Post written by Elle Allison, cofounder and president of Wisdom Out in Danville, Calif. Wisdom Out is a leadership and organizational development company that helps people sustain transformational change and bring their best initiatives to deep implementation. Connect with Allison by e-mail at elle@wisdomout.com. This post was originally featured in ASCD Express.
As many states prepare to launch new educator evaluation systems and amidst ongoing controversy about how to make them fair and meaningful, teachers and administrators alike would do well to ask these questions: What is it about the current culture in which we are introducing these new instruments that will imperil their effectiveness and prevent them from helping teachers and students? How can we engineer cultures for effective teacher evaluation?
Historical Assumptions
In a recent performance-improvement coaching workshop held at the Rhode Island Center for School Leadership, administrators and teacher leaders from school districts throughout the state explored these questions. We began by surfacing the tacit assumptions that seem to operate when teachers receive an "unsatisfactory" or "in need of improvement" rating on their evaluations. The candid list that emerged (not the personal views of the participants!) included the following notions:
- Teachers in need of improvement are not good teachers.
- Teachers in need of improvement do not know
