Q&A with Deborah Gist: Involving teachers in evaluation policy
Deborah Gist (Photo by Frank Curran)
Deborah Gist, Rhode Island’s Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, has implemented some major reforms since assuming her role in 2009. She has raised the score required to pass teacher-certification tests and allowed a superintendent to fire all of the teachers at a school that was resisting reforms. Perhaps most notably, she has overseen the implementation of a new teacher-evaluation system. The Hechinger Reportrecently interviewed Gist about her state’s new approach to evaluating teachers.
Since changing your teacher-evaluation process in 2009 to include students’ standardized test-scores and