Magazine

Teacher Eval Report

5/1/2012 By:

A new report titled “Teacher Evaluator Training and Certification: Lessons Learned from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project,” was based on the collaborative work on video-taping and scoring over 23,000 lessons across 3,000 classrooms for the MET project. The report makes a series of recommendations for evaluator training, including:

* The best training for evaluators is authentic scoring practice. Principals and other evaluators need the opportunity to score real lessons, in real time, and get immediate feedback.

* Any training program must include exemplar videos of classroom sessions that have been pre-scored by instruction experts.

* Evaluator training must focus on both accuracy and consistency. Accuracy and consistency are not synonymous—multiple observers can agree on a teacher’s performance, yet they can all be wrong.

* Training for observers must prepare them to understand the difference between bias, interpretation, and evidence.

* Principals must be trained on both high-end and low-end teacher performance.