Through studies in seven school districts, researchers from 21 universities and organizations put teacher observations, student achievement gains and feedback from student surveys under a microscope—and found these measures were accurate.

Researchers randomly assigned students to math and English teachers who had already received better or worse ratings based on the measures. They got proof the ratings worked when, after a year, students did better or worse according to which teacher taught them.

“As a group, teachers previously identified as more effective caused students to learn more. Teachers identified as less effective caused students to learn less,” says the report. (Read more about the study here.)

Researchers note that one goal is to have a rating system that doesn’t fluctuate too much from year to year, and also predicts students’ performance on state tests and higher-level tests.

They accomplished that using formulas that put 33 percent to 50 percent of the weight on the growth in students’ state test scores, and split the rest of the ratings equally between teacher observations and student survey results.

CPS plan not an exact fit

CPS’ plan bears some similarities, but doesn’t fit the model exactly. Teachers this year will have 75 percent to 90 percent of their evaluations determined by observations of teacher practice. The percentage of evaluations tied to student growth will be 10 to 25 percent, but will increase to up to 30 percent for some teachers in the 2014-2015 school year, then to 35 and perhaps 40 percent in subsequent years. The percentage will include district-designed “performance tasks” as well as standardized tests.

In addition, the research cautions that teachers should be observed at least twice, by at least two different observers, in order to create an accurate rating. CPS teachers are to be observed at least four times when they are evaluated, but there is no guarantee different administrators – such as an assistant principal and the principal – will carry out those evaluations.

"The configuration of an observation schedule is made at the school level and in many cases, both administrators are conducting observations," notes CPS spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler. Some schools also have several assistant principals, meaning some teachers could be observed by three or more different administrators.

CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union are also studying the issue of student surveys. The district will pilot the surveys in 2013-2014, and a joint union-CPS committee will decide whether to include them in teacher evaluations during the 2014-2015 school year. Originally, the district planned to make surveys 10 percent of teachers’ evaluations, but that plan was scrapped during this fall’s teacher strike.

Jean Clements, president of Florida’s Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association, said on a press call announcing the study results that surveys aren’t part of her district’s evaluation process because they were thought to be most contentious of all.

“We can use the student surveys to improve practice without bringing it into the actual evaluation process, which we think would be controversial and a bit contentious,” Clements said.

The new tests are part of a state law requiring that teacher evaluations incorporate student performance, and most of the public discussion so far has focused on the use of standardized test scores in evaluations. But districts around the state will soon have to roll out similar assessments as part of the Performance Evaluation Reform Act of 2010.

Teachers contacted by Catalyst Chicago said the new tests may end up being a better gauge of student learning than standardized tests like the ISAT.

But they also cited several problems, including:

*Mistakes in answer keys and student instructions.

*Problems with delivery of materials and with formatting—for instance, a 1^st-grade assessment in small print students were not accustomed to reading, with little space for young students’ oversized handwriting.

*Concern that some teachers might cheat, since they are responsible for scoring the assessments and reporting their own data.

The performance tasks will count for 10 to 15 percent of elementary teachers’ evaluations this year, and 10 percent of the evaluations of high school core subject teachers. But, since this is a pilot year for the new evaluations, only untenured teachers will be formally evaluated using them.

Roosevelt High School chemistry teacher Theo Pinson, a participant in the Chicago Teachers Union’s Quest Center professional development program, says that the new assessment “was a lot more directly tied to what they were doing in the classroom” than standardized tests are, though he felt the activity didn’t incorporate enough inquiry and critical thinking – asking students to follow a set procedure, instead of designing their own experiments.

Based on Common Core

CPS says that 450 teachers applied to help develop the performance tasks, and 151 participated in the entire process. In some cases, according to teachers who helped develop the assessments, they did not write the questions themselves but rather selected them from a bank of test questions CPS purchased.

The 93 assessments they developed span the elementary grades, as well as core subjects like reading, math, science and social science in high school.

Because the tests are short, they can only touch a small slice of the material teachers are supposed to cover in a year. They are based on the Common Core State Standards for each grade level in reading and math, and in other subjects are based on similar nationally recognized standards.

The assessments will be at the same level at the end of the year as at the beginning, and will cover the same skills, since students are being tested on how much they learn from the start of the year to the end.

Students’ scores will have to increase at least one point on a 4-point rubric to count as showing growth. If a student earns a perfect score at both the start and the end of the year, that will also count as growth.

Teachers point out gaps

Special education students can be given accommodations like extra time, or having a text read aloud to them. “They are more like an assignment given on a daily basis in a class,” said a CPS official who worked with teachers to develop the assessments.

In cases where students have severe and profound disabilities, teachers may have to create their own performance tasks around a student’s goals for the year.

But Samantha Randall, an early childhood special education teacher at Fermi Elementary, says there was “minimal to no support” in how to modify preschool performance tasks to fit her students.

LaWanda Taylor, a math teacher at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep, says that there was no performance task for pre-calculus, so her class had to take a performance task in advanced algebra – a different subject – instead.

In some instances, teachers with multiple sections of students were instructed to pick just one class of students to assess. In others, teachers were instructed to assess all their classes and then choose which data to enter.

The district is spot-checking the scores for reliability and consistency, and says it has found no problems so far.

Reliable measure of learning?

CPS says the problems stem from the short time frame for developing the assessments. The district says just half a dozen tests had errors, and most were in difficult high school math and science subjects.

Carol Caref, Quest Center Coordinator at the Chicago Teachers Union, says that the union has gotten “mixed feedback” so far about the tests from teachers.

“The problem is not the concept of using a performance task rather than a multiple choice test. The problem is that there was not time to adequately test them in the field and modify them accordingly,” Caref says. She points out that CPS may modify some tasks before the spring, but that the district’s ability to do this is limited because the tests are supposed to measure student growth over time.

And as with other assessments, the performance tasks’ accuracy may be frustrated by the wide gaps in CPS students’ learning.

Lillian Kass, who teaches high school English at Austin Polytech, points out that some students may be so far below grade level that they miss the performance task goal entirely.

“The reading level was so far above where my students were at they were unable to complete the task,” Kass says. “My students can grow, and still get a zero again at the end of the year. I am not necessarily going to be able to show growth.”

Paul Zavitkovsky, a leadership coach at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Center for Urban Education Leadership, says that the fact the assessments are being used for teacher evaluation may detract from teachers’ ability to use them to measure learning.                     

He explains that it could shift the focus to, “Did my kids get it right or did they not get it right?” rather than “What can I learn as an adult in order to help my students learn more effectively?”

He adds that the assessments “are designed to provide more balance in the assessment process. Everybody gets that you need to have multiple data points to come up with a reasonable assessment for adults and kids.”

But particularly for those performance tasks that end up being designed by individual teachers, Zavitkovsky says, so few students are taking them that it might be hard to tell whether the questions are useful.

Having teachers grade the test themselves, as is the case in CPS, opens the door to unreliability, Zavitkovsky says.

He adds that problems like those pointed out by Kass are typical until a test can be tried out on students.

“It is really hard to know if you’re assuming too much about children’s knowledge… if it’s a poorly written item, or too hard, or makes kids and teachers span too big a range of learning,” he says. “Assessment is a lot more complex on its face than it seems… (it) requires some deep knowledge about how students grow into levels of complexity within a discipline.”

Strike or no strike, do we have enough excellent teachers? If the new teacher evaluation system that has fueled so much action and so much debate is used as planned to dismiss under-performing teachers, do we have the types of teachers that we want, and that so many Chicago students need, waiting in the wings?

Recent events have shown how questions about fairness—fairness for teachers, fairness for students, and fairness for parents—too often trump the raw economic question of supply and demand in teacher policies. That is, are the salaries and working conditions (inclusive of performance evaluations) in Chicago’s schools sufficiently attractive to talented professional people? Of course they are attractive for some, but are they attracting enough talented teachers to meet our city’s needs?

Do CPS teacher salaries and working conditions entice those excellent teachers already committed to the profession to stay in the classroom for the long-haul, and do they make teaching an attractive career option for talented men and women choosing between many career options available to them? Research conducted by McKinsey & Company on our younger generation of college students suggests that in fact, very few college students from the top-third of their class view teaching as offering them as appealing a career as their alternatives.

If teachers were behaving inappropriately by picketing and partying on Chicago’s streets, what would it take to recruit a more professional, and more highly effective, teacher workforce?

Taking a step back from the chaos of the strike to reconsider whether Chicago as a city is doing its part to secure enough of the kinds of teachers that can get all students reading, writing, and mathematically literate, while also developing their aspirational capacity, requires a comprehensive, systemic human capital approach that strategically addresses not only teacher evaluation but also teacher preparation, recruitment, hiring, induction and mentoring, professional development, working conditions, and compensation.

It’s time to take the bird’s-eye perspective—creating a world-class Chicago teaching force—rather than the worm’s-eye perspective of striking a deal and getting students back in the classroom. At a national convening of state departments of education, Arne Duncan’s teacher quality advisor, Brad Jupp, called for statewide conversations among citizens about what the teaching profession ought to look like and how teacher evaluation reforms can serve as a launching point to help schools and the public to realize that vision.

Chicago researchers at American Institutes for Research, with colleagues from Public Agenda, have created a model and free online resource to help teachers spark these conversations in their schools (see www.EveryoneAtTheTable.org). Let’s start this conversation in Chicago—book clubs, community groups, and most importantly educators, should use this historic strike to spark a renewed conversation to shape the future of our teaching force and the future of our city.

The national wave of teacher evaluation reforms are playing out differently across the country, with the New York Times publishing an article on New York City’s “worst teacher,” and a Los Angeles teachers’ suicide even attributed to the outing of his students poor test scores. What mark does Chicago want to have on the nation—the largest strike, or the largest, most collaborative conversation about how to advance this most important of professions? 

Ellen Behrstock Sherratt is a researcher and policy associate at the American Institutes for Research in Chicago. An expert in teacher quality, she is a coauthor of Improving Teacher Quality and the forthcoming Improving Teacher Evaluation—With Everyone at the Table.

Allison Rizzolo is the senior communications associate for Public Agenda, a national research and engagement organization. She is also a coauthor of Improving Teacher Evaluation—With Everyone at the Table.

Both of us work with Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers on Evaluation Reform, a nationwide initiative to encourage teacher voice in the teacher evaluation policy dialogue.

But as educators deeply invested in the success of Chicago’s schools, we come away with very different lessons. We argue that teacher unions have in the past proven to be an essential voice in improving public education; that the recent strike has preserved that voice for Chicago’s teachers; and that unions must continue to serve as the teachers’ voice into the 21st century.

Throughout a century of disagreements with mayors over patronage, segregation, and unequal resources, organized teachers in Chicago have used their collective power to foster improvement in the public schools. The recent strike reflects this legacy, with the CTU taking a stand against charter schools and high-stakes testing. The spread of charters, on which Mayor Rahm Emanuel staked his position, has had exactly the same mixed results in Chicago as elsewhere:  Research consistently shows that overall, charters perform the same as, or worse than, comparable neighborhood schools while also increasing segregation along racial and class lines. Now, CPS plans to close up to 120 public schools and welcome 60 charters anyway.

Another central issue in this dispute was the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers. The rush to use standardized test scores, despite documented significant flaws, has been compared to early 20th Century IQ testing and the minimum-competency exams of the 1970s, both of which are now recognized by historians as having been racially discriminatory and bad for children and learning.

Many backers of these so-called reforms--including Rauner, CPS board member Penny Pritzker and the Gates Foundation--are politically connected and wealthy, and they are also generous donors to both local and national campaigns. Organized teachers provide a vision of public schooling grounded in the daily realities of children, communities, and schools that offsets this unequal distribution of power. Only one of the seven appointed members of the CPS Board of Education has any education experience. Unions support continued education and the sharing of best practices grounded in empirical research. In fact, the only research-based proposal to come out of this recent contract fight came from the CTU, which argued against the narrowing of the curriculum, more charters, and value-added evaluations.

It’s time to start trusting educators again. Teachers unions of the 21st Century can evolve to become as dynamic and diverse as learning.  Unions should collaborate with districts to put new tools of education, such as mobile computing, in the hands of all students. Teachers’ collaborative power will also be enhanced by bringing charter and “virtual school” educators into unions.  And, as we have seen too many smart people leave this profession out of frustration, unions can carve out new career ladders based on peer-certified mastery: mentor for aspiring and new teachers, master teacher to coach colleagues, online educator, and so on.

All of this takes time, and we have heard over and over again that our most disadvantaged students don’t have it. But we also need to stop treating education as if it is in crisis. The patient is not bleeding out; she has a chronic illness. There is a big difference between doing something—whether to please those demanding that something be done, or out of desperation for a solution—and finding the right thing to do.

It’s time to do the right thing for the children of Chicago and the United States.

Charles Tocci is a clinical assistant professor in the School of Education at Loyola University Chicago. Melissa Barton is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago as well as a teacher and union delegate in the Chicago Public Schools.

On one hand, I wanted to be in the classroom, providing students with the opportunity to learn.   On the other hand, I recognized that a strike was a powerful tool to increase resources for public education.   My students need great teachers, and the strike made me wonder - what do I need to be that great teacher?

The amount of blame I saw leveled at teachers during the strike discussions was terrifying for someone about to enter the profession.   Like our students, the teachers of Chicago feel the effects of unemployment, violence, urban depopulation, and poverty on a daily basis.  Did the responsibility of solving social inequality really fall squarely on my shoulders, as a future teacher?  Such a burden would be unbearable - which may explain why 33% of Chicago teachers leave after only one year.

I have learned in my training that a teacher must maintain high expectations of her students, regardless of their circumstances.   Likewise, I want our district to hold high expectations of me as a teacher, and hold me accountable to those expectations.  But there is another crucial lesson of my student teaching: high expectations alone are not enough.  You can't expect your students to reach great heights without a ladder.  Demanding high achievement without offering support simply leads to stress, frustration, and despair.

Many Chicago teachers are feeling that stress and frustration right now, and many flee the profession before they have the chance to become expert teachers.  I want to stay in the profession for my entire career, and have sought support to make the path more sustainable.  This includes coaching, mentoring, and other professional development from the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation and from my credential program.  But this kind of support is rare and currently unavailable to most teachers.

Our compromise contract holds some promising features.  The union fought to limit the portion of teacher evaluations based on standardized tests, as these have been shown to give greatly varying results even when examining a single teacher from year to year.  As anyone else who has received a bad grade on a paper or test with no explanation should understand, explicit feedback is more useful than an unqualified ranking.  

The compromise is an evaluation system that includes value-added scores from standardized tests, along with evaluations based on student surveys and comprehensive feedback on the teachers' performance in the classroom.  I think this system will encourage me to grow as a professional and strengthen my ability to help students learn, rather than spend my time trying to outwit a test.

(Editor’s note: In the compromise, student surveys will be piloted next year. The student surveys will only be incorporated into formal evaluations the following year upon approval by a majority of a committee of CPS and union representatives.) 

The contract resulting from the strike also tries to balance high, enforced expectations with support. The limits on class sizes were retained and additional money has been committed to reduce class sizes.  This means that I will be able to know my students and give them individualized feedback.  What's more, improved working conditions for school support staff mean that I will have more time to focus on instruction instead of trying to be a social worker for my most troubled students.  

Just as my students must put time and effort into learning their subjects, teaching is a profession that can only be learned and mastered with time and practice.  I hope that the compromise contract will give me, and other new recruits, the opportunity to stay in classes for years to come.

Ivy McDaniel is completing her teaching credential in the Urban Teacher Education Program at the University of Chicago.

Now, CPS’ plans are taking shape:

• Students with disabilities who take the Illinois Alternate Assessment, an alternative test, will not be required to take the tests given to other students (the elementary NWEA test and the high school EPAS) that will be used to calculate teachers’ value-added scores. These students will continue to take the IAA and their teachers will be assigned a school-wide value-added score. The district is also assigning school-wide scores to teachers of non-tested subjects, such as art.

• Special education teachers whose students do not take the IAA will be evaluated based on regular value-added test scores. “We anticipate that the value-added model will take into account the number of students and students’ various disabilities,” spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler says. “CPS will continue to work with our value-added vendor to determine the best and most fair way to control for students’ disabilities.”

• Special education teachers will administer the new “performance tasks” the district is developing, which are supposed to offer a more holistic picture of learning than test scores. In cases where a disability may prevent a student from completing a task, the district will provide guidelines for administering a task that is at the student’s level.

• During performance tasks, as well as NWEA and EPAS testing, students with disabilities will be eligible for accommodations.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which opposes the use of value-added scores, says the plan for special education teachers is flawed.

“In many cases, NWEA or EPAS may be appropriate. However, it may be inappropriate for more than just the 1 percent of students who take the Illinois Alternate Assessment,” Quest Center Coordinator Carol Caref says.  “It remains to be seen how the adaptations work in actual school settings.”

Catalyst captured the presentations on Storify, a web tool that compiles social media.

Changes to the length of next year's school day, a continuing budget deficit and ongoing teacher contract talks are providing a challenge for Chicago Public Schools principals as they prepare for next fall, the Tribune reports several school leaders as saying.

In effort to eliminate the anxiety for many Chicago students who fear being the victim of gang activity as they wait for a bus, Chicago Public Schools has implemented a new system inside the schools where monitors at the exits of the schools will display the whereabouts of their bus and how close they are. (Imperfect Parent)

CPS is using ‘bus tracker’ technology for student safety. (CBS Chicago)

Illinois education officials say cases of cheating on state exams by teachers and principals are on the rise and the state is investigating suspicious patterns on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, which is taken by every third through eighth grade student. (WBEZ)

IN THE NATION
A report by the Schott Foundation for Public Education found that poor and minority students have fewer opportunities to attend New York City's best public schools largely because of where they live. (WNYC/NYT)

More states are requiring teacher-candidates to take—and pass—licensing tests in reading before they can move into the classroom. (Education Week)

Former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday praised school art programs for teaching discipline and creativity to students, crediting his music lessons as a child for his success as a politician. (NOLA.com)

Prolific commentator and education historian Diane Ravitch writes for her Bridging Differences blog she just doesn't understand former DCPC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Here's a bit: "I am trying to understand Michelle Rhee. She has allied herself with the most right-wing governors in the nation, yet she claims to be a Democrat. She has worked with Republican Rick Scott in Florida, Republican John Kasich in Ohio, Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey, Republican Rick Snyder in Michigan, among others. Any governor who wants to cut teachers’ rights and benefits can call on her to stand with him. Wherever there is a governor eager to dismantle and privatize public education, she is there at his side." For the rest, click here.

“As a classroom teacher with over two decades of experience I empathize with those who feel as if this City has declared war on its teachers who’ve dedicate their lives to teaching children and are now left wondering what they have done to be treated like this,” Karen GJ Lewis, union president said. The news conference takes place at 11 a.m. at the union's headquarters in the Merchandise Mart.

While the Tribune gives CPS a solid B+ with an A for effort on its new teacher evaluation system, it also urges CPS to count student growth as half of a teacher's evaluation, not 25 percent as the new evaluation has sanctioned.

The Chicago Teachers Union says internal polling shows there is support for a strike if contract talks with Chicago Public Schools break down, the Tribune reports.

HB 5826 introduced by Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora removes a requirement for school districts with fewer than 50,000 students (all but CPS) to submit a plan each fall for how they will use supplementary General State Act funds, so-called poverty grant, to improve academic achievements of disadvantaged students.

School districts—from Mokena's Summit Hill School District 161 to districts in Naperville and Wilmette—are grappling with adding hours to their kindergarten programs, part of a growing movement to strengthen the early years as the foundation for lifelong learning, the Tribune reports.

IN THE STATE
State pension director Dick Ingram says the Illinois Teachers Retirement System could be insolvent by 2029.

IN THE NATION
Detroit Public Schools is creating a hybrid system within the district by converting 10 high schools into "self-governing" buildings with a five-member board controlling the budget, operations and hiring.

The Houston Independent School District was named Wednesday by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation as one of four urban school districts in the country as a finalist for the 2012 Broad Prize. The other finalists this year are: Corona-Norco Unified School District in Riverside County, Calif., Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and The School District of Palm Beach County, Fla. The winner of the 2012 Broad Prize will be announced Oct. 23. Houston's district's African-American graduation rate improved faster than in other urban districts nationally, according a Broad Foundation press release.

Los Angeles City Council members suggested Wednesday they would consider changes but not a wholesale redrawing of proposed new election-district maps for the Los Angeles Board of Education. (Los Angeles Times)

Joel I. Klein and Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellors in New York and Washington, have formed a statewide political group in New York with an eye toward being a counterweight to the powerful teachers’ union in the 2013 mayoral election. On the board are some of the most well-known and polarizing figures in public education, including Ms. Rhee; Mr. Klein, now a News Corporation executive; and Eva S. Moskowitz, the former councilwoman who now runs a chain of charter schools. Also on the board are former Mayor Edward I. Koch; Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone organization, a network of charter schools; and a number of venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, who have served as the movement’s financial backers.  (The New York Times)

Starting this fall, the current checklist system that administrators and teachers have long said is virtually worthless for improving instruction will be replaced at all schools with the new system. However, many teachers won’t be affected until fall 2013; the new system will only be used initially for probationary teachers and for tenured teachers with satisfactory and unsatisfactory ratings.

Mandated under state law, the new evaluations will factor in measures of student growth on standardized tests; progress on district-designed tests known as “performance assessments”; principal’s observations of teachers using a modified version of Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching. Student feedback will be incorporated in the second year of the program.

District officials dubbed the new evaluation system REACH, for Recognizing Educators and Advancing Chicago’s Students.

The union quickly weighed in, saying the new system is seriously flawed because it relies on value-added test scores--although state law mandates that student achievement be part of all new evaluations--does not provide enough checks and balances on a principal’ evaluation, and doesn’t give teachers an appeal process. But the CTU noted in a statement that “the new observation system is an improvement over the checklist system currently in place.”

Tim Daly, president of TNTP (formerly known as The New Teacher Project) and a member of the state Performance Evaluation Advisory Council, said that several districts around the country weigh achievement more heavily than Chicago’s new plan.

Factoring in achievement has become a nationwide trend in recent years, as the U.S. Department of Education has been pushing states to make student growth measures a part of teacher evaluation.

Neither New York City nor Los Angeles public schools have adopted new evaluation systems yet. A state law will require New York schools to do so in the future.

“The CPS approach is more moderate,” Daly says. “Under the law, the district could have pressed for quite a bit more weight [on value-added measures].”

However, Daly says, that will put more onus on CPS to make sure that teacher observations are done well – something that has not been the district’s strong suit in the past.

“The weight [on achievement] starts out so small that it’s unlikely to affect many teachers’ ratings,” he notes. Even when this percentage rises, “the ratings of the vast majority of teachers in CPS will continue to be determined primarily based on observations.”

The same is true of the district- and teacher-designed performance assessment.

“It’s easy with state tests to say the test makers are at fault, or the state is at fault,” Daly says. “These are going to be local tests, so the responsibility falls on the community of educators to make them good. And it’s going to be tough.”

Disney Magnet Elementary Principal Kathleen Hagstrom says that she already supplemented the district’s checklist with additional evaluation forms. With the new system, she is concerned about how she will find time to do detailed observations of her school’s 86 teachers.

“Some accommodations will have to be made for large staffs,” she notes. “I know those who did the pilot for the Danielson said the data input was extremely difficult.” But, she adds, she looks forward to finding out whether the new system will be helpful.

“I am hoping our questions will be answered,” she says. “Many people felt the past evaluation wasn’t effective. We will have to see.”

Because legally mandated negotiations between the union and the district had been going on since December- well past the minimum 90-day period specified in state law - the district was free to implement the evaluation procedures it most recently discussed with the union.

"I have mixed feelings, and I think it remains to be seen how this will play out," said Carol Caref, coordinator of the CTU's Quest Center. "We felt like it was better than what they started with, but there were many things in it we did not agree with."

Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, praises the district's work. “They deserve credit for this,” she says. “It's an awfully good first step”

The law mandating the new evaluations was passed in 2010 to make Illinois a more viable candidate for the federal Race to the Top grant competition, which Illinois did not win.

Phasing in more reliance on student growth

The weight given to students’ learning gains – the most controversial part of the new evaluations, and one mandated by state law – will increase gradually over five years, until it accounts for 35 to 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Student feedback will comprise 10 percent of the evaluations, and observation will remain the largest factor.

High schools will begin phasing in student growth measures based on the EXPLORE, PLAN and ACT assessments in September 2013. For the coming year, only teachers in core subjects will be rated on student growth, and it will be done through performance assessments that only account for 10 percent of a teacher’s ratings. (This formula does not meet the minimum state requirements for implementing the new evaluations, but CPS has some flexibility because the district is only required to use the new evaluations in 300 schools this year.)

For elementary schools, a portion of the student growth measure will be based on value-added test scores from the NWEA, a test that students take three times a year. The NWEA (for Northwest Evaluation Association, a non-profit group that created the assessment) is more difficult than the state’s ISAT, and the results for Chicago can be compared to those nationally. Using this test is a major divergence from past practice and is another signal of the district’s move away from the ISAT and toward tests that provide a better picture of how CPS compares on a national scale.

Chief Education Officer Noemi Donoso pointed out that the NWEA is more aligned to the Common Core, new learning standards that the district will be phasing in during the next several years. An assessment based on the Common Core is still being developed by a consortium of states that belong to PARCC, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

Creating a value-added formula

Value-added test scores try to isolate a teacher’s impact on student performance. The district’s current value-added formula, for the ISAT, takes into consideration a number of factors including where students start, a school’s racial makeup, students’ native language, and the number of low-income children in a school.

Donoso said district officials and union leadership still need to talk about the factors that will be included in the new NWEA value-added formula and how much weight each factor will have. The union’s criticism of value-added scores notes that scores can fluctuate from year to year and that teachers are rated against one another.

The new performance assessments will be developed by groups of teachers and the district over the summer. Donoso stressed that these will not take the form of multiple-choice, standardized tests, but can be a list of items that students should be able to do.  Across the district, the performance tasks will be the same, regardless of type of school, Donoso said, and will be given to students at different times throughout the year.

However, she said there might need to be adjustments, if, for instance, everyone in a class walks in able to accomplish all the performance tasks. "These will be rigorous assessments so we don't anticipate this happening very often," Donoso said.

One key question is how the evaluations will affect teachers for grades or subjects--such as kindergarten through 2^nd grade, physical education, and the arts—in which standardized tests like NWEA are not given. CPS officials decided that the teachers will develop a performance task assessment, but they also will be judged on school-wide literacy scores – even though those scores may be coming from students a teacher has never instructed.

"Increasing literacy is everyone's job," Donoso said. She noted that currently, only 17 percent of CPS 3^rd-grade students are reading on grade level.

Using school-level value-added scores in cases where teacher-level scores are not available is not uncommon,says Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Washington, D.C. public schools do. Tennessee kicked off a teacher rating system that way this year but aims to gradually replace the school-level scores with alternative assessments of students. A number of districts in Texas use school-level value-added scores to determine teacher merit pay awards in non-tested subjects, as does the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP).

"The key thing is how much you're going to count that, and it seems like what Chicago has proposed is pretty low," Jacobs says. "When you start to talk about it as a percentage that could influence the overall rating, then I think it becomes more complicated."

But a policy brief on the issue from the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, a teacher-quality resource center run by the U.S. Department of Education, notes in a research brief that “this approach presents some additional challenges for a number of reasons, including questions about rigor and comparability when judgments are made about individual teacher performance based on students they never taught.”

Danielson, student achievement linked

CPS’ previous teacher evaluation system had been criticized for decades. Since the 1970s, teachers had been rated on a checklist and the vast majority of teachers received good ratings. The vast number of superior and excellent teachers seemed out of sync with the fact that CPS students, on average lagged in performance.

Winckler and Donoso stressed that, though they didn't win the support of the union, they took into account many of the union suggestions and recommendations made by teachers through surveys. "We started with the voice of teachers," Winckler said. "We were listening and learning what excellent teaching looks like."

Donoso also pointed out that studies have shown a strong correlation between a teacher's score on the Danielson and how they do on student growth measures. The union had called for using the Danielson framework.

On top of observation and student growth, starting in 2013, students in grades 4 to 12 will be surveyed as to what they think of their teachers. Donoso said that a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation study also showed that students are good judges of the quality of their teacher.

"This combination will give us an accurate picture," she said. 

It is not clear yet how much the new rating system will cost. But CPS is hiring up to 18 central office employees to help train evaluators and make sure the new ratings are accurate. The advertised salary for the position is $78,700 to $111,000.

Here’s how the rating system will work:

Elementary school ratings

--For the 2012-13 school year, the ratings of elementary teachers in tested subjects will be based 75 percent on observations under the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching, 15 percent on the individual teachers' value-added scores on the NWEA assessment, and 10 percent on non-multiple-choice student performance assessments designed by teachers.

--In this example, teachers would be rated on a scale of up to 400 points, with 100 points being the lowest possible score. A teacher would get 10 to 40 points for performance assessments and 75 to 300 points for his or her rating on the Danielson observation.

--The 60 possible value-added points would be parceled out according to how far above or below average a teacher is. The lowest fewer-than-1 percent of teachers will get 15 points (the lowest possible score), the middle two-thirds will get 30 to 45 points, and the top fewer-than-1 percent will get 60 points, according to Caref.

--Teachers earning 100 to 219 points would be rated unsatisfactory. Those earning 220 to 284 points would be rated needs improvement. Those garnering 285 to 339 points would be rated proficient and those with at least 340 points would get a rating of excellent.

-- Starting in fall 2013, 10 percent of teachers’ ratings will come from student survey results.

-- For elementary teachers in tested subjects and grades, the proportion of the ratings determined by student growth will increase to 25 percent for value-added measures and 15 percent for performance tasks over the next five years.

--Elementary teachers in subjects that are not tested, and in kindergarten through 2nd grade, will have 15 percent of their ratings determined by the performance assessments and 10 percent by school-wide value-added scores for literacy. The percentages will gradually increase to 20 percent for performance tasks and 15 percent for school-wide literacy scores by the fifth year.

High school ratings

--For the coming school year only, high school teachers in core subjects will have 90 percent of their ratings based on the Danielson framework and 10 percent of their rating based on student performance assessments. Those in non-core subjects will have their entire rating based on observations.

-- Starting in fall 2013, the formula changes. Teachers in tested subjects will have 10 percent of their ratings based on student survey results; 15 percent based on student growth on the EXPLORE, PLAN and ACT standardized tests; 10 percent based on performance tasks; and 65 percent based on classroom observations. Those in non-tested subjects will have 15 percent of their ratings based on performance tasks and 10 percent on school-wide test scores.

-- For all high school teachers, the portion of evaluations determined by observations will decrease gradually until the fifth year of the program, when it will be 50 percent for teachers in tested subjects and 55 percent for those in non-tested subjects. The portion of the ratings based on student growth (including both test scores and performance assessments) will increase to 35 percent for teachers in non-tested subjects and 40 percent for those in tested subjects. Student surveys will still account for 10 percent.

 Related story: A principal gives thumbs-up to Danielson  

CPS officials are expected to announce the district's new teacher evaluation system Friday, including a plan for incorporating test scores as part of evaluations, Chicago Teachers Union negotiators said Thursday night.

Because legally mandated negotiations between the union and the district had been going on since December- well past the minimum 90-day period specified in state law - the district is now free to implement the evaluation procedures it most recently discussed with the union.

"I have mixed feelings, and I think it remains to be seen how this will play out," said Carol Caref, coordinator of the CTU's Quest Center. "We felt like it was better than what they started with, but there were many things in it we did not agree with."

She noted that the union had gotten some concessions from the district but still has concerns about the fact that teachers cannot appeal their ratings, which under the law can affect layoff decisions and even cause some teachers to lose their licenses.

The union is also concerned about the use of value-added ratings as part of evaluations--essentially incorporating test scores into the equation--although state law mandates that at least 25 percent of teacher evaluations be based on student performance this year and 30 percent in later years. 

By law, CPS must use the new evaluations in at least 300 schools by this fall and the remainder of the district by fall 2013.

The district's plan for ratings in 2012-13, according to Caref, is as follows:

--Elementary teachers' ratings would be based 75 percent on observations under the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching, 15 percent on the individual teachers' value-added scores on the NWEA assessment, and 10 percent on non-multiple-choice student performance assessments designed by teachers.

--In this example, teachers would be rated on a scale of up to 400 points. A teacher would get 10 to 40 points for performance assessments, and 75 to 300 points for their rating on the Danielson observation.

--The value-added points would be parceled out according to how far above or below average a teacher is.

--Teachers earning 100 to 219 points would be rated unsatisfactory. Those earning 220 to 284 points would be rated needs improvement. Those garnering 285 to 339 points would be rated proficient and those with at least 340 points would get a rating of excellent.

--Elementary teachers in subjects that are not tested, and in kindergarten through 2nd grade, will have 15 percent of their ratings determined by the performance assessments, and 10 percent by school-wide value-added scores for literacy.

--High school teachers in core subjects will have 90 percent of their ratings based on the Danielson framework, and 10 percent based on student performance assessments.

However, the high school rating system is likely to change dramatically in the future because it does not meet the minimum criteria set by the Illinois State Board of Education for the new evaluations under the Performance Evaluation Reform Act.

It is not clear yet how much the new rating system will cost, but CPS is hiring up to 18 central office employees to help train evaluators and make sure the new ratings are accurate. The advertised salary for the position is $78,700 to $111,000.

As evidenced in recently published opinion pieces, the contours of the debate are rapidly being drawn. Some proponents of using student-achievement data as a component of teacher evaluations, including the philanthropist Bill Gates and Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp, nevertheless believe that such information should not be made widely public. Other figures, like New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, champion the broad dissemination of such data.

Regarding teacher evaluations, the policy landscape for disclosures is also in flux. An Education Week review shows that access to teachers' evaluation results is permissible under open-records laws in at least 18 states plus the District of Columbia, though they are often unclear as to specifics. And only Florida and Michigan have established policies requiring that parents be notified if their child's teacher repeatedly performs poorly on his or her evaluations.

Unpredictable Stances

The debate is poised to grow noisier, as news organizations continue to pursue teacher-performance information.

"I think there are very few education policy issues where people's positions are not entirely predictable, and this is one of them," said Timothy Daly, the president of TNTP, formerly The New Teacher Project, a New York City-based teacher-training group that does not support mass publication of individual ratings.

Teachers' unions, meanwhile, have excoriated efforts by the news media to publish "value added" teacher ratings. But the unions, too, are facing the more nuanced question of whether disclosure could be appropriate under other contexts.

Gera L. Summerford, the president of the Tennessee Education Association, said she believes appropriate limits could be set based on the context of the requests.

"I've never had a problem with a parent coming to the office and requesting a private discussion about the evaluation with the principal," she said. "But when you get everything public in the form of numbers in a database, it's just a whole different picture, and I think it's misleading."

Media Pressure

Observers trace the interest in public disclosure of evaluations to projects conducted by news outlets in California and New York, in which they secured and published data on teachers.

In 2010, the Los Angeles Times conducted an analysis of student-performance data tied to individual teachers, collected over six years' time. It created a searchable database of teachers' names, with each instructor rated on his or her effectiveness in raising student-test scores.

Shortly after, New York newspapers filed open-records requests for similar data included on the city's "teacher data reports," which were provided only to teachers, principals, and superintendents. Those reports were finally released to the journalists last month.

In what amounts to a bit of irony, the newspapers based the results on value-added data collected by the school districts for purposes other than evaluation. It was precisely for that reason that the data was not protected from disclosure under the states' open-records laws.

Value-added data compare how a teacher's students performed from one year to the next compared with similar students taught by other teachers, holding constant factors like parental income that could skew scores.

Researchers generally agree that value-added measurements capture some degree of the differences in teacher quality. But they also say the estimates contain error and become more volatile when calculated with fewer years of achievement data.

Such limitations have been cited by critics of the papers' decision to publish, particularly in the instance of the New York data reports, some of which were based on small sample sizes containing large margins of error around the calculations. The newspapers, in the meantime, have defended the publication of the scores on the basis that teachers are public employees whose performance is of interest to the public at large.

The issue has divided influential figures in public education, some of whom believe public disclosure could scuttle the appetite among educators for changes to teacher evaluations. That was essentially Mr. Gates' position in an op-ed essay in The New York Times a day before the newspaper made the data available.

"Developing a systematic way to help teachers get better is the most powerful idea in education today. The surest way to weaken it is to twist it into a capricious exercise in public shaming," he wrote. (Mr. Gates co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps support Education Week's coverage of business and K-12 innovation.)

As a testament to the complexity of the issues, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's thinking on the matter has evolved since 2010. Though he credited the Los Angeles Times project for spotlighting data that, at that time, was going unheeded, Mr. Duncan said he doesn't support publication as a general rule.

"There's not much of an upside there, and there's a tremendous downside for teachers," he said. "We're at a time where morale is at a record low. We need to be strengthening teachers, and elevating them, and supporting them."

Open-Records Requests

States and districts, in the meantime, face a quandary over what they will have to produce if such information is requested by the news media or other individuals.

The review conducted by Education Week indicates that open-records laws in 18 states and the District of Columbia permit access to individual teachers' evaluation results. An additional 19 states do not allow such access, while the other states require teacher or third-party approval.

Florida has allowed the public to access parts of teachers' personnel files under sunshine laws since 1983, though access to them is made available the year after the review is conducted. Very few parents have chosen to look at those records, according to officials in the Hillsborough County, Miami-Dade, and Orange County school systems, three of the largest in the state.

Still, with new evaluation systems coming online, there could be an increased appetite for the information.

In Tennessee, one of the first states using a revamped, statewide teacher-evaluation system, the open-records law is written in such a way so that while the components that make up the evaluation are probably protected from release, teachers' summary evaluation scores—tallied on a 1-to-5 scale—might not be.

Tennessee state schools Superintendent Kevin Huffman said his agency's lawyers would have to look at each request for such information individually. But as a matter of general policy, the state does not believe summary ratings should be published, he added.

"We think the teacher evaluations provide the opportunity for good conversations between teachers and administrators about what effective teaching looks like, and helping teachers get better in areas where they need to get better," Mr. Huffman said. "That is inherently compromised if people are conducting them with an eye toward public consumption, rather than as a tool for performance improvement."

Ms. Summerford, the president of the Tennessee teachers' association, agreed.

"I don't think it was the intent of any of the policymakers during the development of the evaluation system to make it something that's a single number of a teacher that's public," she said. "Frankly, when you reduce anything as complicated in teaching to a single number, it can get misrepresented."

Parental Disclosure?

In two states, new laws are upping the ante on disclosure. Under a 2011 Florida law, districts must inform parents whose children are taught by a teacher with a string of subpar evaluations.

Districts appear to be wrestling with how to put that mandate in place and make it fit with the year's delay already set in state policy. "We don't yet have our plan for sharing evaluations with parents," said Linda Cobbe, a spokeswoman for the 195,000-student Hillsborough County school system, which includes Tampa.

Michigan, similarly, will require districts to notify parents if their child is taught by a teacher with two successive unsatisfactory evaluations. That policy, also the result of a recently passed state law, does not go into effect until 2015-16.

Such policies raise fresh questions about whether complex information about teacher performance can be provided to parents in a way that helps improve teaching and learning.

Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the Florida Education Association, an affiliate of both national teachers' unions, said he doubts that's possible. The required notification, is "just another mechanism for public flogging," he said. "It's not something that you can put into context."

Yet others see promise in the idea. Though Ms. Kopp of Teach For America doesn't support the newspaper publication of teacher-performance data, she believes providing parents with the information is an idea worth exploring—provided, she said, that error rates associated with value-added methods can be reduced and principals appropriately add context to the data.

"It would give parents information to inform their confidence level that their children will get what they need in the teacher's classroom," Ms. Kopp said, "and it would also provide further incentive for schools to utilize the data to inform their work to develop strong teaching teams."

There is precedent for a degree of parent disclosure. The federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2002, explicitly gives parents the right to view the qualifications of their children's teachers. (The law does not address the issue of teacher evaluations.)

Some states are making use of evaluation results in ways that don't hinge on disclosure. Rhode Island, for instance, prohibits students from being assigned to a teacher deemed "ineffective" more than one year in a row. It does not require the notification of parents, nor does state law grant them access to evaluations.

Philosophical Debates

Policies around teacher-performance disclosures appear likely to be unsettled for some time.

Smarting from the fallout of the newspaper reports in New York, teachers' union officials there are now arguing that evaluations include subjective information and therefore should be exempt from disclosure under open-records laws. (See Education Week, March 14, 2012.)

In Tennessee, state lawmakers introduced legislation that would exempt teachers' evaluation scores from disclosure. Mr. Huffman, the state superintendent, said he would likely support the proposal.

"The hard thing is that we're looking at blunt answers to nuanced questions, which makes it tricky," Mr. Huffman said. "Under state law, we don't get to pick whether this is a parent accessing this information compared to a nosy neighbor."

Mr. Daly of TNTP views the debate over disclosure as a side effect of a school culture that is still too hesitant to act on differences in teacher performance.

"The urge to know is based on the suspicion that schools are not addressing instructional issues, and that is fueling some of this push," he said. "And it's unfortunate that individual teachers bear the brunt."

Library Intern Amy Wickner provided research assistance.

Republished with permission from Education Week. Copyright © 2011 Editorial Projects in Education, Inc. For more information, visit www.edweek.org.

The Charlotte Danielson Framework, a method now used by districts across the country and that has been piloted in CPS, provides a venue for both of those duties to be fulfilled simultaneously.  As a principal and evaluator of teacher practice for the past eight years within CPS, I have had the privilege of utilizing several methods of teacher evaluation, with a focus on improving teacher practice.  I must say that Danielson, although intricate and requiring a big time commitment, does indeed focus on improving practice through evaluation. 

The domains--Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities--cover the vast array of components needed to ensure quality teaching and learning.  A teacher’s knowledge of instructional content, his/her ability to manage behavior and deliver instruction as well as participate as a professional with colleagues and community is addressed. 

Teachers and administrators meet together to discuss teacher practice and set goals for improvement along with plans of actions that stimulate motivation on the part of the teacher and support on the part of the administrator.  The principal creates a safe environment for the teacher that is consistent and confidential therefore building trust, this is important as most teachers view evaluation as punitive.

Collaboratively, work is done to improve and build teacher practice where needed.  The administrator shows his/her commitment to learning by working with the teacher while the teacher builds his/her practice.

The administrator makes sure that the BIG ideas are understood so that teachers fully understand the vision, goal, and work required to be successful.

Does Danielson improve all teacher practice?   Of course not, as no method does.  However, in cases where teacher practice does not improve, the administrator along with the teacher is able to see clear concise evidence of plans made and support given to assist the teacher before other measures are taken.

The Danielson method is, in my opinion, a valuable tool to use for teacher evaluation.  It has the potential to "build" teachers as well as help those who may need possible "career change" to see their way clearly to do so.

Ultimately, this will improve the lives and the education of our students.

Principal Lauren Norwood

Doolittle Elementary, CPS

CPS officials say using the Google Apps system to provide a single email system for all staff and students will save more than $6 million over three years. The school board is expected to approve a $1.8 million three-year contract for the system at its meeting Wednesday. (Tribune)

A group of Chicago Public School students Tuesday demanded that student opinions about the effectiveness of their teachers be slowly folded into a new teacher evaluation process due to start this fall. (Sun-Times)

Two citywide youth groups packed CPS headquarters Tuesday afternoon to ask the district to incorporate student surveys into teacher evaluations. Voices of Youth in Chicago Education joined with students from the Mikva Challenge, an organization dedicated to youth civic engagement, in making their request. (Catalyst)

School leaders confirmed at Monday night’s LSC Candidates Forum that 14 Lane Tech parents are now running for six available seats on the council.  (Roscoe View Journal)

IN THE NATION
Though Colorado is more than a year away from implementing its new teacher-evaluation system, doubts have surfaced about the state's ability to launch such a sweeping initiative on time and with adequate resources for professional development. Educators from some of the 27 districts piloting the new system say that effort has turned out to be a complex and time-consuming task heaped upon demands of other education reforms. (Denver Post)

S. Dallas Dance, chief middle schools officer in the Houston school district, has been chosen as the next superintendent in Baltimore County. Dance, 30, had only two years of teaching experience in public schools, and therefore needed and received a waiver for the position. (The Baltimore Sun)

The group, made up of 88 education professors and researchers from 15 local universities who call themselves CReATE, delivered a letter to the mayor, CPS schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard and the city's board of education Monday, detailing their concerns and offering their expertise. They feel CPS’ planned evaluation system is “flawed” and needs to be tested in the field.

Unable or unwilling to leave the city, a small but growing group of middle-class families are turning to Chicago's public and private schools, a development that holds both potential and peril for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his efforts to improve the school system, Crain's Chicago Business reports.

The Chicago Teachers Union issued a press release Monday saying Mayor Emanuel exhibits a tendency to make changes in education policy "after controversy (such as when he decided to close and “turn around” all 17 schools slated for school action despite unprecedented opposition), or when a new study is released (in this case from the Chicago Consortium on School Research about IB programs)."

The Sun-Times delves into who gets the hefty school milk contracts. One company is a Little Village company owned by members of the McMahon family. Longtime friends of Chicago Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), the McMahons are among the handful of families that have held a stranglehold on Chicago school milk contracts for two generations now, the paper reports.

IN THE NATION
A new in-depth analysis by the Atlanta Journal Constitution found high concentrations of suspect math or reading test scores in school systems from coast to coast. The newspaper analyzed test results for 69,000 public schools. The findings represent an unprecedented examination of the integrity of school testing.

The Los Angeles Unified School District recently became one of the first—if not the first—districts in the nation to hire its own social media director. (Education Week)

Oklahoma is one of several states that recently adopted new reading policies that—with limited exceptions—call for 3rd graders to be held back if they flunk a state standardized test. (Education Week)

Secrets of ‘miraculous’ charter management organizations. (The Washington Post)