Idaho works on statewide teacher evaluations
Law stipulates yearly reviews, but process lacks consistency
By JESSIE L. BONNER
Associated Press
Monday, July 28, 2008 10:15 AM PDT
BOISE — When Mikki Nuchols was first evaluated as a middle school teacher in Idaho, she expected to be graded on how well she taught students in her eighth grade language arts class.
Instead, her first report card from administrators criticized the lack of posters on her classroom walls.
‘’It was awful,’’ Nuchols said. ‘’It was the only comment they could come up with.’’
Nuchols teaches at Rocky Mountain Middle School in Idaho Falls and the Bonneville School District has since adopted an improved, computerized evaluation for teachers that includes specific measurements on how well they manage classrooms, deliver instruction and interact with students.
But the poor system Nuchols was graded by a decade ago is indicative of what some Idaho teachers still experience and a problem state lawmakers are spending $50,000 to fix.
Idaho requires school districts and charter schools to evaluate teachers yearly, but the process lacks consistency and varies among schools and districts, according to the state Department of Education.
Nuchols was among the collection of educators the agency chose to help develop new statewide standards for grading teacher performance. The task force, created by the state Department of Education with money from Idaho lawmakers, has a December deadline to draft a final proposal.
But as Idaho plans to ditch its policy of letting school districts determine how to grade teachers, educators on the task force are questioning how much a new system will cost to put in place and whether administrators will have the time to oversee it.
“The money part of this is going to be a huge issue,’’ said Dan Sakota, a southern Idaho teacher with the Madison County School District who met with other members of the task force in Boise earlier this month. Sakota was primarily concerned with recommendations to incorporate peer reviews into the evaluations, which essentially allow teachers to review their colleagues. But schools, Sakota said, would have to pay staff to monitor classes left unattended during these evaluations. The state Department of Education is building a network of veteran teachers, or mentors, to perform the peer evaluations, said Nick Smith, a Department of Education deputy superintendent. The new system may come with a slightly higher price tag for school districts, but Smith anticipates the costs won’t be significant. The agency has partnered with New Jersey educational consultant Charlotte Danielson, who has helped develop teacher performance evaluations at school districts throughout the country. But in many ways, Idaho is breaking new ground on a national scale in its efforts to build performance model that can be embraced statewide. While some states like Connecticut have embraced rigorous criteria for grading teachers, most states have yet to latch on to the idea of adopting uniform teaching evaluations, according to the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan group based in Denver that specializes in education policy.
The Tennessee State Board of Education adopted a statewide framework for teaching evaluations in 1997, said Kathy Christie, the commission’s chief of staff.
‘’If there’s more, other than Tennessee, they are few and far between,’’ Christie said.
Tennessee State Board of Education director Gary Nixon coordinated teaching evaluations as a high school principal from 2000 to 2004. Under the Tennessee system, new teachers must have three yearly assessments, Nixon said.
The evaluations proved time-consuming in his district, which hired about a dozen new teachers every year, he said.
‘’I think they’re wise to be concerned about time,’’ Nixon said of Idaho’s plans. ‘’The process can become very cumbersome.’’
Standardizing teacher evaluations in Tennessee didn’t create a financial burden for school districts because administrators performed them as part of their regular duties, Nixon said, but peer evaluations can require more staffing.
A recent draft of the Idaho evaluation plan suggests new teachers, during their first three years, observe another teacher for at least one hour each semester. It also recommends that new teachers be observed six times during the school year, with at least three of those observations lasting an hour.
