The Vashon Island School District is grappling with how it will implement a new, more in-depth teacher evaluation system it is required to begin this year.
Starting this August, the Vashon School District, along with all other districts in the state, must start a new teacher evaluation system designed by the state and approved by the Legislature in 2010 as part of a larger education reform effort.
Under the new evaluation system, principals will be required to perform extensive evaluations, often called long-form evaluations, of each teacher once every four years. Currently only new teachers or teachers on probation are given long-form evaluations.
District officials say the thorough evaluations may be helpful to teachers but will be time-consuming for principals, requiring long hours of observation, evaluation and in-person meetings for each staff member.
Superintendent Michael Soltman said the district was considering adding assistant principals at Chautauqa Elementary and McMurray Middle School to help bear the new load. There is already an assistant principal at the high school.
“We’ll have to take a look at restoring some assistant principal time to allow principals to spend more time in the classrooms,” he said.
The state has also identified eight criteria on which each teacher should be evaluated. While standards for good teaching could be helpful, officials are worried the state’s criteria are vague, particular one focused on demonstrated student learning.
While the idea of evaluating teachers based on student scores or grades is controversial, the new state requirement is vague, officials say, meaning each school can determine how to evaluate student growth.
“There’s no definition of what the measure should be,” Soltman said. “It’s led to a tremendous amount of confusion across the state.”
Roxanne Lyons, the district’s director of instructional services, said that although some parts of the new evaluation model are still unclear, she hopes in the end it will be a helpful tool. Some schools, she said, have suggested they may use the new evaluations punitively to weed out bad teachers, but the Vashon School District is planning to use them as a tool to aid in professional growth.
“We have a team that’s working on refining our system to make it as beneficial as possible,” she said. “All of us, no matter where our expertise lies, have some area where we can grow.”
Soltman said he, too, thought the evaluation could be a tool for growth but was frustrated by some of the state’s unclear expectations. He also said the new system will cost the district money to implement it, while the current teacher evaluation model has proven effective.
“I think we’re headed toward getting really good results out of what we’re doing anyway. This adds a level of complexity that’s costly and unnecessary,” he said.
