Frontline Blog

Education is constantly changing, giving us new opportunities to discover, create and adapt. That goes for all of us: the teachers referring to real world situations and current events to deepen student learning, the Curriculum & Instruction specialists seeking ways to further uphold and implement best practices in evaluations and professional learning, and the administrators who must prepare for and comply with new regulations and expectations.  

Dr. James Stronge on the Gates Foundation’s Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative.

What Robla School District learned by upending their teacher evaluations and empowering teacher leaders.

We are well into the last quarter of the school year, and that means we are entering the final phase of conducting classroom observations for teacher performance evaluation. If observations involve only one person, how do we enhance intra-rater reliability? And especially, if multiple observers have been involved in observing teachers’ classroom performance, what can we do to ensure inter-rater reliability? If a vice principal conducted an observation earlier in the year and the principal is scheduled to conduct an additional or final observation, how can we ensure the results of the more recent observation won’t sway the decision disproportionately and that observers are using the same yardstick to measure effectiveness?

No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Every Student Succeeds Act - all inspiring names, all painting a picture of education in which each student learns to her full potential. But what happens when well-intended laws yield unintended results? (We're looking at you, NCLB.)

Each morning, thousands of students step out of cars or bounce off buses into their classrooms at a suburban school district not far from Rochester, New York. With 17 schools and over 3,500 teachers and staff, the team that facilitates professional learning has an incredible opportunity to make a lasting impact on the education each student receives.  

The whirlwind 18 months since the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) became law have brought no small amount of buzz. Much of it concerns teacher evaluations — specifically because with ESSA, the federal government handed a fair amount of power back to the states in determining how to conduct them.  

Every administrator — and every teacher — wants the best possible learning environment for students. There’s been a lot of talk about teacher evaluations as a tool for educator growth, and much written about how far we have yet to go.

School buses are parked, classrooms are quiet, hallways are empty (unless your school is hosting theater camp) and many of us are recharging with some time at the beach. It’s also the time of year when educators take time to reflect on the past school year, look at the data they’ve collected, set goals and make plans for the coming year. We surveyed school districts around the country to learn what they’re thinking about evaluations and professional learning. Keep reading to learn what’s working for school districts and what they want to aim for in 2016-2017.