Commentary:
A Bill of Rights to Improve Teacher Evaluations
By Hans Andrews
A Teacher’s Bill of Rights appears to be needed at this most important time and my experiences in education can help guide the key issues and outcomes. These experiences include secondary school teacher and counselor, teacher union leader, a community college instruction leader, adjunct university faculty member, a community college president, and a state, national, and international speaker on these topics.
The teacher shortage continues to affect school districts throughout Illinois. Even with actions underway to improve the situation, there is a long road ahead, and no question that teacher job satisfaction is a crucial factor.
The high-stakes testing and merit pay movements over the past decade have brought to the surface issues that should not have developed, including:
- Evaluating teachers by the scores their students receive on these state and national exams;
- Deciding on retention or dismissal of teachers based on these tests and not on their actual classroom teaching expertise;
- Rewarding teachers with a merit pay system that has failed everywhere it was implemented over the previous 50-plus years; and
- Merit pay being granted to teachers who may have been able to recruit top students to their classes for the purpose of improving the test scores for those teachers’ students.
Watching this develop has brought to mind many things that teachers should expect in their professional evaluations. These expectations have been pushed aside. With all of this in mind, the following expectations should become guidelines toward a Teacher’s Bill of Rights for teachers everywhere.
Let’s start with evaluations. Teachers should be able to have reasonable expectations of evaluators. Competent evaluators should be expected and used in all evaluations of teachers.
- Evaluators should have been excellent classroom teachers themselves.
- Evaluators must accept the wide range of teaching processes they observe.
- Evaluators and teachers should all understand the evaluation processes to be used.
- The evaluation instruments will have been reviewed and understood by teachers so they will know the expectations and can offer improvement suggestions.
- Consistency in evaluation should be expected by teachers and practiced by evaluators.
- Fairness needs to be expected and will allow for teachers to express disagreement where there are questionable evaluation comments or observations recorded.
- Disagreements should be expressed both orally and in writing.
- Feedback from the evaluator should be made in a reasonably short time to help relieve the anxiety of those evaluated.
- Feedback should be both verbal and written and allow for discourse from both the evaluator and the teacher.
- Positive recognition should be expressed both orally and in writing for excellent teachers.
If there are areas suggested for remedial work to be done, there should be a defined timeframe so the teacher has an expectation of what to work on, an opportunity to receive assistance, and follow-up evaluations to chart progress.
A teacher bill of rights as outlined here should be looked at as guidelines in developing or improving a professional evaluation system. Such a well-designed system with input from both teachers and administrators can build trust and support between teachers and administrative evaluators and help make it a positive experience for both teachers and evaluators.
The process of evaluation after tenure or long-term hiring has been awarded was well stated by the National Commission of Higher Education Issues (1982):
It should assure that the tenured faculty member continues to maintain the appropriate level of competence as when they received tenure.
It is the responsibility of both the evaluator and teachers to follow up to see that unsatisfactory performances are remediated.
Incompetent faculty members should not be protected at the expense of the students.
Over the years, professional researchers have tended to classify teacher evaluation as either formative or summative. Formative teacher evaluation is conducted to improve the teacher by identifying the teacher’s strengths and weaknesses. Summative teacher evaluation is conducted primarily for the purpose of making personnel decisions about the teacher (e.g., special recognition, reassignment, promotion, dismissal, tenure) according to the Teacher Evaluation Glossary.
A 1990 study, which I co-authored with Christine M. Licata, took issue with whether evaluation must be divided as either formative or summative. We consider evaluation a continuum, providing formative support for teachers even during a process of remediation of teaching techniques that were identified as insufficient. There will be negative outcomes in almost any evaluation system, whether they are considered formative or summative. Those who seem to have to have a dual system are not working in the same reality as those who are in the trenches of evaluation.
Most teachers respect evaluators who continue to work with them to improve their delivery of competent instruction to their students. When asked to state some ways that their teacher evaluation could be improved, here’s what teachers have said:
- Utilize the results in a meaningful way to let faculty know when they are doing an excellent job and when they need help;
- More feedback and awards from the system; and
- Reward the effective faculty members, not the “slouches.” There is not enough distinction now.
Conclusion
School districts have a big job ahead as they come out of and move forward from the two-plus years of the coronavirus pandemic. Many teachers have become worn down and need a boost from governing boards and school administrators to help them bounce back. Working toward a Teacher’s Bill of Rights will help build positive expectations on how their teaching lives can be supported now and into the upcoming years.