Transforming HISD: Driving student achievement by placing a highly effective teacher in every classroom
February 10, 2010
| RESOURCES |
| Team HISD |
One of the best parts of my job is getting to spend time in our schools. The talent and dedication of the teachers I meet and the amazing work they do with their students never fail to inspire me. It's a good reminder that teachers truly are our most precious resource, because more than anything or anyone else, they have the power to put students on track for academic success.
And let's face it: too many of our students have fallen off that track. Despite HISD's accomplishments in recent years, many students—especially poor and minority students—are leaving school without the skills they need to become successful adults.
I'm convinced we can change that by focusing all our energy on giving every single student great teachers. We need to do everything we can to put a great teacher in every classroom and give our teachers the feedback and support they need to do their best work.
That's exactly what we're going to do over the coming months and years.
- At its meeting in January 2010, the Board of Education voted unanimously to take an important first step by approving a plan to improve teacher evaluations starting next year. We want to make sure evaluations give teachers an honest assessment of how much they're helping their students learn—the kind of feedback that will actually help them improve. Standardized test scores are one important indicator of how much students are learning, so they will be one of many different components in the evaluation.
- Giving teachers better feedback is just the beginning. We need to build on our current efforts to reward and learn from our best teachers, such as the ASPIRE performance pay program. We need to give teachers access to mentoring and professional development customized to meet their individual needs.
- And as difficult as it may be, we need to stop turning a blind eye to the ineffective teaching that happens in a relatively small number of our classrooms. The number of ineffective teachers is relatively small, but the impact of these teachers on our children is large. That's why I'm asking the Board of Education to approve a policy during its meeting February that would require principals to use all the information available to them—includingvalue-added test scores—when making decisions about renewing a teacher's contract. A teacher might impact hundreds or even thousands of students' lives over the course of a contract, so we need to treat these decisions with the seriousness they demand.
As I've said before, we will never remove a teacher from the classroom solely on the basis of test scores. But if those scores show that a teacher is actually dragging students backwards academically year after year, I expect principals to take this information very seriously. We simply can't allow teachers who consistently struggle—despite our best efforts to support them—to continue teaching. And we can't afford to wait to use all the information that is available to us. The stakes are too high for our students.
I'll be relying on feedback and ideas from every member of Team HISD in the coming months as we take a fresh look at how we can put a great teacher in every classroom. Please take the time to give me your feedback on these issues now by using the comments tool below
You will be hearing more from me over the coming weeks and months about these issues. Working together, we can help HISD achieve the transformation that our students deserve, and help make our schools a model for other cities across the country.
– Terry B. Grier, Ed.D., Superintendent of Schools
Please note, questions included in comments will not be responded to individually. All comments are welcome and are taken into consideration by those working closely with the issues. Also, comments that are off topic or that contain offensive language or are considered offensive, will be removed.