Rethinking Teacher Evaluation For The Competency-Based Grading & Reporting System
During my first three years as a high school math teacher in Massachusetts back in the early 2000’s, I had grown accustomed to having an administrator in my classroom to observe me teach a math lesson. As a newteacher I was required by district policy to be observed at least three times per year. Both my administrator and I knew how the drill worked: We would pick a date and a class for me to be observed. We would meet in advance to talk about what I was planning to teach. During my observation I would make sure to use innovative teaching strategies or cooperative learning activities with my students. We would meet after the lesson to talk about what went well and where I could improve. The administrator would write up a narrative, I would sign it, and it would be filed away. The process would then repeat, and repeat, and repeat. Over my first three years I had nine observations. Once I reached my fourth year, I was considered tenured and thus my observations went down to one every other year. This means it would have taken me an additional eighteen years of teaching before I would have completed another nine observation cycles.
I don’t think my experience in this regard was unique as many school districts used and still use a model very similar to this one. As I reflect back on that experience as a new teacher, years later, I don’t think I ever