State wants standard teacher evaluations

Recommended standards for evaluating Iowa's kindergarten-through-grade-12 teachers would spell out what types of student learning outcomes should be used and provide a spectrum of scores for teachers beyond simply meets/doesn't meet expectations.

The Council on Educator Development, created by the Iowa Legislature in 2013, released six preliminary recommendations in October for state teacher and principal job reviews. 'One of the reasons this task force came together was to look at the use of student achievement data as a part of teacher evaluation,' said Brad Buck, Cedar Rapids superintendent and council member. 'For ELL (English-language-learner) teachers, we may look at how well their students are learning English. For the welding teacher, maybe it's how many students are earning their welding certification.'

Buck, who was Iowa Department of Education director from 2013 to 2015, knows districts will want to maintain control over what specific student measures are required for evaluating teachers.

'My preference is for local control,' he said.

Iowa has eight teaching standards, amended in 2010, that require teachers to provide, at least every third year, evidence of student learning and analyze student growth 'based on teacher-created tests and authentic measures as well as any standardized and districtwide tests.'

Many Iowa school districts already include measures of student achievement in their teacher evaluations, said Jon Sheldahl, chief administrator of the Great Prairie Area Education Agency in southeast Iowa. Others do not.

'This could be a shift for some districts,' he said.

The Council's preliminary recommendations require districts to use a learning progression tool for teacher evaluations — so instead of just meeting or not meeting expectations, teachers can strive for higher achievement levels, Buck said.

Tammy Wawro, president of the Iowa State Education Association, Iowa's teacher's union, likes the addition of the progressive evaluation. But she said it will add time to the job review process, already a rush for time-crunched principals.

'There's not time to have these quality conversations that need to happen,' she said.

The Council also recommends the state formally certify evaluators — who include principals, superintendents or human-resources employees — to make sure teacher evaluations follow state standards.

Wawro sees this as an important step because evaluations can differ dramatically, even among schools in the same district. Ways to improve this might be require more continuing education for evaluators or producing a video to shows evaluators the proper steps of a job review.

'We need to make sure my evaluation process is the same (as that of other educators), and the conversation needs to be accurate,' she said.

More than 2,200 Iowa teachers and 623 administrators provided feedback to the preliminary recommendations, Sheldahl said. The group will review feedback and produce final recommendations in November.

If the Legislature approves the recommendations in 2017, new standards could go into effect as soon as the 2017-2018 school year, Buck said.