DSEA Action!

Evaluation update How were teachers rated last year? Department of Education releases report on first year of DPASII-Revised Go to www.doe.k12.de. us/news/2013/1106. shtml for a summary and a link to the full report ere's what DSEA President Jenner said to the press about the report's findings and the state of the educator evaluation system, DPASII-Revised: This is the first year of implementation of a system that doesn't have all of its student assessments in place yet. The system is still in transition. In addition, we know that one year of data does not allow you to draw conclusions or establish trend lines. We know that this data (DPAS IIR and Component 5 data for 20122013) show that only 1% of the nearly 5,100 teachers who received summative ratings were ineffective. (Approximately 3,400 teachers are not included in this data since not all teachers receive summative evaluations every year.) What we will all need to do is continue to monitor and refine DPASIIR so that its results are valid and reliable, holding teachers accountable for those things that are within their control. H " Specifically, the results show us what we need to do going forward • Continue to monitor and refine DPAS II-R so that it holds teachers accountable for those things that are within their control. Because that's what teachers want: to be held accountable for what they can control while continuing to learn and grow – and the evaluation system is designed to do that: help teachers identify areas where they can improve. • Continue to refine and improve the assessments used to determine achievement of student growth goals for Measure A and especially Measure B. • Continue to refine and improve Measure C growth goals to make sure that they are appropriate and reflect the work of Group 3 educators and are not meaningless data points - for instance, number of students enrolled in AP courses. • Provide continual, quality training on the DPAS II-R system to educators and administrators to make sure that they are operating from the same pool of knowledge and kept current on the system and its requirements. • Calibrate the performance of evaluators to ensure that they are implementing the system with fidelity to its design, and that all evaluators see and measure classroom performance in the same way . • Continue to work together to develop and provide on-going, outstanding professional development that is differentiated, timely and relevant. • Continue to work towards Secretary Murphy's goals of developing an evaluation system that is fair, transparent, easy to understand and respectful of the profession. • Finally, we need to look to improve the system further so that it does not treat all educators the same, regardless of their length of service and past performance record. A quality evaluation system would focus the majority of its resources on two groups of educators – those who are new to the profession and deserve continual feedback to ensure their growth, and those who demonstrate identified performance problems that need to be remediated to ensure that their performance meets acceptable professional standards. " Let's determine how to create an evaluation system that works resident Frederika Jenner has asked Dom Zaffora, a middle school Social Studies teacher at Phillis Wheatley Middle School in Woodbridge and DSEA treasurer, to chair a new Task Force that she is currently appointing. She is charging the new Task Force with researching, discussing, evaluating and making recommendations about where they believe teacher and specialist evaluation should go. "We've been at DPAS now for six years," Jenner says. "We've gone from DPAS II to DPAS II-Revised, which became part of our Race to P www.dsea.org the Top application. It's time for us to create a system that works." Should the Danielson rubrics for K-3 be revised? The evaluation rubrics from Danielson's Framework for Teaching are currently validated for Grade 4 and above. A number of states using the Danielson framework are now working to create preK to grade 3 adaptations to meet the needs of educators teaching at that level. Other states are also considering moving to Danielson's 2013 version of the Framework which now @dseafan reflects the shift to the Common Core. Both of these topics will be part of discussions held with the DOE DPAS II Review Group in the upcoming months. DSEA has three representatives on that group. DSEA's "Making it CCLEAR" cadre is taking shape CCLEAR stands for Common Core Leaders Educating and Advocating for Reform. Twenty members have volunteered to take the lead in training their colleagues and be a resource for members and DSEA leadership regarding implementation of the Common Core standards. Using a grant from NEA, DSEA created this program to offer teacher leaders multiple opportunities for networking and training as well as advocating for effective implementation, support and financing that is necessary for Common Core success. All of DSEA's CCLEAR participants are scheduled to take Kagan Training (principles for effective, dynamic teaching) in early December, sponsored by DSEA. Nov./Dec. 2013 DSEA ACTION! 9

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