Education Week - November 14, 2018 - 6

Teacher Evaluations Stretch Principals' Expertise, Time
By Denisa R. Superville
The pitched battles that once
waged over more-rigorous teacher
evaluations have long since quieted,
but there's a lasting legacy of those
systems: They have fundamentally
changed the principal's job.
They have increased principals'
attention to instruction and what's
happening in classrooms. But at the
same time, they have created monumental time-management challenges for principals that could lead
to turnover and burnout.
That's according to a new paper
published online last month in
the Elementary School Journal, in
which researchers from North Carolina State University, the University
of Michigan, and Vanderbilt University examined how multiple-measure teacher evaluations adopted as
a result of the Obama administration's Race To The Top competitive
grant program-and still largely in
place in many states-have redefined the principal's role.
Based on interviews with principals in six urban districts that
began using new teacher-evaluation
systems, the researchers found that
principals were spending more time
in classrooms and had better direction on what evidence to look for
when they were there.
Evidence of good teaching was
standardized across those districts,
and the principals said they were
getting more concrete and "objective"
data from the new systems that they
could use to have meaningful conversations with teachers about their
performance, what they needed to do
to improve, and even to make decisions about retaining or firing teachers, according to the paper.
But the systems were also timeconsuming, the researchers wrote.
While evaluation systems varied across states, some required
principals to have pre-conference
meetings with teachers, conduct
multiple observations annually,
script entire lessons they observed,
compare what they heard and saw
with an evidence-based rubric,
enter data into a district database,
and again meet with teachers to
review the observations. Other factors included student surveys and
student test scores.
Principals told researchers that
some of the coding required in each
evaluation was so intense that they
were spending hours after work and
on weekends doing so. One principal
estimated she was spending three
hours to complete a single teacher's
evaluation, according to the paper.
Some said they felt they were less
visible in their buildings as a result
of the time required to complete the
evaluations. And others feared the
new systems were affecting their relationships with teachers who may
be hesitant to approach them with
a problem out of concern that doing
so could count against them in the
evaluation process.
Still, many principals interviewed
by the researchers found the observation-based evaluation systems to
be positive, said Jason Grissom, an
associate professor of public policy

and education at Vanderbilt University, and one of the paper's authors.
"They had better information
than they had before, they knew
their schools better, at least in the
sense of knowing more about the
instructional capacity of people in
their building and being able to articulate specific strengths or areas
of challenges for individual teachers and give feedback on that basis ,
and also connect them to supports,"
Grissom said.
But even for the majority of principals who said the more-intensive
evaluations were good for their
schools, managing the time the evaluations take to complete is a major
challenge. Overnight, Grissom said,
job expectations changed for principals, without additional support.
"The expectations for doing all of
this new work happened very quickly,
and districts didn't necessarily think
what can we do to help make space
for principals? What can we take off
their plate?" he said. "I think that
was a big frustration for a lot of principals."
The time constraints on principals is not exactly a new concern.
In a 2013 survey, the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the National Association of
Secondary School Principals found
that completing a single, "substantive" teacher evaluation can take
11-15 hours of a principal's time
over a school year.
The associations have called for
additional and better training for
principals and more time for them
to have coaching sessions with
teachers. They say states and districts should trust principals' professional judgment and reduce the
number of observations for teachers
who demonstrate effectiveness.
Research "reminds us that
schools get the best return when
principals allocate their time to
priorities where we know their attention has the greatest impact,"
JoAnn Bartoletti, the executive director of the National Association of
Secondary School Principals, said in
a statement. "That isn't lining the
football field or shuffling compliance
paperwork. The priority is helping
teachers become better."

poverty district, she prioritizes
face-to-face time with parents and
students. As a result, she is up as
late as 11 p.m. at least three nights
a week answering emails and finishing paperwork related to evaluations, she said.
"There are just so many needs
with the kids in the daytime that
the paperwork has to get done at
night," she said.
Grissom and colleagues set out in
2012-13 to look at how principals
were using the massive amounts of
data they were getting from these
new teacher-evaluation systems in
six districts.
In the course of interviewing principals, "it became evident pretty
quickly that implementing the systems was causing a fundamental
shift in how they were doing the
work," he said. The researchers did
not gather feedback from teachers

or students, something they said
would be helpful in future studies.
The findings ring true for Eric
Cardwell, the president of the National Association of Elementary
School Principals, who is on a year's
leave from his job as principal of
Besser Elementary School in Alpena, Mich.
Cardwell, a veteran school leader,
said the evaluation system in place
before the district adopted the Charlotte Danielson teaching-evaluation
tool about six years ago, was too lax.
"There was very little meaningful
feedback that was provided to teachers," he said. "It was more just completing a form."
The new framework provides indepth information and valuable feedback for both principal and teachers,
and he appreciates the uninterrupted
discussions with teachers during the
self-evaluation portion.

THE TIME-INTENSIVE WORK
OF EVALUATING TEACHERS
Lisa Hilberg, the principal of Wilson Elementary School in Alpena, Mich., must
evaluate her staff of 15 teachers annually, unless they have been rated highly
effective for three straight years. The state requires principals to hold a preconference meeting with teachers, conduct two observations annually for most
teachers, document what they see and hear during the observations as measured
against a rubric, and conduct a post-conference discussion with teachers after each
observation. Student growth is also included in the evaluations.
Here's a snapshot of how each evaluation breaks down for Principal Hilberg:

6. Student growth:
Because student growth
is included in teacher
evaluations, Hilberg has
to rate the teacher's
proposed student
learning objectives
against the rubric;
document the feedback
from the discussion with
the teacher; and provide
a score and reflection at
the end of the year.

1. Self-review:
Prepare for a
pre-evaluation
conference with
the teacher.
Hilberg reads
each teacher's
submissions about
their strengths,
where they need
to focus attention,
and what supports
they may need.

2. Preconference:
Meet with the
teacher for a
pre-evaluation
conference.

Downsides of Evaluation
Lisa Hilberg, the principal of Wilson Elementary School in Alpena,
Mich., has mixed feelings about the
teacher evaluations she must do.
She wants to be trusted to use the
rubric-a kind of score card of skills
and attributes that teachers must
demonstrate-to have conversations
with teachers as needed and not be
required to document everything
during observation sessions.
"It gives us an excellent focus for
the conversation," she said about
the rubric. "I think it's effective that
way. The downside is all of the paperwork that goes with it."
The documentation is time-consuming and requires her to write
down what she already knows, she
said. And it's forced her to use time
during the school day differently.
As a principal in a rural, high-

6 | EDUCATION WEEK | November 14, 2018 | www.edweek.org

5. Feedback: Postevaluation conference
with teacher to review
the observation and
next steps. By law,
the feedback must be
provided within 30 days
of the observation.

Note: All times are estimates.

4. Documentation:
Drawing from
copious notes,
Hilberg records
what she's seen
and heard and
compares them
with the rubric.

3. Observation: Hilberg
sits through a lesson
and documents what she
sees and hears, including
student interactions,
teacher prompts, and the
transition from one class
to another. Unscheduled
observations are shorter,
and observations are
done twice a year.

"The bulk of the teachers I have
worked with are their own worst
critics, and they all want to improve," he said. "The rubric allows
that to occur."

Time Is a 'Boogeyman'
But the amount of time he spent
on the evaluations was a strain.
He estimates that he spent 270
hours on evaluation in the 2016-17
school year, reviewing everyone but
the custodian in his building. And
he said he was putting in six and
seven hours on Sundays, in addition to working extended weekdays
to complete evaluations, especially
to input data.
"Time has always been any educator's boogeyman-it's always chasing them," Cardwell said. "Although
there have been some real positives
that have come from the teacher
evaluation [reforms], that boogeyman has gotten much larger."
He worries about burnout, and
suggests that states and districts
allow principals to rotate evaluations for teachers who are rated
effective or highly effective. That
would free up principals to work
with struggling or brand new
teachers. Better technology platforms for data entry would also
cut down on time, he said. Some
districts have also added a staff
person to conduct the evaluation,
he said.
For John George, the principal
at Dexter McCarty Middle School
in the Gresham-Barlow district
near Portland, Ore., evaluations
have been a sea change. But because the process was so cumbersome and took such a long time,
principals were not using the data
as intended: to have substantive
conversations with teachers about
instruction and collaborate on improvement.
"The value that we hoped for as a
whole wasn't there for everybody,"
he said. He likes the direction his
district is moving now with a pilot
program to allow teacher-led walkthroughs be part of the evaluation
process.
"I like the structure of teachers
going into other teachers' classrooms to see practice because it's a
less threatening than having an administrator come in and watch you,"
he said.
George also supports the idea
of districts hiring teams to run a
building or having one staffer dedicated to conducting evaluations.
And one way he's tried to keep good
relationships with teachers is to invite them to give feedback on his
job performance.
"It's creating different channels
for that communication to happen,"
he said. "It's like 'if you got to say
something, come and tell me because I can't learn and I can't improve unless I get feedback, too.' "
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Education Week - November 14, 2018

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