welfare. At this crucial design stage, the
roots of trust and buy-in begin to grow
(Cosner, 2010).
Step 2: Protect opportunities
to learn and grow.
Too often, districts pay lip service to the
feedback and learning process. Post-
observation conferences are either non-
existent or crammed into difficult time
slots; observers aren’t adequately trained
to lead effective coaching sessions, so
the conferences come across more like
one-way summative evaluations. As
Charlotte Danielson (2011) puts it,
if we want teacher evaluation systems that
teachers find meaningful and from which
they can learn, we must use processes
that not only are rigorous, valid, and
reliable, but also engage teachers in those
activities that promote learning—namely
self-assessment, reflection on practice,
and professional conversation. (p. 38)
When a teacher and coach/admin-istrator identify a skill that needs
developing, the district’s professional
development environment must be
flexible enough to support the teacher’s
pursuit of that skill. This means individualizing; every professional in the district must have a personal professional
growth plan. It also means providing
ongoing professional development for
principals and peer coaches around
their own consultation and coaching
skills with teachers. (See Drago-Severson, 2009, for a useful description
of these practices.)
The most compelling and successful
professional development is that which
teachers find most relevant to their
classroom work. First- or second-year
teachers need ample and frequent
feedback to build their awareness of
the myriad things going on in their
classrooms, and they need colleagues’
are developing coaching competency,
the teachers can develop strategies to
address these areas. Repeated observa-
tions and conferences can then build
evidence of whether teachers are
growing in the relevant competencies.
School districts’ success at developing the
very best teachers hinges on the technical and
interpersonal skills of their front-line supervisors.
The performance assessment system
must include the time and professional
development resources necessary to
support teacher learning—and, just as
important, administrator learning. As
teachers confer with administrators or
peer coaches over documentation of
their teaching and student learning,
conjectures emerge regarding their
successes and challenges and their
strengths and failings with individual
students and whole classes. For teachers
to find these conjectures credible and
respond to them with efforts to build on
their strengths and address their weak-nesses, they must trust the observer
and have access to subsequent learning
opportunities.
help to develop specific techniques and
confirm that those techniques work.
For example, a beginning teacher might
benefit from learning a specific strategy
for engaging students with attention
challenges. Master teachers, on the
other hand, benefit from professional
development to diversify and expand
their repertoire—for example, by
learning how to develop students’ 21st
century skills.
When a performance review helps
teachers clarify their own competency
profiles, teachers come to see which
behavior sets, planning procedures,
and knowledge bases they need to
strengthen. With the assistance of
coaches and supervisors who themselves
Step 3: Hone principals’ and coaches’
skills at observing and consulting
with teachers.
Principals and peer coaches need to
understand what good instruction is
and how to discern it in action. They
must also be empathetic consultants
capable of building trust while sharing
potentially unwelcome or discomfiting
information. Teacher growth requires
a careful balance of constructive and
critical performance feedback, creative
coaching in new practices, and insistent
optimism.
Principals sometimes lack the pedagogical backgrounds and the consulting
skills to deliver feedback that teachers
find both valid and constructive. This
is true, as well, for some peer coaches,
who face the particularly challenging
task of providing critical feedback to
their colleagues. Coming to their work
with little training as observers or consultants, most supervisors learn on the
job, for better or for worse.
Districts can no longer leave this
crucial process to chance. They must
provide ongoing training and consultation that focus on the interpersonal
as well as the technical aspects of
observing and coaching teachers.
Without such professional development
and support, performance assessment
will slip back to where it often is today:
Most teachers receive vaguely worded
praise and are “socially promoted” to
the next contract year.
For example, instead of an evaluator
writing, “You have good rapport with
students,” he or she might write,
You and the students smiled often when
working together during the observed
math lesson. Students approached you
