Breaking new ground in California, San Jose Unified has adopted an innovative teacher evaluation procedure that gives teachers a role in reviewing their peers and greatly revises the electric current – and some say outmoded – method of measuring teacher success.

The new arrangement would deny automated raises to unsatisfactory performers and give evaluators the option of adding some other year to the probationary period for new teachers – a provision at odds with the state teachers union. Bucking a national trend, the new system will not use standardized test scores as a directly measure of operation.

The school board canonical the contract, 2 years in the making, Th night. Seventy-ii pct of San Jose teachers endorsed it, with three-quarters of teachers in the union voting, earlier this month.

San Jose Teachers Association President Jennifer Thomas and Superintendent Vincent Matthews relax after the school board unanimously approved the contract with teachers, with the new evaluation system, Thursday night. (John Fensterwald photo)

San Jose Teachers Association President Jennifer Thomas and Superintendent Vincent Matthews relax subsequently the school board unanimously canonical the contract with teachers, with the new evaluation system, Th night. (John Fensterwald photo)

The understanding offers a model of collaboration betwixt teachers and a district at a time when unions, school reformers and district leaders in California remain sharply divided over how to alter the country'southward largely ineffective evaluation police force, the Stull Human action, and who – teachers or the school board – should have the authorization to determine what an evaluation system should comprise.

"Teachers, in concert with the district, have created something that puts teachers in the center of what happens with student achievement. There is the recognition that professional evolution is important, and so is educatee growth. The teacher'due south voice is heard once again," said English language instructor and San Jose Teachers Association President Jennifer Thomas.

"To assist teachers to grow as professionals, it was important that management and the spousal relationship work together," said Superintendent Vincent Matthews. "We believe it will lead to greater pupil achievement."

The new evaluation system won't take effect for two years, and non all of the pieces are in place. A salary ladder that incorporates college pay for model and master teachers will rely initially on outside funding that the district must now pursue.

Chief features include:

  • Peer review

Currently in about all districts, the chief or banana chief does evaluations, often based on hurried observations and a checklist of items that critics say don't get to the middle of good education. Teachers view the process equally either superficial or as a game of gotcha.

Under the San Jose contract, consulting teachers – a newly created position – volition participate with principals in evaluating probationary teachers and, when requested, veteran teachers subsequently a chief's initial review. Six-member Instructor Quality Panels, split as between teachers and administrators, but requiring a bulk vote for actions, may review decisions at key points forth the manner and make recommendations to the school board. The Teacher Quality Panels are modeled after successful Peer Assistance and Review programs in San Juan Unified and Poway Unified, which are permitted under state law, but with added responsibilities. Thomas said including respected teachers on the instructor quality panels cuts both ways, as a protection from an inaccurate or unfair review and as an affidavit that it's authentic. "There is accountability at both ends," she said. "A instructor will tell another who is struggling, 'You may not like your evaluation but information technology is not necessarily wrong.'"

  • A connectedness between performance and pay

Teachers will keep with a traditional stride and cavalcade pay scale, based on experience and degrees. (Union and district negotiators had considered a more compressed pay schedule that might be more attractive to younger teachers, simply it didn't happen.) Notwithstanding, teachers whose evaluations are deemed unsatisfactory volition lose an automatic yearly raise. After a year of piece of work with a mentor teacher under an improvement plan, teachers whom the Teacher Quality Console decides have improved volition return to the salary schedule. Those who had not improved would face dismissal.

  • New career positions

Model and master teachers will be selected for iii-twelvemonth assignments, paying in the range of $15,000 to $25,000 more per year, subsequently a rigorous awarding process. Model teachers will exist recognized as the best classroom practitioners and will get extra coin for coaching and mentoring – roles they're already informally assuming without official condition, Thomas said. They'll remain in their classrooms. Main teachers will take special assignments, such equally designing curriculums and overseeing commune projects, outside of the classroom. Moving ahead with these positions initially will depend on raising exterior funding, between $7 million and $ten one thousand thousand a year, Matthews said. Thomas said she's confident the district will be able to notice the funding one time the contract is ratified.

  • Optional 3-year probationary period for new teachers

Under current state police force, districts must decide by March of the second twelvemonth whether to grant teachers permanent status or tenure, which provides due-process rights and job protections. A two-year probationary period is not a lot of fourth dimension on which to base a conclusion, particularly in districts without constructive mentoring and induction programs. In San Jose, Teacher Quality Panels could recommend a 3rd year when they determine a teacher has potential but needs more time to develop, Thomas said.

The district will have to become to the Legislature for a waiver from the Educational activity Lawmaking to extend the probationary period, and that may be hard to get. The nationwide tendency has been to increase the probationary period to three to five years (come across page  11). California is one of just a half-dozen states to grant tenure in less than iii years. However, the California Teachers Clan has opposed efforts to change the law.

All teachers will exist evaluated every two years, and there are provisions permitting yearly updates, to track progress toward coming together comeback goals. Nether the Stull Deed, experienced teachers can be evaluated as infrequently as once every v years. Classroom walkthroughs, formal observations, interactions with the principal, feedback from peers, a student/parent survey and personal reflections will all factor into a review, without assigning specific weights or points that other evaluation systems quantify. Instead, a narrative by a consulting teacher and chief will detail strengths and weaknesses.

The rubric for judging will be the California Standards for the Pedagogy Profession, vi broad standards broken down into specific skills that an effective teacher needs. These include engaging and supporting all students, understanding and organizing discipline matter, planning instruction, designing lessons and learning experiences and creating assessments for learning.

Educatee test scores will be one guess. But they won't be used directly. Instead, evaluators will look at whether teachers acquire from the results of assessments and use them to ameliorate the way they teach, say, writing or fractions. If changes in teaching don't atomic number 82 to improve results, so that volition affect an evaluation, Matthews said.

This approach is different from using value-added measures of standardized tests as a meaning component in an evaluation and separates the San Jose system from one favored by reform groups like StudentsFirst. In 2011, a Los Angeles Canton Superior Court approximate ruled that the Stull Act does require the apply of the state standardized examination scores as a gene in a instructor evaluation and ordered Los Angeles Unified to incorporate them.

But San Jose's approach too is more than in line with the approach recommended in Greatness By Design, the report of Land Superintendent of Public Pedagogy Tom Torlakson'southward Chore Force on Educator Excellence, co-chaired by Stanford Didactics Professor Linda Darling-Hammond and Long Beach Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser.

California standards tests – CSTs – won't be used in the San Jose evaluations; the fact that the state is phasing them out in two years made that issue simpler to resolve. Common Core assessments that are being developed by a multi-state consortium to replace them, both stop-of-year and practice tests, may be incorporated, depending on their quality.

"Nosotros believe the agreement complies with Stull Act, with the spirit of the police," Matthews said, "and nosotros volition continue downwards that road until we're told information technology'southward the incorrect route."

San Jose's organization continues the Stull Act's pass/fail grading system. The federal government, every bit a condition for a waiver from the No Child Left Behind police force, is requiring that states adopt a minimum of three performance levels, such as "meets expectations, doesn't meet expectations, and needs improvement." But Matthews said that the binary organization gives teachers the clearest indication of where they stand. And, with raises tied to evaluations, adding levels of functioning would have shifted the focus of discussions from ways to better to money.

Teachers and the commune will movement advisedly to implement the system over the adjacent two years, Thomas said. Details must exist worked out and consulting teachers and principals fully trained.Final year, an effort to rewrite the Stull Human action ended in anger over the issue of whether the criteria and standards behind a district'south evaluation should be bailiwick to commonage bargaining. All cardinal aspects in the San Jose understanding were negotiated, nether the assumption a system whose goal is continuous comeback is congenital on trust.

"It's important that we work together to make the tools in an evaluation process as meaningful as possible," Matthews said.

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