Teacher evaluation is a process for assessing teachers’ performance to determine their effectiveness in the classroom. The various teacher evaluation models aim to review teachers’ teaching methods, student interactions, and overall impact on learning.
Evaluation helps identify strengths and areas for improvement while providing feedback to enhance teaching skills and student outcomes. The goal is to help teachers become even better at their job so students can be even more successful in the classroom.
Why Teacher Evaluation Is Important
Assessing teacher performance provides several important benefits, including:
- Identifying areas of strength and areas that need improvement in a teacher’s practice. Evaluation provides feedback and support, helping teachers enhance their instructional skills, methodologies, and classroom management.
- Enhancing student learning by ensuring teachers provide high-quality instruction, meet curriculum goals, and engage students effectively.
- Encouraging teachers’ continuous professional development as they focus on their strengths and areas for growth. School administrators can tailor professional development opportunities based on evaluation outcomes, enabling teachers to acquire new strategies, stay updated with research, and enhance their teaching skills.
- Ensuring teachers meet standards and expectations set by educational authorities, schools, and districts.
- Providing up-to-date data at the school or district level to identify trends and patterns. This information can guide school improvement efforts, such as targeted professional development, resource allocation, and strategic decision-making.
Choosing a Reliable Teacher Evaluation Model
While there are various teacher evaluation approaches, school administrators should adopt reliable assessment models with rubrics that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of teachers.
A few things to consider when assessing the reliability of a teacher evaluation model include:
- Consistency of the model: A reliable model rates and assesses teachers based on their current teaching methods. A deficient model will provide inconsistent ratings from one assessment period to another, whether or not teachers change their methodologies, strategies, or teaching practices.
- A tendency for bias: For the best results, consider a teacher evaluation tool free from prejudice or bias. An objective and reliable model minimizes the chances of an administrator or evaluator influencing a teacher’s ratings positively or negatively.
- Teachers’ confidence in the model: When teachers trust an evaluation model, they are more likely to view the evaluation process as an opportunity for professional growth and improvement. As a result, they may be more open to feedback. On the other hand, teachers may discount suggestions for improvement if they don’t trust an evaluation model.
Teacher Evaluation Examples
Teacher evaluation models continue to evolve over the years, and reviews show that many evaluation systems today focus on accountability and improvement. Here are five teacher evaluation examples common in schools.
1. The Framework for Teaching Model
The Framework for Teaching Model (FFT) is an evaluation framework developed by Dr. Charlotte Danielson. It provides a comprehensive structure for assessing and improving teaching practices.
Danielson’s framework evaluates teachers based on four domains, namely:
- Planning and Preparation
- Learning Environments
- Learning Experiences
- Principled Teaching
Each domain includes specific components and indicators that capture various aspects of effective teaching. The FFT has become a widely adopted tool in academic environments because it consistently produces positive results.
Using the FFT model significantly improves the evaluation process and helps teachers to develop their skills, leading to better student performance.
A possible downside of the framework is its dependence on the level of understanding among evaluators and teachers. School administrators and teachers often need more training on the model to get the best results.
2. The Marzano Focused Teacher Evaluation Model
The Marzano Focused Teacher Evaluation Model is an approach to teacher evaluation developed by Dr. Robert Marzano. It provides a framework for assessing and improving teaching effectiveness using 23 key proficiencies grouped into four categories:
- Standards-Based Planning
- Standards-Based Instruction
- Conditions for Learning
- Professional Responsibilities
In addition to actual instructions teachers give in class, Marzano’s research-based evaluation model focuses on core teaching elements including classroom strategies and student engagement.
The evaluation process guides administrators in rating each teaching element as “needs improvement” or “highly effective.”
3. The Value-Added Model
The Value-Added Model (VAM) essentially measures the effectiveness of teachers based on the value they impart to student learning. VAM’s evaluation process for calculating a teacher’s value-added score involves the following steps:
- The evaluator collects students’ background information and test scores from previous years to predict the following year’s test scores.
- The administrator or evaluator measures students’ performance to determine if it falls below, meets, or exceeds expectations.
- The evaluator uses the difference between the predicted and actual students’ scores to calculate the teacher’s value-added score.
While this model is great in theory, it relies heavily on students’ performance to determine teachers’ professional abilities. Also, it lacks the essential rubrics to clearly identify teachers with average teaching and classroom management skills.
For more on the Value-Added Model, here is an article that explains the system in greater detail.
4. 360-Degree Evaluation Tool
In a teacher evaluation setting, a 360-degree evaluation tool gathers feedback on a teacher’s performance from multiple sources involved in the educational process. These sources may include students, fellow teachers, administrators, support staff, and student’s families.
The 360-degree evaluation can assess various aspects of teaching, such as:
- Instructional methods
- Classroom management
- Rapport with students and colleagues
- Communication and collaboration with colleagues
- Professional responsibilities
Evaluating teachers this way allows for greater objectivity as it considers different perspectives and experiences. One study by Barbara L. McCombs, PhD., a senior research scientist at the University of Denver, shows that the best teacher evaluation models utilize a collaborative 360-degree assessment approach.
The feedback from this evaluation can help identify areas where the teacher excels and where they may need support or further professional development.
5. Teacher Observation
Observing teachers in the classroom is a traditional method for school administrators to assess teaching effectiveness. Using this method, school administrators can evaluate teachers by observing essential teaching elements, such as:
- A teacher’s classroom management
- The atmosphere the teacher creates
- The teacher’s preparedness
- The teacher’s handling of responsibilities
Teacher observation allows school administrators to track teachers’ performance and see how they respond to feedback. Considering its well-designed rubrics, the method also gives evaluators relevant first-hand information about the rapport between teachers and students.
One of the potential problems with this teacher evaluation method is that the reliability of the observations depends on the observer, so evaluating teachers in this way may be subject to bias. In addition, teachers and students may behave differently when an evaluator is present.
This teacher evaluation method can be labor-intensive and time-consuming since it requires the physical presence and commitment of school administrators and evaluators.
Conclusion
Various teacher evaluation approaches have both positive and negative aspects. This suggests that combining key factors from different models can offer a more accurate and constructive result. According to research by the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, combining teacher observations, value-added methods, and student feedback can provide a more balanced view of teacher performance.
Overall, teacher evaluation promotes professional growth, ensures high-quality teaching, and enhances student achievement and school effectiveness.
Ready to implement a reliable Evaluation system that checks all the important teacher performance assessment rubrics? Contact Education Advanced today to learn more.
If your school is interested in new ways to improve the learning experience for children, you may also be interested in automating tasks and streamlining processes so that your teachers have more time to teach. Education Advanced offers a large suite of tools that may be able to help. For example, four of our most popular and effective tools are:
- TestHound, our test accommodation software, helps schools coordinate thousands of students across all state and local K-12 school assessments while taking into account dozens of accommodations (reading disabilities, physical disabilities, translations, etc.) for students.
- Pathways, our college and career readiness software, helps administrators and counselors create, track, and analyze graduation pathways to ensure secondary students are on track to graduate.
- Evaluation, our teacher evaluation software, documents every step of the staff evaluation process, including walk-throughs, self-evaluations, supporting evidence, reporting, and performance analytics.
