The Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey ACT, which provides school systems with an expedited process for dismissing tenured teachers, recently saw its first case go through the arbitration process.
A teacher in Vineland, NJ was the first teacher dismissed under the process after he had been arrested for running naked through a public parking lot; apparently it was not an isolated incident.
The purpose of the TEACH NJ Act though is really meant to provide school systems with an expedited process to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom.
In accordance with the new law, Oakland has chosen an evaluation system that will allow it to monitor teacher effectiveness…but Oakland teachers can keep their shirts on as the Marshall Rubric has the potential to be a win-win-win for teachers, administrators, and most importantly students.
The school system needed to choose a method before the end of 2012 – and it needed to be an approved method that would withstand arbitration. The Bergen Record reported on Oakland’s support for the chosen evaluation method by Superintendent Heflich and Manito Principal Silverstein. In contrast to other choices, the Marshall Rubric is considered “open source” and the district will not incur the expenses related to other more expensive options.
Known as the Marshall Teacher Evaluation Rubric, this evaluation system seems to fill one of the major complaints critics have of the TEACH NJ Act: that the law does little – if nothing – to actually improve education in NJ schools.
The TEACH NJ Act was an historic piece of legislation signed by Governor Christie this past summer, but it was the product of deep negotiations that weighed protecting the rights of teachers while providing administrators with tools to improve their district. In a nut shell, the law was written from a legalistic perspective rather than from an educational perspective.
The New York Times published an extensive article concerning the challenges school systems around the nation face as they seek to implement teacher evaluations. Concerns range from those who feel very strict evaluations do not allow for flexibility, and additional concerns that the evaluations become nothing but a dog and pony show .
The Marshall Plan presented by Heflich and Silverstein meets the legal standards, but goes far beyond that by creating a process that is fundamentally focused on actually improving education.
Developed by Kim Marshall, the evaluation process is an ongoing effort throughout the school year with a primary focus on providing teachers with regular feedback that can improve their effectiveness.
This methodology does not simply “grade” a teacher, but provides a process where administrators can gain a more holistic understanding of a teachers’ strengths and weaknesses; ultimately providing an opportunity for teachers to learn and benefit from each other.
One of the core components of the Marshall Plan is based on the idea of “Mini-Observations” – where a teacher is observed more often for shorter durations, and given more timely feedback. The idea of mini-observations, and the story of how Kim Marshall came to develop this evaluation system, is described in this 12 page summary of Marshall’s book.
Another summary of Marshall’s Teacher Evaluation Rubrics, written by Kim Marshall in 2011, is also available online.
Links:
It will be interesting to see how this works and whether it will help or hurt. The idea of weeding out the ineffective teachers and rewarding the effective ones sounds good but time will tell if this is an accurate method of evaluating teacher performance. I wonder if this will be used to evaluate principals too.