A group of 21 teachers from 11 districts in the metro area, today released a report with their own recommendations for teacher evaluation.
The group of teachers, called the New Millennium Initiative, was organized and funded by the Center for Teaching Quality, Rose Community Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Similar groups were formed across the country.
The team’s report notes that Colorado’s teacher evaluation law has the potential to improve teaching and learning, but only with fair and effective implementation.
One of their recommendations is the creation of pre- and post-tests so that growth can be measured based on students’ performance during one school year instead of comparing to previous years’ scores.
They also suggest that teachers be able to choose a group of assessments that will measure growth based on individual goals, and that evaluators should be peer educators who maintain a role as teachers or who are rotated in cycles to go back to the classroom.
The report also recommends that evaluators be assessed as well to make sure they maintain good observation skills.
“A self-organized, self-regulated guild of novice, journeyman and master teachers will aggressively assess, audit, intervene and develop its own (teachers) across buildings and, ideally, across districts,” said one report writer, Vinnie Basile, a teacher in Adams County. “If this was done aggressively and thoroughly, the guild could completely recapture evaluation into the hands of its own teachers.”
To read the full report visit: http://www.teachingquality.org/sites/default/files/denvernm_final.pdf
