Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Policies Under Race to the Top PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Policies Under Race to the Top PDF full book. Access full book title Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Policies Under Race to the Top by Rachael Elisabeth Gabriel. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Rachael Elisabeth Gabriel Publisher: ISBN: Category : Effective teaching Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
Teacher effectiveness has been a rallying cry for education reform over the last decade. The push for policies that aim to increase teacher effectiveness, fire ineffective teachers and recruit or retain effective teachers unite educational stakeholders; yet, specific, operational definitions of effectiveness remain elusive and divisive. It is easy to say that teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in student achievement, but difficult to say what it means to be effective. In this study I take up a Critical Discursive Psychology (Wetherell, 1998) approach to the text of the current Framework for Teacher Evaluation and Professional Growth in Tennessee and the talk of the Teacher Evaluation Advisory Committee (TEAC)- a 15-member committee appointed to craft a new evaluation policy with Race To The Top funds under the First To the Top Act. My findings suggest that there are polarized interpretative repertoires available for talking and making sense of effectiveness in teaching. These ways of talking about teaching create conflicts and dilemmas within conversations that are managed in patterned ways. Within the talk of the TEAC, patterns in the way dilemmas are managed within conversations include evading and dividing decisions points in ways that support a self-extending system of education reform. My findings suggest that teacher effectiveness is constantly being constructed within conversations, rather than being a single idea that can be singularly and authoritatively defined and handed down. As such I argue that teacher effectiveness policies must purposefully engage individuals at all levels of policy and practice in ongoing conversations about effectiveness in teaching and the evaluation of teaching in order to mediate the unintended consequences of tools for evaluation, and to develop a shared vision of excellence for collaborative progress.
Author: Rachael Elisabeth Gabriel Publisher: ISBN: Category : Effective teaching Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
Teacher effectiveness has been a rallying cry for education reform over the last decade. The push for policies that aim to increase teacher effectiveness, fire ineffective teachers and recruit or retain effective teachers unite educational stakeholders; yet, specific, operational definitions of effectiveness remain elusive and divisive. It is easy to say that teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in student achievement, but difficult to say what it means to be effective. In this study I take up a Critical Discursive Psychology (Wetherell, 1998) approach to the text of the current Framework for Teacher Evaluation and Professional Growth in Tennessee and the talk of the Teacher Evaluation Advisory Committee (TEAC)- a 15-member committee appointed to craft a new evaluation policy with Race To The Top funds under the First To the Top Act. My findings suggest that there are polarized interpretative repertoires available for talking and making sense of effectiveness in teaching. These ways of talking about teaching create conflicts and dilemmas within conversations that are managed in patterned ways. Within the talk of the TEAC, patterns in the way dilemmas are managed within conversations include evading and dividing decisions points in ways that support a self-extending system of education reform. My findings suggest that teacher effectiveness is constantly being constructed within conversations, rather than being a single idea that can be singularly and authoritatively defined and handed down. As such I argue that teacher effectiveness policies must purposefully engage individuals at all levels of policy and practice in ongoing conversations about effectiveness in teaching and the evaluation of teaching in order to mediate the unintended consequences of tools for evaluation, and to develop a shared vision of excellence for collaborative progress.
Author: Abigail Leigh Braddock Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand how policy decisions concerning teacher effectiveness measures are made and have since evolved in Tennessee since the inception of the Race to the Top funding grant proposal. The push for education reform at the federal level has provided Tennessee with the funding to make major changes in the way teachers are evaluated and compensated under the guise of raising student achievement. First, at a micro level, the researcher explored the policy development process through semi-structured interviews of key policymakers and superintendents. The researcher utilized McDonnell’s policy feedback framework to determine how feedback shaped the policy implementation process. Second, at a macro level, the researcher explored the contextual flow of political streams evolution of teacher effectiveness measures after Tennessee received Race to the Top funding. Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources, utilizing Kingdon’s policy streams, the researcher examined the context and the policy actors involved in the shaping of each policy, with the idea that minute variations in initial inputs lead to sizeable difference in outcomes, as the decision agendas which stemmed out of each “policy window” had a large impact upon Tennessee’s classrooms. The findings and discussion explored the successes and challenges of implementing the teacher evaluation measures in Tennessee, how feedback helped legislators refine the policies as they were implemented, and the education reform legislation that spiraled out of measuring the effectiveness of teachers.
Author: Erroll Quinn Headen Publisher: ISBN: Category : Electronic dissertations Languages : en Pages : 181
Book Description
Educational accountability has moved to the forefront of the educational reform movement. There is a call to have every student taught by a highly effective teacher at a highly effective school. How do we get there? As states compete for funding under the Race to the Top initiative (RTTT), new teacher evaluation policies have become one of the leading tools to assess teacher effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to examine select state teacher evaluation policies and the literature on teacher evaluation for the larger purpose of informing teacher evaluation policies and practices in Alabama. The goal is to make Alabama education policymakers and leaders aware of the current trends in teacher evaluation and an analysis of their successes and failures. The study begins with educational accountability in the United States, starting with the signing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and follows the different acts, policies, initiatives, and competitions ending with RTTT. The second stage looks at the literature on educational reforms and the causal assumptions behind these reforms. The research was based on a comparative policy analysis using qualitative methods. The study includes a comparative data matrix, which includes anchors and subanchors from five states: Georgia, Tennessee, New York, Illinois, and Alabama. The move toward new teacher evaluation policies and models has been eminently contested and debated by all stakeholders. Several implications for states and teachers emerged from this study, including the following: (a) creating new teacher evaluation policies using multiple measures, (b) using student data as a percentage of a teacher's final evaluation rating, and (c) the need for teachers to have a voice in the development of the new teacher evaluation policies.
Author: Jorge Manzi Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303113639X Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 358
Book Description
This book presents some of the leading technical, professional, and political challenges associated with the development and implementation of teacher evaluation systems, along with characterizing some of these systems in different countries around the world. The book promotes a broader comprehension of the complexities associated with this kind of initiatives, which have gained relevance in the last two decades, especially in the context of policies aimed at improving the quality of education. The first section of the book includes conceptual chapters that will detail some of the central debates around teacher evaluation, such as a) performance evaluation versus teaching effectiveness; b) tensions between formative and summative uses of evaluation; c) relationship between evaluation and teacher professionalization; and d) political tensions around teacher evaluation. In the second section, the book addresses specific examples of national or state-wide initiatives in the field of teacher evaluation. For this section, the authors have invited contributions that reflect experiences in North America, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and Latin America. In each chapter, a teacher evaluation system is presented, including their main results and validity evidence, as well as the main challenges associated with its design and implementation. This wide-ranging presentation of teacher evaluation systems around the world is a valuable reference to understand the diverse challenges for the implementation of teacher evaluation programs. The presence of conceptual chapters with others that illustrate how teacher evaluation has been implemented in different contexts gives the reader a comprehensive view of the complex nature of teacher evaluation, considering their technical and political underpinnings. It is a valuable source for anyone interested in the design, improvement, and implementation of teacher evaluation systems.
Author: Alyson Leah Lavigne Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135093253 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 204
Book Description
Following the recent major school reform of Race to the Top, schools, teachers, and students are increasingly evaluated through high-stakes achievement test scores. In six concise chapters, Teacher and Student Evaluation explores the historical rise and modern landscape of accountability in American education, and the current models of teacher evaluation. The authors provide realistic and useful suggestions for responding to current accountability demands. The authors explore the methodological concerns and policy implications of using value-added and observational measures to make high-stakes decisions. After reaching the conclusion that these contemporary evaluation practices are flawed, Alyson Lavigne and Thomas Good offer possible solutions that inform current and future teacher evaluation. This book is a valuable resource for students of educational assessment as well as policy makers, administrators, and teachers who are currently building accountability plans. The book is written in an accessible but authoritative fashion that practitioners, policymakers, and scholars will find useful.
Author: Maida Alice Finch Publisher: ISBN: Category : Education and state Languages : en Pages : 213
Book Description
Race to the Top is a new policy lever in the struggle for authority in educational governance among various levels of government, and it provides an opportunity to examine the state-level policymaking context. Tennessee passed comprehensive education reform legislation in an effort to win the competition. This effort was successful: the Volunteer State was one of two winning states in the first round. I conducted a two-part case study of the events surrounding the state's application and the development of an educator evaluation policy as required by the legislation. Interviews with key actors in the policymaking process reveal that the legislation was not an isolated attempt to improve education, but part of a series of steps led by the governor. His proactive leadership and inclusive style were crucial factors in the legislation's successful passage. The legislation established a 15 member committee of diverse backgrounds to develop policy recommendations for an annual educator evaluation system. Interviews with these committee members and an analysis of pertinent documents show the institutional challenges the committee faced and the ways in which the process was open to public input. This study presents an examination of rapid, fully supported policy change in one state, including a description of how non-traditional actors developed policy. It is a story of how democracy worked--cooperation, coercion, or backroom deals--in one Southern state as it tries to improve education for its youngest citizens. Implications for policy and practice are discussed as are steps for future research.
Author: Jim Horn Publisher: IAP ISBN: 1623963931 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 286
Book Description
With new student assessments and teacher evaluation schemes in the planning or early implementation phases, this book takes a step back to examine the ideological and historical grounding, potential benefits, scholarly evidence, and ethical basis for the new generation of test based accountability measures. After providing the political and cultural contexts for the rise of the testing accountability movement in the 1960s that culminated almost forty years later in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, this book then moves on to provide a policy history and social policy analysis of value-added testing in Tennessee that is framed around questions of power relations, winners, and losers. In examining the issues and exercise of power that are sustained in the long-standing policy of standardized testing in schools, this work provides a big picture perspective on assessment practices over time in the U. S.; by examining the rise of value-added assessment in Tennessee, a fine-grained and contemporary case is provided within that larger context. The last half of the book provides a detailed survey of the research based critiques of value-added methodology, while detailing an aggressive marketing campaign to make value-added modeling (VAM) a central component of reform strategies following NCLB. The last chapter and epilogue place the continuation of test-based accountability practices within the context of an emerging pushback against privatization, high stakes testing, and other education reforms. This book will be useful to a wide audience, including teachers, parents, school leaders, policymakers, researchers, and students of educational history, policy, and politics.
Author: Tennessee. Department of Education Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 45
Book Description
In the summer of 2011, the Tennessee Department of Education contracted with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to provide a four-day training for all evaluators across the state. NIET trained more than 5,000 evaluators intensively in the state model (districts using alternative instruments delivered their own training). Evaluators were required to pass an inter-rater reliability exam, in which they viewed video recordings of teachers delivering lessons and rated them to ensure they understood the distinction between differing levels of performance. Implementation of the evaluation system began at the start of the 2011-12 school year. The department made a concentrated effort to solicit and encourage feedback, meeting with teachers and administrators across the state. Educators voiced both strengths and concerns about various facets of the teacher evaluation process and implementation. Legislators also received feedback from their constituents and shared information with department officials. The department and others heard positive comments from administrators about improvements in the quality of instruction in classrooms and also heard concerns about particular facets of the system. As implementation continued through the first semester of the school year, it became clear that satisfaction with the evaluation system varied considerably from district to district, driven largely by district- and school-level leadership. While administrators continued to tout the system's impact on instruction, the public discussion about teacher evaluation began to detract from the real purpose of the evaluation system: improving student achievement. In response, Governor Haslam, supported by legislative leadership, tasked the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) with conducting an independent review of the system through a statewide listening and feedback process and producing a report to the State Board of Education and department outlining a range of policy considerations. In addition, the Governor announced his support of House Joint Resolution (HJR) 520, which ultimately was adopted by the General Assembly. This resolution directed the department to follow through on its commitment to seek feedback, conduct an internal review of the evaluation system, and provide a report with recommendations to the House and Senate Education Committees by July 15, 2012. Through its feedback gathering process, common themes have emerged: (1) Administrators and teachers--including both supporters and opponents of the evaluation model--believe the TEAM rubric effectively represents high-quality instruction and facilitates rich conversations about instruction; (2) Administrators consistently noted that having school-wide value-added scores has led to increased collaboration among teachers and a higher emphasis on academic standards in all subjects; (3) Administrators and teachers both feel too many teachers have treated the rubric like a checklist rather than viewing it as a holistic representation of an effective lesson, and both groups feel additional training is needed on this point; (4) Teachers in subjects and grades that do not yield an individual value-added score do not believe it is fair to have 35 percent of their evaluation determined by school-wide scores; (5) Implementation of the 15 percent measure has not led to selection of appropriate measures, with choices too often dictated by teacher and principal perceptions of which measure would generate the highest score rather than an accurate reflection of achievement; (6) Administrators consistently noted the large amount of time needed to complete the evaluation process. In particular, administrators want to spend less time observing their highest performing teachers and more time observing lower performing teachers. Additionally, they feel the mechanics of the process (e.g., data entry) need to be more streamlined and efficient; (7) Both administrators and teachers consistently felt better about the system as the year progressed, in part due to familiarity with the expectations and because of changes that allowed for fewer classroom visits during the second semester; and (8) Local capacity to offer high-quality feedback and to facilitate targeted professional development based on evaluation results varies considerably across districts. (Contains 5 footnotes.).
Author: Department of Education (ED) Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 114
Book Description
This paper describes Tennessee's progress in implementing a comprehensive and coherent approach to education reform from the time of application through June 30, 2011. In particular, this report highlights key accomplishments over the reporting period in the four reform areas: standards and assessments, data systems to support instruction, great teachers and leaders, and turning around lowest-achieving schools. Tennessee's application for Race to the Top laid out an ambitious education reform agenda at all levels--from the state to the school district to the classroom. The state established equally ambitious goals for improving both teacher and leader effectiveness and student achievement. In the first year of implementation of the Tennessee First to the Top initiatives, the state made modest gains towards achieving those goals. From 2010 to 2011, overall student achievement in the two primary focus areas of the grant, 3rd grade reading and 7th grade math, increased by 2 percentage points and 7 percentage points respectively. The implementation of Tennessee's reform agenda has been complex and not without its challenges, but the state has made significant progress in a number of key areas over the past year. Tennessee has made the most significant progress in the area of great teachers and leaders-specifically the development of a new teacher and principal evaluation system, recruitment initiatives, and strategic compensation plans. The state has also laid the groundwork for significant progress to come in the next year on standards and assessments, data systems, school turnaround and STEM, specifically through initial awareness training for the Common Core standards, planning for an early warning data system, establishing charter schools and a co-management process for the state's Achievement School District, and creating two new STEM platform schools. Local education agencies that are experiencing gains in student achievement are executing on First to the Top plans that support these initiatives and have a comprehensive focus on the state goals. [For the parent document, "Race to the Top Annual Performance Report," see ED529267. For the state summary report, "Race to the Top. Tennessee Report. Year 1: School Year 2010-2011. [State-Specific Summary Report]", see ED529330.].
Author: Rachael Elisabeth Gabriel
Author: Rachael Elisabeth Gabriel
Author: Abigail Leigh Braddock
Author: Erroll Quinn Headen
Author: Jorge Manzi
Author: Alyson Leah Lavigne
Author: Maida Alice Finch
Author: Jim Horn
Author: Tennessee. Department of Education
Author: Linda Darling-Hammond
Author: Department of Education (ED)