Ramsey Chooses New 'Flexible' Teacher Evaluation System

Thanks to a state mandate passed last year, Ramsey teachers will be evaluated using a new system in the 2013-14 school year. A district committee tasked with investigating four state-suggested possibilities and choosing a new model for the evaluations has landed on the Stronge Model as the new system that will be used in Ramsey.

Committee heads Hubbard Principal Molly Dinning and Fine Arts Supervisor Kenneth Veit presented the results of their evaluation search to the Board of Education last week. The board unanimously approved the committee’s Stronge recommendation.

Ultimitely, the committee recommended the system because it was flexible enough to allow the district to incorporate components of Ramsey’s curriculum standards to the evaluation guidelines, Dinning said.

“We didn’t want the evaluation system dictating how we teach our children,” she said. Instead, the Strong system best fit Ramsey’s core instructional beliefs, she said.

The Stronge system has seven performance standards teachers will be evaluated on, including professional knowledge, instruction delivery and student progress. Teachers will be evaluated via a four-tier rubric ranging from highly effective to ineffective.

Most teachers, they said, are expected to perform at the effective level, while any consistently ranked as partially effective or ineffective will face additional considerations.

While some aspects of the Stronge evaluation system, like observations, will be similar to what the district has in place now, the duo said there will be some significant differences.

Judging teachers based on multiple data sources, not just in-classroom observations, will be the biggest change, they said. Under Stronge, teachers will need to provide evaluators with documentation of their credentials, and with student goals and objectives that will be measured against student performance.

The documentation, Dinning said, is not meant to be more work for teachers, but to create a written log of things they are already doing. For example, a teacher who attends a professional development conference would submit a certificate of completion to the evaluation committee.

The system could also include an optional student survey as part of the teacher evaluations. Teachers would give out anonymous student surveys, and write a reflection on them to submit to evaluators. The surveys are an optional component of the system, Dinning said.

“We would decide on a district level whether or not we wanted to include them,” she tolf the board.

The system also includes evaluation standards for principals and non-instruction staff, like school psychologists or nurses. Dinning said the committee felt the standards would lead to consistency in evaluations for employees across the district.

Ultimately, the committee recommended Stronge because it allowed for the incorporation of standards the district felt it was important to evaluate its staff on, Dinning and Veit said, like the incorporation of 21st Century skills. So far, 11 other districts in the state, including Paramus, have chosen the Stronge model.

The board’s approval of the choice last week set in motion a series of state-mandated deadlines the district must meet in order to implement the new system by next year. By January 31, the district must begin to pilot the new system, it must have all teachers trained by July 1 and all evaluators trained by August 31. Thus far, the committee, which formed in March, has been working ahead of the state’s deadlines.

The district recently readjusted its school calendar to incorporate teacher training days on the new system.

Interim Superintendent Bruce DeYoung called the switch, “high stakes,” for teachers, especially those who are non-tenured. Though he emphasized that the evaluation system the district has in place now is “rigorous and has always served us well,” he said the new standards are “much more prescribed by the state.” Its success in Ramsey will be dependent upon teacher training, he said.

--

Get Patched in with the Ramsey Patch newsletter. And, get updates on the Ramsey Patch Facebook and Ramsey Patch Twitter.