How My District Is Rethinking Evaluations to Help Teachers Grow and Improve

Superintendent’s view: By emphasizing teachers’ confidence in their abilities, we created an environment that fosters professional development.

When done right, yearly performance evaluations can be a powerful tool for professional growth. Reviews are a time when staff members can celebrate their achievements, identify and develop their key strengths, and receive objective insights to close skill gaps.

Most teacher evaluations, however, are just another check box on an administrator’s to-do list and a lesson in futility for those on both sides of the table. State reforms have tied success to high-stakes standardized test scores and other rigorous quantitative measures, which one study found have “no detectable effect on student achievement or attainment.”