Teachers in Pennsylvania will soon be getting new grades.But their students and the students’ parents won’t get to see them. The grades will be put into the hands of the state Department of Education, though.This is the first year of the new state-mandated program. Eighty-five percent of a teacher’s grade will come from in-class evaluations. The other 15 percent will come from a new set of state data on school performance.
When the program is running at full speed, the grades will combine in-class evaluations, along with district-determined and state data such as test scores, graduation progress and other measures. Teachers will receive a grade from zero, which is failing, to three, which is distinguished.
The evaluations are based on the Danielson model, which grades teachers in a four-category rubric that covers preparation, instructional delivery, classroom environment and professionalism.
The teachers will receive their grades as a personnel record, but the law mandates that the district report the results in aggregate to the state. The law was passed with the blessing of the state’s largest teachers union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association.
Joseph Brereton, the principal at Butler Elementary School in New Britain Township, helped pilot the new evaluation system with six teachers at his school last year. The Central Bucks School District is one of several across the state involved in the pilot. Those teachers have started working with the other faculty in the building to understand the new model. He said that while the district’s old system was based on the Danielson model, all districts’ evaluations will now use the same rubric.
Brereton said the value of the new system won’t come from the data that is added, but from how the information is used to improve teacher performance in the classroom. A good administrator should recognize problems with teachers long before they are graded and work to correct those problems, he said.
“In order for (evaluations) to be effective, it can’t just be about measuring teachers and administrators at a certain period of time. It has to be about growth,” he said.
For instance, the School Performance Profile, which is a grade given to each school, makes up 15 percent of this year’s teacher evaluation grades. The teacher grades will come out in fall 2014. The School Performance Profile replaces the No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress rating for school districts this year. Those scores for the 2012-13 school year came out earlier this month for most schools in the state.
Central Bucks Superintendent David Weitzel said the release of the teacher grades the following school year isn’t a problem. He also doesn’t believe the evaluations will shift his district’s policy much and he wants to keep teachers focused on their classes, rather than just rote fulfillment of an evaluation.
“I hope for Central Bucks, it won’t have much effect at all,” he said. “We have a history of ongoing evaluation and supervision of our teachers.”
In the coming years, more data — including building-specific performance and student performance — will get plugged into teachers’ grades, lowering the percentage of the grade coming from in-class evaluations. The evaluations will also include another, locally determined, data point. Weitzel said the district hasn’t finalized its local portion, which will then need state approval.
Evaluations for principals and specialists will start in the next school year. The data for those two processes will use a model similar to teacher evaluations. Brereton said the first training for administrators starts later this month.
Rob Olson, president of the Central Bucks Education Association, said the district spent time before school started last month preparing for the new evaluation system.
“There is a certain amount of confidence among the teachers that there will not be something completely new for us, that these are the same standards that Central Bucks teachers have been held to for a long time,” he said.
Olson and Brereton both said some teachers still have questions and concerns about the system and its implementation, including about how much student data would factor into their grades.
“Anytime you implement a big new evaluation system, there is going to be a little apprehension about that just because people can be apprehensive about change,” Olson said.
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