In a recent training, teachers were asked to participate in a role play (I know, I am not a fan either, but it got the job done) in which one person was a representative from HR and the other two were interviewing to be teachers at the school. The HR rep had to present both teachers with the same question and then decide who they would hire and why, providing specific data on their responses.  The question from HR was “Are you a good teacher? Why?”

Pause. Try it yourself. Create a list. What makes you a good teacher?

The responses from my teachers ranged from somewhat humorous (I smell good) to the more common (I show interest in my students, I am organized and plan my classes responsibly, I have good classroom management, etc.) but none of the answers directly responded to the ultimate goal of teaching: LEARNING. Sure, for each of the attributes that the teachers provided one could make a connection to learning.  If I have a plan for class, it is more likely that my students will meet the learning objective that day. If I smell good, my students are more likely to be comfortable, thus more likely to be able to focus on the class and thus more likely to master the day’s learning objective. But this is not intended to be an exercise on the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Once teachers realized that they had not explicitly mentioned their impact on student learning, they were given another chance to “interview”. “What makes you a good teacher? In other words, what evidence do you have that you generate student learning in your classroom?”

What would you say? Do you have the evidence? This might be easier for teachers in high stakes environments, where ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) is very much present, but in the Colombian school where I work, this was not an easy task for the teachers.  I guess I knew this would be true going into the activity, because the point was to help them see the importance of connecting their actions and teaching decisions to student learning, but it still left me wondering, why is this not more obvious?

A few years ago, in my new role as director of professional development, I was sure I had the answer. We needed a framework for good teaching. This was the panacea to all problems related to teaching and learning. Once we all had a clear understanding of what constituted good teaching, we would be able to move in that direction. For three years now, department heads have been evaluating teachers against the framework for good teaching, I get the data and then I can use this data to make strategic decisions about teacher trainings and professional learning opportunities.

False.

First, having the framework did not guarantee that teachers and their supervisors were engaging in valuable conversations about teaching and learning. While this has improved somewhat, in the first year it only guaranteed that in May, I had 90+ frameworks with a box circled for each indicator. In many cases, I don’t even think the teachers saw these results!

Second, while a framework is more explicit than a checklist of items such as: Classroom management – yes or no? (the prior teacher evaluation system), there is still a lot of room for subjectivity and bias.  Even the most well-intentioned evaluators were not always consistent in their evaluations, or they were consistently evaluating all of their teachers as perfect or terrible. This was not particularly helpful for make strategic decisions about professional learning goals for the coming school year.

Finally, in the first year there was no evidence on teacher growth and student growth wasn’t even on the table. When the second round of teacher evaluations was complete there might have been some evidence that a teacher improved if they moved from “developing” to “developed”, but evaluators were also beginning to come to new understandings of what each indicator of the framework was saying, so the way they evaluated from one year to the next changed.

Little to no reflection and no evidence of student learning – teachers were becoming familiar, maybe, with the framework for good teaching but without effective reflecting conversations on teaching and learning, the connection was not being made between good teaching and student learning. Teachers were more clear on what they should do when they are observed in order for a specific box to be circled, but they were not engaging in the critical work of analyzing student achievement and developing a plan of action for improving these results.

So revert back to the role play. Yes, teachers could identify actions that research has shown support student learning but they were not talking about student learning as the ultimate goal.

A framework for good teaching, whether it be Danielson, Marzano, Stronge, Marshall or some other home brew, when offered as a guide for how to improve student learning is a great thing. It is a starting point for a reflection.  It provides a third point in a coaching conversation about an individual’s teaching, offering a common language and a shared understanding. As an evaluation tool, in my experience, however, it causes debate far more than reflection. Teachers argue why they should be at one level and not another, thinking more about their score and less about their student’s success.

These frameworks are useful when they are used to promote discussion, spark ideas and help teachers figure out how to improve student performance. So now I am thinking about how to make this happen in my school.

• Is teacher evaluation truly necessary?
• If the real goal is continuous reflection and improvement in teaching in order to improve learning, what activities or supports will better promote this?
• Where is the balance (time, resources, money, manpower, etc.) between helping an individual teacher grow and helping an entire team of teachers to grow?
• How do you establish goals that reach all teachers?