Greater Transparency, Visibility, and Consistency in Teacher Evaluations

Visibility

Beth can log into Frontline and instantly see how things are going — and whether administrators are on track to complete their evaluations on time. “Usually, this time of year, I will see how many we have finished, because we are about halfway through the year. Are we about half done with our evaluations? If we are not, then that concerns me.”

Beth can also dig into individual observations, which lets her keep an eye on any areas of concern. If a principal notices a teacher struggling in a particular area, Beth can look through the evaluation histories and see if it’s a trend. This can help inform any coaching that may need to happen. “It can lead to hard conversations, but they can be good conversations as well, just having that information. Keeping it all in one place is really nice.”

Transparency

Evaluation standards are listed as part of the evaluation process so teachers can see what they need to do to achieve a higher score. “It is not a secret what we are going to be looking for when we come into your classroom,” Beth says. “They are able to see, ‘In order to move up to the next level on the proficiency scale, I need to do this.’ It really leads to a nice discussion.”

If any teacher or staff member scores “Unsatisfactory” in any domain, they are automatically put on an improvement plan. This has no bearing on a teacher’s salary, but it does make clear where improvement is needed, and makes it easy for the district to see where teachers need additional support. “As a district, we owe these teachers. We need to support them.”

Beth says the data in Frontline helps them monitor trends in performance over time and determine where additional support may be needed even if a teacher has not received an “Unsatisfactory” rating in a particular domain. “You can go back and look up any year that we have had Frontline and see, ‘They have been fine, they have scored well,’ or ‘No, they really have not scored well. We need to do something.’”

With online evaluation records, teachers also have access to their observation history and can demonstrate how they have grown over time.

Self-reflection

When conducting observations, administrators type their notes right into Frontline. The system timestamps what they write, and then they can choose which category to tag the observed practice to.

Once the observation is complete, administrators can share their notes in PDF format with the teacher for reflection before a score has been calculated. Beth explains that this improves the post-observation conversation. “It is nice for self-reflection, because they don’t see what you see from the back of the room. I have found that it really makes my post-observations go easier and better, because I do not have to tell them what I wrote. They have already read it.”

Consistency

“We want consistency with our scoring,” Beth says. “Are some of our administrators scoring really high while others are scoring really low?” With Frontline Professional Growth, it is easy for Beth to track the scores that administrators provide and have any conversations that may be needed to ensure that different administrators are using the same criteria for evaluations.

Efficiency

Beth appreciates that Frontline makes the evaluation process run more smoothly. “It really saves us a lot of time. It does. It saves me time, and it saves our HR department time.”

Marshall Public Schools also uses Frontline to manage teacher absences and find substitute teachers, track employee time, manage the recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process, and keep employee records. When a new employee is hired, they are automatically provisioned in Frontline Central, which creates their profile across all of Frontline. “This year when I went in, I thought I had to enter 22 new staff members, but they were already in there. And [our HR department] said, ‘Yeah, it’s all done.’ That was awesome. I just had to assign them their evaluations.”

Beth summarizes: “We have used Frontline for many years, and Frontline really has streamlined everything for us. It is a one-stop shop. We use it for many different areas, but in particular for professional growth with not only our teacher observations, but our non-certified staff as well. We use it for custodial staff, our paras, anybody in the district is in Professional Growth. We can customize the rubrics that we use for each of those different jobs that we have in our district. It has been great for us. Frontline is great to work with. It’s awesome.”