District Administration - September 2010 - (Page 14)

B B r e e f nn g s r i i fi i gs NewsUpdate Seeking Tangible Results for Effective Teaching With one year under its belt, hillsborough County (Fla.) Public schools embarks on its second school year of collecting data to evaluate teacher effectiveness. The two-year project, currently underway in five other districts nationwide, began in fall 2009 with a Measures of effective teaching (Met) grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The data collection strategies include digital video recording, student assessments, student surveys, and teacher surveys. This data—combined with figures from other districts—will ultimately be used to generate a more effective model for measuring teacher effectiveness. The Met project works in conjunction with the empowering effective teaching (eet) grant at hillsborough. The data collected through the Met project will be used to inform the eet initiative to develop a more comprehensive evaluation system, improve professional development and to focus on the recruitment and retention of effective teachers. hillsborough’s new evaluation system, which will begin this fall, is based on 30 percent principal evaluations, 30 percent expert teacher or peer evaluations, and 40 percent student achievement. Through this data, says tracye Brown, director of communications and project management with the eet program at the hillsborough district, researchers can pinpoint the practices and characteristics of an effective teacher. The current political climate has put a focus on teacher evaluations and is driving much of the change being seen, says adriane dorrington, senior policy analyst with the teacher Quality department at the national education association. although all teachers in hillsborough will be evaluated on this new system, they will have the option of participating in a new compensation model in 2013 after three years of student achievement data has been collected to determine if it would be most advantageous to them. “researchers will be able to look at this data to define Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation New teacher evaluation techniques, such as digital video recording, have been implemented in Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Schools as part of a national study. effective teaching and provide educators and policymakers with information as to how they can be used to develop models for evaluating and rewarding teachers,” says Faychone durant, Met project director at hillsborough. “There will never be a perfect model,” says dorrington, “but we have to keep working toward high aspirations.” The Stereotype Trap StereotypeS Are hArmful. however, A new StuDy from researchers at Indiana university, entitled “Stereotype threat prevents perceptual learning,” is taking this simple message to the next level: negative stereotypes hinder learning in the present and could make it impossible in the future. “Stereotypes about women’s math ability can affect their ability to learn,” says robert J. rydell, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Iu and a leading member of the research team. “It’s important to think about ways in which the environment in their schools tends to reinforce or make active those stereotypes.” According to rydell, it’s important to start thinking about this as early as first or second grade, because once these women reach high school and college, it may be too late. “Both 14 September 2010 targets of the stereotypes, as well as those who aren’t targets, don’t encode important information,” says rydell. It seems to be a safe guess that for disciplines like math and science, where “those skills are cumulative and [the students] build on those skills, there could be long-term effects.” negative stereotypes can pertain to just about anything. while rydell’s research focuses primarily on women and math, negative stereotypes ranging from women drivers to women golfers impact our culture and society. And they don’t necessarily have to be against women. to cultivate these stereotypes, all that’s necessary is “a situation where people can confirm a negative stereotype about their group.” So what steps must be taken to foster a learning environment that is stereotype-free? “one thing that can be done is to be mindful of the fact that the way students behave, the way students interact, may bring up these stereotypes and impactstudents in ways that are unintended,” rydell suggests. “Stereotype threat prevents perceptual learning” was published on July 26, 2010, in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. —Eric A. Clayton District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2010

District Administration - September 2010
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Inside the Law
Conversations
District Profile
Administrator Profile
A Salary Recession for School Administrators?
Working Hard in the Big Easy
School Safety Gets the Ax
Keeping Schools Safe during Challenging times
Google and Microsoft Go to School
A Bull Market for Financial Literacy
Problem/ Solution
Tech Disruptions
Student Counsel
Product Focus
New Products
Superintendent’s Insights

District Administration - September 2010