Urbandale School Leaders Change the Way Teachers Are Evaluated

Teachers will evaluate themselves and take in observations from administrators who sit in classrooms as part of a revamped evaluation process in the Urbandale school district.

Superintendent Doug Stilwell wants to improve staff performance through a new evaluation process, which has the support of the Iowa Department of Education, the Des Moines Register reports.

Stilwell told school board members at a meeting last month he still has concerns about the process and wonders if it helps people to improve their performance.

The procedure “usually comes down to completing a form at the end of the school year, putting their names on it and putting it in someone’s file,” Stilwell said in the Register story. “The question is if that’s improving anyone’s performance.”

The new evaluation plan fits into the district’s focus on collaborative learning. It includes administrators observing teaching components in the classrooms that are part of student-centered instruction, the newspaper reported. The new process will let administrators talk about their observations on a monthly basis and couple it with new learning.

“What we’re trying to incorporate is putting the responsibility of growth and achievement and improvement in the hands of individuals and the group,” Stilwell told the Register. “We ask people to self-evaluate along the way.”

Members of the Iowa Department of Education were at the September board meeting to show support for the district’s new vision on evaluations, the newspaper said.

David Tilly, deputy director of the department of education, said, “One of the things we’ve been hearing at the governor’s office, from parents, school boards and in the media is that we’re not making the kind of progress we need to as a state. Just the learning we can do together, to me, will be the most powerful thing.”