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Educators share successful practices—and how to avoid pitfalls—in new report
As states and districts revamp ineffective teacher evaluation systems, the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) released a report today illustrating ten key recommendations for getting teacher evaluation right. The lessons are drawn from NIET's signature initiative, TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement, and presented in the paper, More than Measurement: The TAP System's Lessons Learned for Designing Better Teacher Evaluation Systems. Education writer and researcher Craig Jerald worked with Kristan Van Hook at NIET to distill the findings.
"There are good reasons for policymakers and educators to pay close attention to lessons learned from TAP," said Dr. Gary Stark, president and CEO of NIET.
"TAP is the longest-sustained and most successful effort to radically transform teacher evaluation using multiple measures, including student achievement gains, in America today," said Van Hook, NIET's senior vice president of public policy and development. "What's more, TAP's teacher evaluation system has been tried and tested with thousands of teachers in real school settings over a significant period of time."
"While there are many ways to design and implement better approaches to teacher evaluation, there are also many ways to get it wrong," added Jerald, president of Break the Curve Consulting. "With new national momentum and resources behind redesigning the ways teachers are evaluated and supported, it is more important than ever to prevent past mistakes that have resulted in systems that do not accurately measure performance or provide feedback for improvement."
The lessons were announced during a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., today, reinforced by TAP leaders and educators from South Carolina, Louisiana and Texas, which all have created a state infrastructure to support TAP's comprehensive reform. They are:
1. Identify specific goals for teacher evaluation that can guide difficult system design decisions, for example, whether the system will not only measure performance, but also support professional growth;
2. Use multiple, complementary measures—including student achievement gains—to evaluate teachers;
3. Invest sufficiently in "wrap-around" quality control mechanisms, those that take place before, during and after the teacher is evaluated;
4. Train evaluators to conduct in-depth post-conferences that can help teachers improve their effectiveness;
5. Look for ways to provide teachers with targeted follow-up support;
6. Identify deliberate strategies for integrating evaluation and professional development;
7. Include teacher leaders as well as administrators among evaluators;
8. Use an evidence-based evaluation rubric that balances breadth and depth;
9. Attend to the "human side" of evaluation by offering teachers plenty of opportunities to understand how and why the new system works; and
10. Provide sufficient technical assistance to implement the system.
Monica Hills, principal of Lowery Intermediate School in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and Dedra Collins, master teacher at Rolling Hills Elementary School in Lancaster, Texas, discussed how TAP revolutionized their teacher evaluation process into a powerful vehicle to measure teacher effectiveness while providing them necessary support to improve.
"As a principal, I see how valuable it is to be able to accurately measure teacher effectiveness," said Hills, "but I could never handle all those evaluations myself. Having master and mentor teachers work with me to conduct evaluations and take the lead in providing support for teachers to improve has enabled us to make significant improvements in student achievement."
"Being observed by multiple evaluators and receiving ongoing support help teachers become more comfortable with the process," said Collins. "Teachers are well-prepared for their observations and they highly value the professional support we provide. Their support really increases when they see their students' achievement grow."
"TAP's comprehensive scope and use of data to drive teacher effectiveness have made it a key part of our state's efforts to drive overall teacher effectiveness through evaluation, mentoring and professional development," said Dennis Dotterer, executive director of South Carolina TAP at the state department of education. "TAP has produced promising and sustained increases in student achievement in our highest-need schools."
The National Institute for Excellence in Teaching is an independent public charity committed to ensuring a highly skilled, strongly motivated and competitively compensated teacher for every classroom in America. Its signature initiative is TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement, a comprehensive school reform that provides teachers with powerful opportunities for career advancement, ongoing professional development, a fair accountability system and performance-based compensation.
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In the confined space of a classroom, gastrointestinal illnesses can spread quickly, causing sufferers many painful and uncomfortable symptoms. But what is to blame for a school-based outbreak? In most cases, improper food handling is the culprit, says a Ryerson University public health expert.
Professor Marilyn Lee, Ryerson’s School of Occupational and Public Health, is the lead author of A Review of Gastrointestinal Outbreaks in Schools: Effective Infection Control Interventions. The North American-based study deals with the critical issue of food preparation in many schools from kindergarten through university/college. The National School Lunch Program, for example, provided low-cost or free meals to more than 30 million students across the United States in 2008.
Typically, gastrointestinal illnesses are short-lived and their symptoms – cramps, fever, vomiting and diarrhea – don’t require medical treatment. Some children, however, require hospitalization and even, in the case of E.coli contamination, can die from their condition.
Together with epidemiologist Judy Greig of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Lee searched documented reports published between 1998 and 2008 to identify a number of factors, including the cause of a gastrointestinal outbreak, how the infection was transmitted, the number of children affected, mortality rates, and control and prevention measures.
“The reports of documented cases are just the tip of the iceberg,” Lee says. “There are easily thousands of other outbreaks that aren’t reported to public-health authorities. So, to avoid future outbreaks, it’s important that people take lessons from this study.”
Among the 121 outbreaks cited from the reports gathered in the study, slightly more than half involved bacterial infections (51 per cent) or viral infections (40 per cent). The rest were caused by one or more parasites. In almost half of the cases, transmission was identified as being food-borne (45 per cent), followed by person-to-person (16 per cent), waterborne (12 per cent) and via animal contact (11 per cent).
The researchers found that the risk of food-borne illness was reduced when food handlers practiced effective hand-washing and received food-safety training and certification. In addition, student-training programs on hand hygiene and enhanced cleaning and disinfection of schools were effective strategies.
“Everyone has a role to play,” Lee says. “Many classrooms contain sinks, so teachers can model proper hand washing for their students. School administrators must ensure that students always have access to warm water, soap and paper towels; custodians must frequently check the cleanliness of bathrooms.”
Lee also says it is vital that educational officials notify public-health authorities at the start of an outbreak – a step that was not taken by many of the schools in the study.
“Public-health representatives are experts in disease control, and can take steps to stop an outbreak promptly.”
A Review of Gastrointestinal Outbreaks in Schools: Effective Infection Control Interventions was published in the December 2010 issue of the Journal of School Health.
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The majority of public high school biology teachers are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution, according to Penn State political scientists. A mandatory undergraduate course in evolutionary biology for prospective teachers, and frequent refresher courses for current teachers, may be part of the solution, they say.
"Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America's classrooms," write Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, professors of political science at Penn State, in today's (Jan. 28) issue of Science.
The researchers examined data from the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers, a representative sample of 926 public high school biology instructors. They found only about 28 percent of those teachers consistently implement National Research Council recommendations calling for introduction of evidence that evolution occurred, and craft lesson plans with evolution as a unifying theme linking disparate topics in biology.
In contrast, Berkman and Plutzer found that about 13 percent of biology teachers "explicitly advocate creationism or intelligent design by spending at least one hour of class time presenting it in a positive light." Many of these teachers typically rejected the possibility that scientific methods can shed light on the origin of the species, and considered both evolution and creationism as belief systems that cannot be fully proven or discredited.
Berkman and Plutzer dubbed the remaining teachers the "cautious 60 percent," who are neither strong advocates for evolutionary biology nor explicit endorsers of nonscientific alternatives. "Our data show that these teachers understandably want to avoid controversy," they said.
The researchers found these teachers commonly use one or more of three strategies to avoid controversy. Some teach evolutionary biology as if it applies only to molecular biology, ignoring an opportunity to impart a rich understanding of the diversity of species and evidence that one species gives rise to others.
Using a second strategy, some teachers rationalize the teaching of evolution by referring to high-stakes examinations.
These teachers "tell students it does not matter if they really 'believe' in evolution, so long as they know it for the test," Berkman and Plutzer said.
Finally, many teachers expose their students to all positions, scientific and otherwise, and let them make up their own minds.
This is unfortunate, the researchers said, because "this approach tells students that well established concepts can be debated in the same way we debate personal opinions."
Berkman and Plutzer conclude that "the cautious 60 percent fail to explain the nature of scientific inquiry, undermine the authority of established experts, and legitimize creationist arguments." As a result, "they may play a far more important role in hindering scientific literacy in the United States than the smaller number of explicit creationists."
The researchers note that more high school students take biology than any other science course, and for as many as 25 percent of high school students it is the only science course they will ever take, even though a sound science education is important in a democracy that depends on citizen input on highly technical, consequential, public policies.
Berkman and Plutzer say the nation must have better-trained biology teachers who can confidently advocate for high standards of science education in their local communities. Colleges and universities should mandate a dedicated undergraduate course in evolution for all prospective biology teachers, for example, and follow up with outreach refresher courses, so that more biology teachers embrace evolutionary biology.
"Combined with continued successes in courtrooms and the halls of state government, this approach offers our best chance of increasing the scientific literacy of future generations," they conclude.