In “Flexibility for Fairness: Crafting Business Rules for Student Learning Objectives” AIR’s Amy Potemski explores the ways in which states are creating “business rules” to allow for flexibility in the SLO process.
SLOs, or Student Learning Objectives, are being used across states as a way to provide a student growth measure in non-tested grades and subject areas. But although SLOs are more flexible than other student growth measures like Value-Added Measures, they are still complex.
What, for example, should an evaluator do with a student who has missed more than 20% of the school year? Should they be included in the teacher’s SLO calculation? What about for a teacher who has had an extended leave of absence during the instructional interval? What special considerations should be made for resource teachers who do not have a static caseload of students?
AIR explores each of these situations and summarizes guidelines that are in place in various states and districts.
To view the brief, see http://www.gtlcenter.org/sites/default/files/docs/GTL_AskTeam_FlexForFairness.pdf
AIR also recently released another brief—this one focused on what to do if your district lacks capacity to implement new teacher observations and evaluations.
First, to “lighten the load” districts could consider requiring fewer observations for those teachers who have scored highly on most of their recent observations, or they could also focus on a more limited set of competencies for each observation.
To “leverage your talent, technology, and teams”, districts should scrutinize their rules for observations carefully, because they may be able to use others besides principals for evaluations or at least delegate certain other aspects of the principals’ work load to other employees. It might also be possible to use video recordings of teachers to simplify the observation process and to employ existing teacher service days for teachers to work together to understand results of observations.
Finally, to “streamline processes across districts”, groups of districts or all of the districts in a state should strive to have as much clarity and consistency among them as possible so that less time is spent discerning what exactly is required. This top-down approach must be balanced, however, with offering enough leeway to account for local circumstances.
To view this brief, see
