The baseball playoffs have started and I can't watch them without drawing parallels to the pressures that teachers face as they go through their end of year evaluations and reviews.
Ball players and teachers have both worked tirelessly throughout the year, putting forth their best efforts, leaving it all out there, only to have it come down to the final score.
Were their efforts enough?
Did they do the job?
The first is rewarded with the adoration of millions of fans, a giant trophy, confetti, champagne showers, possible parades, and million dollar paychecks.
The latter gets the comfort of knowing they have a job for another year and maybe a grand or two raise.
Piece of cake, right? No pressure... right?!
They're only in charge of educating the minds and leaders of our future...
Seems fair.
Ohio has recently restructured the way in which teachers can be evaluated using the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES).
The original method of review for a teacher's scorecard is a 50/50 assessment.
- It looks at (1) student growth and (2) the teacher's personal performance.
- The review is taken out of 600 points formula-based approach.
- Allows for consistent basis.
- It is done in house by the school's principal.
The new, alternative method looks at teacher's performance, student growth and other components.
- 50% teacher performance, 35% student growth, and 15% alternative components.
- Alternative components are made up of: student surveys, teacher self-evaluations, peer review evaluations, student portfolios, and district determined components.
- The review is taken out of 600 points formula-based approach.
Both methods use a 600-point scale that divide the teacher's evaluation rating with clear advantages. The scale "accommodates both the 1-to-4 and 1-to-5 rating ladders used as inputs in the evolution system and allows for minimal use of decimals in summative ratings. In addition, ratings are not confused with a 0-100 percent grading scale with specific built-in connotations (e.g. 75 percents is a letter grade of "C")."
Scores are then calculated:
For example:
Original method -
Alternative method -
The school district that I will be doing my placement at also uses Value-Added Assessment for half of the evaluation score in addition to OTES assessment.
Not being in the system yet, makes it a bit hard to fully grasps all elements of these evaluation systems.
Not knowing how students will fair makes it hard to determine which method would be preferred and/or more beneficial to the teacher. Perhaps one year you have high achieving students and picking the original method might be more advantages to you; but maybe the next year you have a large group of below level learners and using the alternative method would allow a truer assessment of all that is going on. However, I don't even know if it is possible to switch evaluation methods between years or the protocol that is needed to do that. So there's a lot of Idk's.
But I do know that I would want my evaluation to go just like how Ms. Gurick's went in the Teaching Channel's New Teacher Survival Series video "Preparing For The Formal Observation".
That observation felt fair and adequate, with plenty of feedback and resources for help and improvement. I would feel comfortable going into an evaluation of that nature and know coming out of it that there would be real-time, concrete elements that i could take back to my classroom and implement into the correction and advancement of my teaching practice.
I hope I fair well.
References:
Overview of the Formula for Ohio Educator Evaluation System Final Summative Ratings. (2015, August 26). Retrieved October 9, 2015.
