar, Blended Learning in Charter Schools: Reimagining Traditional Models, Heather Staker, senior research fellow for the Education Practice at Innosight Institute, discussed examples of blended learning, including the arrangement of classrooms and schedules, student-teacher ratios, and impact on school budgets.

Also, Lucy Steiner, senior consultant with the education policy and practice organization Public Impact, discussed the impact of blended learning on staff development, including job descriptions and candidate screening, and accountability for interactions between teachers and students.

Native Charter School's Expansion Part of Federal Professional Development Grant

Twenty-two U.S. Department of Education grants totaling more than $6 million will go to efforts to improve educational opportunities for American Indian children and aid professional development, including an award supporting expansion of a Native charter school, the department announced on September 13, 2012.

The grants include one for $289,232 that involves aid for training teachers to help expand Ojibwe Immersion Charter School in Wisconsin. The goal is to support five people who will receive "advanced training in Ojibwe oral fluency and immersion pedagogy" to help boost the school's capacity to serve three more grades, according to the grant description.

Twelve of the grants totaling $3.3 million were made under the Demonstration Grants for Indian Children program, which supports projects to increase readiness of children for kindergarten and the capacity for high school students to transition to postsecondary education.

Ten grants totaling $3.3 million were made under the Indian Education Professional Development program, which includes support for training Indian people to serve as teachers and administrators.

The National Charter School Resource Center's July 2012 newsletter focused on charter schools as an option for aiding Native education.

Charter Schools Named 2012 National Blue Ribbon Schools Winners

At least 11 charter schools are among the Education Department's 2012 National Blue Ribbon Schools winners, according to a list released by the department.

The award honors public and private elementary, middle, and high schools "where students perform at very high levels or where significant improvements are being made in students' levels of achievement," according to the department's September 7, 2012 announcement.

Charter Schools Among 900 Intending to Seek Race to the Top-District Award

At least 23 charter school organizations from eight states and Washington, D.C., are among the nearly 900 organizations that have expressed intent to apply for the Education Department's $400 million 2012 Race to the Top-District competition, according to a Department list.

Through the Race to the Top-District program, the Department plans to "support school districts in implementing local reforms that will personalize learning, close achievement gaps and take full advantage of 21st century tools that prepare each student for college and their careers." The four-year awards will range from $5 million to $40 million, and 15-25 awards are expected.

Expressing intent to apply is not binding and the application process remains open, the Department stated. Applications are due on October 30, 2012, with awards to be announced no later than December 31, 2012.

Events

October 22–25, 2012: The National Association of Charter School Authorizers will hold the 2012 NACSA Leadership Conference in Memphis, Tennessee.

November 4–5, 2012: Best Cooperative Practices Between Charter and Traditional Public Schools Conference in Broomfield, Colorado.

Resources

• State of the States: Trends and Early Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies: This 2011 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality reviews the teacher evaluation landscape (including a table showing actions in all 50 states), and provides detailed examinations of policies in selected states, key elements of evaluation, and background on the context of trend in evaluation.
• Recent State Action on Teacher Effectiveness: What's in State Laws and Regulations?: An August 2012 report from Bellwether Education Partners reviews changes in laws that address teacher effectiveness and evaluation in selected states and checks them against criteria including whether evaluation results are tied to student learning and personnel decisions such as dismissal, whether all teachers are evaluated annually, and whether parents and the public receive clear information about effectiveness.
• Examining District Guidance to Schools on Teacher Evaluation Policies in the Midwest Region: This 2007 federal study from the Midwest Regional Education Laboratory found that districts evaluate teachers primarily to help decide whether to retain or release new teachers. Beginning teachers are typically evaluated two or more times a year and experienced teachers just once every two or three years. The findings also include that few policies spell out consequences for unsatisfactory evaluations, most evaluations are summative reports used to support decisions about retaining teachers and granting tenure, rather than for professional development. Few district policies require evaluators to be trained.
• An Examination of Performance-Based Teacher Evaluation Systems in Five States: This 2012 federal study from the Northeast and Islands Educational Laboratory, which included a review of all 50 states to identify teacher evaluation systems that met certain criteria similar to the 2009 Race to the Top grant competition guidelines, profiles systems in Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
• Measuring Teacher Effectiveness: A Look "Under The Hood" of Teacher Evaluation in 10 Sites: This 2012 report from 50CAN (50-State Campaign for Achievement Now), ConnCAN (Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now), and Public Impact reports on teacher evaluation systems being implemented at 10 sites, including a charter management organization and a graduate school of education. The report provides descriptions of evaluation methods and standards, summaries of the evaluation systems and tables comparing the systems' practices.
• The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness: This 2009 report from The New Teacher Project involves an examination of teacher performance management systems across 12 districts in four states and survey responses from 15,000 teachers and 1,300 administrators. The report finds little differentiation of teachers, a lack of professional development, tolerance of poor performance, and excellence that is unrecognized. For example, in systems where teachers are rated either satisfactory or unsatisfactory, more than 99 percent are rated satisfactory.
• Evaluation, Support, Compensation: Lessons from The College-Ready Promise: This section of website of The College-Ready Promise, a teacher effectiveness project led by a coalition of California charter management organizations with a $60-million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, offers a presentation on lessons learned from charter schools' staff evaluation programs. The presentation describes training involved in implementing evaluation programs and includes sample reports charting teacher and student performance, examples of different methods of measuring student progress to show teacher effectiveness, and a sample governance structure for evaluation.
• International Summit on the Teaching Profession: This website of the Education Department provides links to a range of information gathered as part of the 2011 and 2012 International Summit on the Teaching Profession, including links to reports on evaluation and compensation that assess programs from around the world. The Department, along with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, education organizations, and others hosted the event.
• Parallel Patterns: Teacher Attrition in Charter vs. District Schools: This 2010 report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education suggests that teacher turnover in charter schools is more likely driven by the same factors that lead teachers to leave traditional public schools. The study was based on data for nearly 1,000 newly hired charter school teachers and 20,000 traditional public school teachers in Wisconsin between 1998 and 2006. Teachers in both charter and traditional public schools cited a lack of administrative support, poor working conditions, and low salaries as reasons for leaving. Charter school teachers were more likely to point to lack of job security and the scope of their work as reasons for leaving, the researchers said.
• Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness in Charter Schools: Exploring Initiatives to Develop and Reward Excellent Teachers: This 2012 National Charter School Resource Center webinar explores the teacher evaluation system developed at Achievement First charter schools. Sarah Coon, Senior Director of Talent Development at Achievement First and the lead for its Teacher Career Pathway initiative, discusses the genesis of the system, the challenges faced with design and implementation, and the lessons learned. A 2011 report from The Aspen Institute, Achievement First: Developing a Teacher Performance Management System That Recognizes Excellence, provides an extensive description of the Achievement First system, including stages of teacher career development and salary ranges. The report was released at a forum in Washington, D.C., where Coon shared the stage with Jason Kamras, Chief of Human Capital for the District of Columbia Public Schools, which was the focus of another Aspen Institute report, District of Columbia Public Schools: Defining Instructional Expectations and Aligning Accountability and Support.
• Problems With the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers: This 2010 Economic Policy Institute briefing paper examines the use of standardized test scores in mathematics and reading to evaluate teachers. The report covers issues such as the diverse factors that influence student performance, statistical methods involved in evaluation calculations, and the potential influence on curriculum and interactions among teachers.
• Two Center for Educator Compensation Reform Webinars Focus on How Charter Schools Can Build Effective Performance Management Systems: These March 2012 webinars from the Center for Educator Compensation Reform (CECR) focus on how charter schools can build effective performance management and compensation systems. Identifying and Utilizing Supports for Developing Performance-Based Compensation Systems highlights CECR resources available to charter schools, and representatives from the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching discuss aligned talent management systems and share resources and best practices. Innovations in Comprehensive Educator Performance Management Systems highlights how E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. is developing a comprehensive talent management system that aligns teacher recruitment, evaluation, feedback, professional development, and compensation.
• National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality: The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, funded by the Education Department, is focused on providing guidance to practitioners and policymakers to strengthen the quality of teaching, especially in high-poverty, low performing, and hard-to-staff schools.