Joan McRobbie / commentary
November 2, 2012

William Slotnik

William Slotnik

By now the consensus is clear: California needs a ameliorate, more than systematic way of supporting and ensuring instructor effectiveness. Though the teacher evaluation beak, AB 5, complanate again in August, there is broad agreement on the land's responsibility to ensure that every student has an effective instructor. Moreover, expert teachers welcome accountability and they want and need support. As the 2010 Accomplished California Teachers written report noted, every teacher wants to know "How am I doing?" and "How can I exercise better?"

Efforts here in California to structure a workable evaluation organization accept run across the same sticking points bedeviling states across the land. The design challenge is to ensure both accountability and back up as anchors of loftier-quality evaluation. What are the right components? Which policy decisions belong at the land level and which should be adamant locally? Should pupil growth be part of instructor evaluation and, if and then, how should that growth be measured?

Joan McRobbie

Joan McRobbie

With state policy even so in limbo, many districts are taking up these questions on their own. Some lxxx California districts and other entities filed an intent to apply for federal "District Race to the Top" funding. That application required spelling out plans for an educator evaluation organisation, one that indeed factors in educatee growth.

Equally districts grapple with system blueprint, one big question cuts across all the others: How to best ensure teacher participation in shaping the system? This goes straight to the why of evaluation. Is this about rooting out bad teachers? Or is it near trying to help more teachers do a better chore with more kids? That starting point volition ultimately lift or doom the result. People enter the instruction profession from a sense of mission. Teachers want to succeed with kids. Information technology's hard to kill that intrinsic motivation, only evaluation approaches that stem from teacher bashing or assumptions of rampant incompetence tin can do it – with profound implications for students.

So what approaches are available that respect teachers' professionalism and tap, rather than squelch, their motivation?

One is peer assist and review (PAR), which has gained recent attention for this very reason. Less known in California, though complementary to PAR, is the utilise of Student Learning Objectives (SLOs).

SLOs emerged equally an integral component of systemic reform in the Denver Public Schools more than a decade ago. In Denver's loftier-stakes environment, research past our organization, the Customs Training and Assist Center, showed that unproblematic, centre, and loftier school students whose teachers had loftier-quality SLOs outperformed their peers on state and national standardized tests over a four-twelvemonth period. Since then, both the Austin and Charlotte-Mecklenburg school districts take implemented and improved on SLOs. SLOs are now beingness implemented on a broad scale in numerous states and districts. They are a cornerstone of the new teacher and principal evaluation systems in New York State.

SLOs are exactly what they audio like – carefully planned learning goals that teachers set for each student for a given fourth dimension period. They're based on teachers' analyses of by student performance information and evidence. SLOs involve front-end planning of the content and instructional strategies needed for students to reach learning goals as well every bit decisions nearly the measures to be used to judge pupil progress.

Importantly, SLOs are collaborative: Whether developed by individuals or teams, they involve input and guidance from principals and colleagues. Each teacher has to be able to demonstrate knowledge of content and instruction also every bit the power to prepare learning targets. Yet this is done with the input and guidance of the chief. And at the end of the procedure, teachers provide evidence to the principal of students' attainment of the targeted goals.

Imagine a math SLO for a 4th form teacher, for instance. The teacher start works with her grade-level team to review her class'south math accomplishment from last twelvemonth likewise as this year's diagnostic data. Guided past the Common Core standards, their joint analysis initially determines that this grade'due south weakest areas are fractions and solving measurement-related issues. They annotation that within the Common Core, fractions are one of the cardinal areas to master for future success, while measurement is less emphasized.

The teacher then does a more granular analysis of her students' answers on specific cess items. She finds several things: Students missed more than items on fractions than on measurement; students sympathise the concepts of measurement, simply usually miss the computational aspects; students normally miss all types of fraction items, peculiarly those on equivalence and ordering.

Attending to information and results

Given those insights, the teacher decides that the standards related to fractions will go the learning content for this SLO. She makes this case to the main, whose advice helps fine-tune her programme for each SLO element. To measure out student progress, she will utilise findings from the diagnostic assessment as her baseline, and she chooses the post-assessment she deems nearly focused on fraction skills. She will then fix specific learning targets aligned with that post-assessment and place instructional strategies – east.g., using manipulatives; constructive questioning – that will aid studentslearn the content and encounter the targets.

At the end of the semester or twelvemonth, assessment results demonstrate the degree to which the students are learning the standards.

When SLOs are role of an evaluation system, district-broad parameters are set. Districts demand to brand a number of decisions to inform teachers' and principals' efforts. For example, which assessments tin be used for SLOs: State tests? Commune assessments? Portfolios? What are acceptable definitions of growth – for example, by 20 pct pre to postal service? How will the outcomes of SLOs be used in teacher evaluation – as an boosted component considered along with classroom observations? How much will SLOs count – 20 per centum, 40 pct?

SLOs are gaining momentum in states and districts for several reasons. For starters, wherever examination scores are included in evaluations as evidence of educatee growth, as is required in states with NCLB waivers, SLOs address the problem of not-tested subjects and grades, i.eastward., those not tested by the state. SLOs utilize to all teachers, since they involve using valid assessments (including available state tests) along with selected other evidence.

But fundamentally, SLOs provide a methodology that links accountability and back up. They work in tandem with classroom observations to more accurately understand learning and teachers' contributions to that learning. They enable teachers, in collaboration with principals, to appraise their strengths and weaknesses, such as analyzing data or linking instruction to standards. Those insights then allow for specifically tailored professional evolution to see those needs, better educational activity, and, ultimately, bolster learning.

In short, SLOs tie teacher practice to student learning and do so in means that honor and motivate teacher professionalism. They anticipate evaluation equally something done with teachers, non to teachers. They also force the entire schoolhouse district to focus on teacher support and provide a precise road map for directing that support.

With broader use nationwide, the SLO process continues to be strengthened. For case, information technology'due south clear that constructive implementation includes the use of validated rubrics to ensure high, objective standards of rigor as well every bit to objectively measure levels of educatee attainment of learning goals. Teacherleaders and principals participate in developing and approving the rubrics, which then must be clearly communicated to all.

California can benefit from and contribute to this growing body of knowledge. Districts striving to build new evaluation systems need to find means to put priority on student learning while besides acknowledging the complexity of education. Tiptop-downward approaches or simplistic reliance on standardized test scores won't accomplish these goals. An SLO component offers both thoughtful measurement and an comeback strategy. That combination can intermission through tough standoffs.

William J. Slotnik is the founder and executive director of the Community Preparation and Assistance Center, a minority-controlled, not-for-profit organization that supports the systemic reform of urban school districts. Based in Boston, it has a field office in California. Joan McRobbie is senior associate, national school reform, at CTAC.

To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource's no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.