Four local school districts will begin implementing a common teacher evaluation system in January structured around the educational goals of each district.
According to Bruce Preston, director of curriculum and instruction for the Shore Regional, Oceanport, West Long Branch and Monmouth Beach school districts, a regional evaluation system has been created based on teacher input and the goal of establishing a common culture and instructional model for teaching.
“What we wanted to do, rather than invest financial capital into dumping something on our teachers, we wanted to invest in the human capital that is our teachers and build that tool,” Preston said at the Sept. 11 meeting of the West Long Branch Board of Education.
“It was also a great opportunity for us as a region to create a common language around an instructional model.”
In 2011, the state mandated that all school districts implement a new teacher evaluation model by September 2013. According to Preston, administrators and teachers from all four districts began meeting last year to create an evaluation tool from scratch.
Teachers met with administrators to determine the three essential teaching elements and to establish a system that follows guidelines from state Department of Education.
The administrators used in-service time to meet with the teachers and allow them to review, refine and ask questions, Preston said.
Oceanport Superintendent Andrew Orifice explained that teacher input was important to establishing the new evaluation tool.
“The teacher evaluation process is meant to support teachers so having their input, having them understand what our essential teaching behaviors are, and what makes for a better lesson is paramount to improving instruction,” Orefice said.
“When you have that kind of buy-in you have a productive document. We are not here to ‘get’ teachers. We are here to improve instruction. Together I think this will happen.”
West Long Branch Superintendent Herbert Massa agreed.
“There is no one size that fits all and when the staff looked at it, they tried to come up with an appropriate model that fit our schools,” Massa said.
According to Preston, the new model will evaluate teachers on plans and planning, delivery of lessons and classroom environment. Teachers will be evaluated as ineffective, partially effective, effective, or highly effective.
Orifice noted that one of the challenging aspects of the new teacher evaluation system is that the number of observations will increase.
Currently non-tenured teachers have three observations a year while tenured teachers have one.
In 2013, all teachers, regardless of tenure, will have four observations.
“This is a change for administrators,” Orifice said. “Not only do we have to run the buildings but now we have to go into the classrooms more.”
The four districts will begin phasing in the new model starting in January to prepare teachers for the 2013-2014 school year.
“We are not implementing this form this year in its full implementation. We are phasing it in through the course of this year, training the staff on it through the course of this year and it will have full 100 percent implementation throughout the region in September 2013,” Preston said.
According to Preston, the four districts combined educate approximately 2,000 students and include about 200 teachers.
There will be three phases involved in the changeover to a common teacher evaluation system.
The first round of observations will have a team of administrators visit classrooms with one administrator serving as the point person. The observation sheet that will go into a teacher’s file is the form that the district is currently using, he said.
The second round will use the current form but teachers will get feedback from the new form to prepare them for 2013.
In the third round, non-tenured teachers will be evaluated based on the new form. The current form will be used for tenured teachers, who will get feedback based on the new form.
“New teachers have to have three observations. They will already have had feedback from that new form twice already. So they will be well versed and know what they need to do already. They will have the capacity to know what they need to deliver in the classroom,” Preston said.
“Tenured teachers, [the form] may be the only observation for that year so it wouldn’t be fair to have that in their file.”
Preston said that the last item to be completed before 2013 is the model for the annual district evaluation, which includes the observations and benchmark assessments.
To date, the West Long Branch and Shore Regional district boards of education have approved the new teacher evaluation systems.
According to Orefice, the Oceanport board of education is expected to approve the new system in October. The Monmouth Beach School District superintendent could not be reached for comment.