Teacher pay and raises at Warsaw Community Schools in the future will be tied to their evaluations.
The Warsaw Community School Corp. Board of Trustees heard a presentation on the teacher evaluation system during a public work session Tuesday night. The board will not vote to approve the system until its May meeting.
Indiana is requiring each school to adopt a new teacher evaluation system for the 2012-13 school year.
Tom Kline, WCS chief accountability officer, said a steering committee has worked on the evaluation instrument for months. A total of 73 people reviewed the evaluation tool since the committee started in September. They finished their work in March.
“We started with two goals,” Kline said. “First was to help and guide teachers on what to do to be good teachers, and secondly to create a fair system.”
After much study, the committee decided to go with the Indiana Department of Education RISE 1.0 Teacher Evaluation System, with only a slight amendment to it. Now, Kline said, the committee is going through the process of presenting it to all teachers at every Warsaw school building.
“The evaluations eventually will be tied to raises,” Kline said.
Kline said more information on the evaluations can be found online at www.riseindiana.org or moodle.warsaw.k12.in.us There are two major components of the RISE evaluation system, Kline said. One is professional practice, and the other is student learning. Added together, they result in the “summative evaluation rating.”
Under the system, each teacher will be evaluated and categorized under one of four categories: highly effective, effective, needs improvement or ineffective.
The professional practice is measured using the Indiana Teacher Effectiveness Rubric. Kelly Meeks, committee member, said the TER is made up of four domains, and each domain accounts for a percentage toward the teacher’s overall evaluation.
Meeks and committee member David Bailey ran through each of the domains. Domain 1 is planning and accounts for 10 percent. Domain 2 is instruction and accounts for 75 percent. Domain 3 is leadership and makes up another 15 percent.
“Our administration is going to be burdened by this process,” Bailey said.
Domain 4, he said, “is a little ambiguous right now.” Instead of a percentage, teachers will either get a “0” or a “-1.” Most WCS teachers will get a “0”, he said. Teachers can get a “-1” for poor attendance, not arriving on time, policies and procedures or showing a lack of respect.
“It still needs to be well defined,” Bailey said. “Domain four will be a zero for most of us. A small percentage will be a negative one, but we will have to define that through the WCEA and the administration.”
The WCEA is the teachers’ union, Warsaw Community Educators Association.
Deb Blatz talked about the likely teacher evaluators. At the elementaries, the evaluators will be the principals. At the secondary schools, the evaluators will be the principals or assistant principals.
There will be two types of observations.
The extended is 40 minutes, twice a year. A pre-conference is optional, a post conference is required, and required written feedback will be provided within five days. It’s at the discretion of the evaluator whether it’s announced to the teacher or not.
The short evaluation is 10 minutes, three times a year, with no pre- or post-conference. Required written feedback will be provided within two days, and it is not announced.
Primary evaluators must perform a minimum of one extended and one short observation per year. All others may be conducted by secondary evaluators.
“If you do have 30 teachers in your building,” said Blatz, “it is going to be a big chunk of your time to get to all of them.”
Later in the meeting, Superintendent Dr. Craig Hintz said, “The bar has been raised here as far as how much time our administrators and secondary evaluators spend on our team.”
There are three possible measures of student learning in RISE.
The first measure of student learning is individual growth model data. For teachers in grades 4-8 English/language arts and math, growth model data will be reported at the student level, class level and across class level.
“There has to be a previous ISTEP score to see how much a student grew,” said Kline. “Students are only compared to students who scored as much as they did the previous year.”
Every teacher who has a class with growth model data will get a score between one and four based on their data across classes.
The second measure of student learning is the schoolwide measure. It counts equally for all teachers and will be aligned to the new A-F accountability policy of the state.
The third measure, Student Learning Objectives, measures growth for non-growth model grades and classes. The objectives are targets of student growth and achievement set at the start of the school year that teachers and students work toward throughout the year. All teachers will have student learning objectives.
Evaluators use the rubric to rate a teacher at the end of the year on professional practice using a four-step process. In the end, a teacher’s weighted score determines the final rating.
If a teacher receives a 1.0 to 1.75 points, they are ineffective; 1.75 to 2.5, improvement necessary; 2.5 to 3.5, effective; and 3.5 to 4.0 highly effective.
“Only teachers that get these two ratings (effective and highly effective) will get the raise,” Kline said.
