Public Impact’s newest, five-step, free toolkit, “Evaluation, Accountability, and Professional Development in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Guide”, gives schools, districts, and states what they need to create an evaluation system that helps teachers improve and advance their careers while helping more students.
An accompanying State Policy Brief helps policymakers and teaching advocates change laws and other policies to support Opportunity Culture-style school cultures focused on collaboration and excellence.
Why do districts need to change teacher evaluation? Because today’s systems were built for the one-teacher-one-classroom model and don’t do what great evaluation should:
— support on-the-job and long-term development for great teaching; help identify teachers for advanced roles and paths in which they are likely to succeed;
— prepare teachers for advanced roles that help their peers and more students succeed; and
— match teachers to long-term paths in which they can best succeed.
Opportunity Culture models, which extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for higher pay within budget, change both the content and process of teacher evaluation. Other team-based, teacher-led, extended-reach school models also need new teacher evaluation systems that reflect new roles and provide opportunities for peers to help one another succeed.
The guide and its tools are organized into sections covering evaluation redesign, evaluation content, evaluation process, and critical uses of evaluation. Each section includes a set of action steps, considerations and guidance, tools, and links to other relevant resources.
Although some changes in evaluation and accountability can be made at the school and district levels, the accompanying brief looks at those that require a policy fix at the state level.
This guide and brief join the many materials, all free, available at the revamped Opportunity Culture website for schools, districts, and human resources personnel to use in creating an Opportunity Culture.
Toolkit: http://opportunityculture.org/evaluation-guide/
State Policy Brief: http://opportunityculture.org/evaluation-policy-brief/
