I had already linked that in the bottom of the original :)

There is a software tool that can greatly enhance observations, including those based on Danielson's work. It's called eCOVE Observation Software and includes 40 tools for collecting objective data on classroom behaviors (teachers and/or students).    For instance, Danielson lists student engagement as one of the targets for a rating of 'proficient', certainly reasonable. eCOVE can track the amount and percent of time-on-task of either individual students or an entire class; and track the number, percent and types of questions that students ask (another measure of engagement), etc. These timers and counters make the process of feedback to teachers clear and objective; the data can be gathered by a colleague, administrator, even students.     You can download a 30 day trial at www.ecove.net. Disclaimer: I wrote the software after 30 years in classrooms.

I used to think that student attendance was a ridiulous measure of teacher effectiveness until I spent a few years working with "at risk" students in an alternative school.  In that setting this measure was obvious.  If you did a good job of creating community in your classroom, if you did a good job of engaging students, if you did a good job of addressing individual student needs, and if the students find what you offer relevant they come to class.  We had teachers in that school who were awesome teachers who always had a full house of students and others whose class lists were no shorter who stared at many empty seats.  In the average suburban school district where the majority student population is not "at risk" this is less obvious and not a good indicator since students are likely to be forced to show up.  While in most cases this data will show little, in some schools the data will speak volumes.

Carl I think you highlighted the point that I should have had in mind already.  Just like every student is different, every school and every school disctrict is too.  That's something that we have to keep in mind when crafting standards and teacher assessments. 

Seriously, Derek just brought up a point I've made before, and it's certainly one to consider in this discussion, too. While the attendance factor may work in an "at-risk" school, it certainly doesn't in an international school, or some other kind of private school.  In our school, students are absent all the time for reasons like "my friend from Argentina is visiting and we're going to see Ho Chi Minh's mausolem," "our family is taking an extended holiday in Myanmar to do a homestay with a local family during a festival," and "we had to renew our passports and the embassy is only open from 8:00-10:00 a.m. on Fridays."  So the attendance thing just would *not* be useful in these kinds of schools...

Must diasagree. The continuity within the classroom is very important. Substitutes for the most part cannot fill in as the original teacher, who should have identified and implemented a set of learning presentations and activities that are within a timely framework. Interruption of the flow will potentially deconstruct the 'lesson plan'.

What about the teachers who are unfortunate enough to have cancer?  Should they schedule their chemo around the school's schedule?  Or should they do their best to stay alive to teach their students, and get treatment as soon and whenever it is available?  What about when you get pneumonia and are forced to stay out for weeks or risk exacerbating it or giving it to your students?
Attendance doesn't measure teacher quality in any way.  It measures teacher HEALTH, which as far as I know, can't be used as a basis for more or less pay.

You'll have to forgive my ignorance, but what is SMART?

I also don't know what SMART is... 

SMART is one of those acronyms our profession seems to have an affinity for.  It took me a couple of days trying to remember what it stood for before I did a Google search to find out:

specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely

@Charlie

My wife is encouraging me to go into admin for the money. I figure when I hit 60 I might be interested ;-_

Exactly: define very clearly and precisely what the student is able to do and how to measure it. Simply as an old 70's, 80's educator the old approach for effectiveness was defined by behavioral objectives and creation of the evaluation method. These can be developed, utilized and evaluated as necessary.

I am all for defining goals.  I just balk at defining the undefinable, transient or fleeting.  You know, like students.  They change.  So must our instruction.  Everyday.  Maybe every minute.

Good teaching is an art, not a science!

Oh, and merit pay is a non-starter.

What about art and music teachers?  We often don't even have a curriculum to follow or a classroom or supplies.  How are you going to measure our success?  Will it include the number of broken instruments, the fact that we teach in the hallway or stairwell sometimes, the fact that students have stolen the instruments and pawned them for money?  Whose fault is that?  Should my pay be lowered because I'm unfortunate enough to teach  subject that few adminisrators respect, let alone understand?!?

This is BS.  We're already underpaid and overworked, lacking adequate supplies or textbooks, given no respect, kicked out of our teaching space at random.  What's next?  Cut my pay because the kid sitting last chair trumpet can't play a high c?  Do you people even know what that last sentence meant?!?

I'm sick of being completely misunderstood and undervalued by administration.  I've been teaching 4 years, and never once been observed.  How the heck would they know if I'm doing my job if they never check in on me?!?

Sorry for the rant.  As an inner-city educator we are plagued with issues that other (read: suburban) teachers never even have to think about, let alone deal with on a daily basis.  I'm just sick of people who don't know what I do for a living telling me what to do and how to do it, or rating me when they can't understand the lesson I'm teaching.

Yes they should. I was fortunate to serve as department Chair and also went on to Assistant  Principal for Curriculum and Instruction, where I worked with the teachers individually to provide feedback on what my observations were and would offer suggestions and also praise if appropriate. I would especially work with new teachers, who can be overwhelmed by the bureaucracy and required time to prepare. many do not realize the enormity of time required to create a lesson and associated evaluation. Some long-time teachers lose sight of the need to engage different approaches and not rely on their existing plan and activities. A well organized-enthusiastic educator is highly motivating to most students.

Let me add that feedback to the students must be frequent, on going and supportive. Returning a test a week later is not a good practice.

"The other teachers in that department should give their input as well: how does this teacher work with his peers? Does he collaborate with the other teachers of the same subject, so they are all teaching the same skills at the same time (for students who change classes, etc.)? Does he share ideas with his colleagues? Is he available to help when a fellow teacher needs help? Teaching is a lonely and stressful profession. The least we can do is be there for one another."

Are you joking?  That sounds like a popularity contest to me.  One I wouldn't win, becuase I stand up for my students when they are being treated unfairly.  Should my pay be lower because some of my colleagues don't like my methods?  My students learn, and are good musicians with a love of the arts and the dedication to practice their music and ask for help when they need it.  How do you "measure success" in a situation like that?

And again, the "specials" or "prep" teachers are left out.  There's only one music, art, library, phys ed, health, etc. teacher.  Who are our peers supposed to be?  The classroom teachers don't understand what we do AT ALL so have no right to analyze us.  Same goes for the administration, who for the most part can't tell their rear end from a hole in the ground, let alone tell me how to spell a V7 chord. (My 5th-graders, however, COULD explain that.)

So who gets to grade me?

"Returning a test a week later is not a good practice."  Here's another one I object to.  I teach in 6 schools every week.  I have no alternative but to return tests a week later.  That's the next time I see my students.

Meredith, I understand that there would, of course, also be problems with colleagues evaluating each other. There are problems with every system, and the one we have now (at least in my state) has tons of problems (however, your state sounds worse, since yearly evaluations/observartions are not even required -- four years and you have not been evaluated/observed once???)

Obviously the evaluations would not just be a "good teacher" or "bad teacher" checkbox. Teachers would have to give detailed feedback, and the point is that with MANY evaluators (department chair, whom one would hope would have some sort of work ethic and integrity, administrators, peers) one person's word -- or opinion -- would not be the only say in the teacher's appraisal.

Thank you for bringing up specials (music, art, etc.) Their situation is different from core subjects and non-fine arts electives, which would affect the way they are appraised because, as you have pointed out, the way they teach and the output they demand from their students in different from other subjects.

While each school only has one music, art, etc. teacher (as opposed to seven teachers in the math department who all teach Algebra I), one of the reasons specials are lumped together is because they do share certain aspects. Don't you think the art teacher would be able to assess if your students "learn, and are good musicians with a love of the arts and the dedication to practice their music and ask for help when they need it"? Isn't that what the art teacher does, just replace "musicians" with "artists" and "music" with "art (drawing, painting, etc.)"? You can also collaborate with other music teachers in the district (if we're dreaming, let's go ahead and dream, and give specials teachers, who do not have other teachers on their campus who teach the same subject, one afternoon off a week to plan and collaborate with the other teachers in the district/area).

Re-reading your comment it sounds like you are the only teacher in your district, if you teach in six schools every week. In order to give you all the answers, I would have to know all the details of your, and the rest of the teaching world's, individual situation. At the high school where I teach, we have 4 Spanish teachers, one French teacher and one German teacher. I have colleagues right there on campus (even though two of them leave two minutes after the bell dismisses the students -- even though our contract time does not end at that bell); the French teacher doesn't have colleagues on campus but there are other French teachers in the district; the German teacher is the only German teacher in the district. Her situation is similar to yours (based on the very little information I have on your situation). None of our administrators speak German, and while there are a few other teachers on campus who speak German (don't ask me to what degree of fluency), the German teacher does not have any "peers." To an extent, she can collaborate with the French and Spanish teachers, because we all teach a language other than English, but the grammatical structure of German is very different from French or Spanish, so there's only so much we can do together.

Instead, when our district asked us to spend X hours working in PLCs (in exchange for contract days), she worked with the German teacher from a neighboring district to get her hours, something she had been doing anyway because the other tacher is in the same boat (no one in the district who teaches her subject and "understands what she does").

Chriss,
Nope, not one observation.  I usually find out what the rules are as I'm getting in trouble for not following them.

Actually, there are a lot of music teachers in my district.  It's HUGE.  There just aren't enough of us to adequately provide music classes to all the kids in the district.  At some schools, there's no art teacher either, so I kind of get lumped in with the phys ed teachers and the librarian.  Some schools, I'm not included in the meetings at all.  Everyone gets a group assignment, but my name isn't on any of the lists.  It's a really bizarre situation.  It would be funny if it didn't involve children's lives and education.

We also don't get to pick who we meet with in any way.  If there's no music meeting scheduled, you stay at whatever school you were at, which usually didn't plan for you to be there.  So unlike your German teacher (who sound like she's in a tough situation too) we can't meet with each other without express permission from the head of the music and arts department.

It sounds like there are A LOT of organizational problems with your district, especially with the non-core subjects (read: those that are not tested through state-mandated assessments).

The German teacher meets with the teacher in the other district on her own time (weekends, etc.), not during regular staff development sessions. This year our district offered your choice of 2-hour meetings after school (adding up to 2 contract days' worth of hours) instead of attending two more days in the summer of staff development. For those of us with colleagues in the district it was great, because we had PLCs during the year to help us plan, etc., but obviously this wasn't going to work for her, so she petitioned to the district to allow her to count some work she had done with the other teacher over the summer (stuff she does every year, but without pay or credit).

Good for her!  Your German teacher sounds like a really good teacher, and you guys are lucky to have her.  I wish we were given choices as to when/how we get our professional develpment, but unfortunately, we aren't.  We also do most of our planning/meeting on our own time.  I'll meet with a friend to write arrangements of songs that work for our instrumentation (some schools have 10 clarinets, 2 flutes, a trombone, a sax and 2 trumpets.  Not many band scores written for that group of kids...) or go grab a drink with a colleague to plan a clean-up day at the end of the year.  It would be fantastic if we could do those things at school for professional development credit, but at this point we can't.

What we need to do to fix that problem is get better subs. Teachers need to be able to take days off -- we have to go to the dentist and to the doctor; we need to have permission to get sick every once in a while. Teachers with families need to be able to take care of their children.

Districts need to pay their subs well enough that qualified people apply for the job. And they need to stop hiring anyone who can sign his name on the paperwork.

But if we can't get quality teachers in teaching positions, how can we expect quality teachers in substitute positions? *sigh*

Don't knock subs.  I was a substitute teacher before I got my full-time gig, and a darn good one.  I remember one time, I was teaching a math lesson, and the teacher DID THE PROBLEMS WRONG.  I had to fix it and explain to the students why the original answer sould not possibly be right.  And before you accuse me, as a music teacher, of not knowing math, I got a 720 on my math SATs.  I know math.  Maybe if the teachers' lesson plans were reviewed before they taught them, somebody would have picked up on the mistake.

Meredith,
Yes, there are good subs out there. I had an excellent sub in my classroom a few weeks ago -- she did a better job with my kids than I do. The next day I had a sub who couldn't find the lesson plans THAT WERE WRITTEN ON THE BOARD.

The sad fact is that the vast majority of districts will hire anyone with a valid Social Security number because we need bodies in the room. This happens sometimes with teachers, too, which is why we have so many bad teachers. There are good subs and bad subs, and good teachers and bad teachers. Unfortunately, since it takes more effort to become a classroom teacher than it does to become a sub, the overall quality of subs is lacking.

Another problem with subs that I imagine you, as a music teacher, also experience, is that as a Spanish teacher, I cannot assume my sub will know any Spanish. Since I teach in Texas, my odds are no that bad (but then again I want my sub to know Spanish, not Tex-Mex Spanglish), but what about the French teacher? Or the German teacher? When you have to be out and call in a sub, will the sub be able to answer your students' questions about the proper way to blow a high C on the trumpet? This is why so often teachers leave busywork for their students; if they leave a lesson for the sub that could challenge the students, we have no clue as to whether the sub will be able to help the students with that lesson, so we'd rather play it safe. Which wastes the students' time.

(And why would anyone assume music teachers can't do math? Isn't there a proven link between musical ability and facility in math, or something like that?)

Chriss,
I actually don't get a sub.  If I'm sick, the kids don't get music class.  Pretty sad, huh?  We really undervalue the arts in this country.

I get your point about the bad subs, I just don't like when people categorically assume that ALL subs are bad, which seemed to be the opinion of a couple of the other commenters.  Like you said, there are both good and bad subs and teachers.

As for the music/math thing, I guess because you can get a music degree while only taking ONE college math class.  They aren't taught as much math because music theory classes often count as math, which they really aren't.  Another sad fact.  Math is a pretty important thing to know.

Two things, Jennifer,

1) You teach me a world I don't know: public schools. I'm a private international school teacher, and that's the experience I speak from. So your points are well-taken. That's why I love blogging. I learn from comments.

2) If merit pay is a zero-sum game, then the competition and selfishness you describe as results are valid. But if it's something that all teachers can earn, then it's not. I work from the second assumption, and find the first one as destructive as you do.

Great comment, thanks for weighing in.

Competition and selfishness will always exist in any field.  Regardless of whether it's something that all teachers can earn, merit pay will still go to the "best" teachers, who may be the ones hiding their secrets so they come out looking good and their co-workers don't.  I have one colleague who is constantly taking my teaching space, arranging field trips and leaving out the band students, and taking credit for other people's hard work.  (She also teaches Christian songs in public school, which I believe is against the law.  You know, separation of church and state and all.)  These underhanded tactics undermine the band and orchestra programs while making the choral program the focus of the school administration.  Now, who would get the merit pay?  I'm honestly doing my best, but when your teaching time is taken away, when you only have one day to the other teacher's 5 days, the other guy will look better than you, and thus get the merit pay.  Is this really fair?

By the same token, I don't think seniority is a good basis for pay either.  I know some crappy teachers that have been teaching 20 years longer than me.  It doesn't make them better teachers.

If we're going to try merit pay, it should be for the amount of professional development credits a teacher has or something.  But really, merit pay won't work.  It will just set up teachers to be in competition rather than working as a team.

One more point:
"I'm speaking of the school systems that hand the new teacher a binder and warn that if they deviate from the daily plans, they will earn negative evaluations.  No teachers can excel as curriculum/project designers in this situation because they aren't given the professional responsibility for planning what occurs in their classrooms each day."

Those new teachers are lucky they got a binder.  I got nothing when I started teaching.  No supplies, no funds for supplies, no curriculum, not even an orientation paper that tells you how to call in sick.  You can always add to the binder.  But if you're given nothing, how do you know what to teach?

If you copy and paste from Word, formatting is lost.

A trick is to type your comment in the comment box, and then select all, copy, THEN submit. If you lose it, just paste it from your clipboard and submit until successful.

What about classes with no written work?  Like phys ed or band or other activity-based classes which rely mainly on kinetic or hands-on learning.

As for student feedback, one of my colleagues expected high quality work from his students.  Because they didn't want to do the work, 4 students reported the teacher as having raised his hand to them in a physical way.  The administration and parents all believed the 4 students, and my colleague almost lost his job.  It wasn't till the classroom teacher got a written anonymous account of the situation from the entire class that my colleague was vindicated.  Turns out, only 4 students backed up the original claim.  Every other student honestly replied, and my colleague's job was saved.  If we had relied on "student feedback" and the classroom teacher hadn't thought to act quickly, a good teacher would have lost his job.

Are you a teacher John?  Because if you are, you must have a very nice teaching situation.  We don't all have that.

"a) Students' outcomes should take the most prominent place in assessing teacher effectiveness. People my aver that they are teaching but, unless their students are learning, they didn't teach. I suspect some will assert that good teaching can't overcome a lack of motivation (substitute other learner characteristics), but I disagree: Motivating students is part of the teaching duties."

No, it's part of the PARENT'S duties.  If the parents don't make their kids do their homework, it's not the teacher's fault.  I wouldn't have done a single homework assignment if I'd had a choice, but I didn't.  My parents made it clear that failure was unacceptable, and so my brother and I got straight A's.  My teachers had not a darn thing to do with it.

The area in which I teah is very violent, drug-ridden, and low-income.  I've heard parents call their kids names in the middle of the main office.  If their parents tell them they're worthless or if the ghetto mentality is telling these kids to sell drugs or get pregnant or go one welfare, one person (the teacher) isn't going to change that much.  Maybe you can reach a few students every year if you really try, but one person can't change the values or socio-economic situation of their school's population.  If people expect us to work miacles, people should pay us better.

I agree with one point and disagree with another.

While parents play an important role in a child's learning, they play far from the only role.  In your situation teachers did not have much to do with your success.  What about all the children who's parents are too busy, don't care, or are downright abusive?  You can't legistlate parental involvement. 

No one expects a teacher to change the economic situations of their students either.  We shouldn't pile more onto educators already crowded plates.  The knowledge a teacher imparts on their students should allow them to have a diploma that means something and an opportunity rise above their beginings.  That's no miracle.

Now, should teachers get paid more?  Yes.

You don't think you can/should legislate paerntal involvement, and nobody expects you to change a students socioeconomic status, but somehow teachers are supposed to oversome those factors (with or without student desire to learn) and somehow "impart the information" you are supposed to.  How is that NOT a miracle?  It's certainly a heck of a lot harder than teaching a smaller class with motivated students/parents (say, in a suburban job) where people regularly go to college. 

Have you ever taught in the inner city, Derek?  It's no picnic.  Some kids have no faith in themselves, and some kids are downright hostile toward learning, both of which are attitudes fostered in the home, that the school has very little control over.  And when kids are getting up and walking out of class or shoving their teachers arm through a plate-glass wndow, it IS a gosh-darn miracle we get any of them to graduation.

It's demeaning to think that all teachers do is stand in front of a classroom and "impart knowledge."  You also have to try to motivate kids to absorb the information, and you just can't do it without some sort of parental support.  It just doesn't work.  That's why my district has a huge drop-out rate.  It's not that we're not doing our very best in a horrible situation to at least get some kids out of the hood and into college.

Believe me, I get it that some kids have horrible situations, and that it's not their fault.  I made that clear in my last post.  I choose to work in that environment anyway because I want to help people.  But don't for a second think that it isn't like pulling teeth, every single day.

Rating of teachers by a range of observers is fraught with dangers. For a 'rating' to be valid there needs to be efforts to establish Rater Reliability - that there is no hidden bias or counter definition of terms at work.Another approach is for various observers to gather objective data on the classroom behaviors. This needs to be done not by recording opinions, but by gathering data using clearly defined behaviors and recording frequency or duration of the behavior (i.e. Level of questions being answered by students or the teacher's response to student errors, etc). Please look at the eCOVE Observation Software (www.ecove.net), which does all this and more. Disclaimer: I wrote it after 30 years in the classroom.     If the data is presented to the teacher without praise, without criticism, and without 'solutions' it empowers the teacher to make changes as indicated, objectively test new curriculum or behavior plans, and measure incremental growth. Teachers are competent professionals who need less 'evaluation' and more objective feedback in the form of observation data - not anyone's opinion or judgment.  John@ecove.net

Not to mention, in the inner city there are plenty of parents who don't give a crap how their kid does in school.  They'd have them working at the family store every day instead of going to school if truancy court wasn't a threat.

Then there's the parents who speak no English and so can't possibly rate a class taught in English.

Then there are the parents who just want their kids to pass the grade, and don't care if they learn at all.

Then there's the fact that most of the motivated learners with suppotive families are going to magnet schools, charter schools, or Catholic schools.  The local neighborhood school gets the dregs.  Every student deserves the opportunity to learn and get a good education; not all of them want it.

Also, what about the high population of special education students, be they ADD, ADHD, OCD, Autistic, or Emotional Support?  Is it really fair to demand the same of them as we do of the kids with no learning disabilities and high IQs?

David,
Thanks for your comments. While some parents do have their children's best interest at heart, I've seen too many parents who are much more interested in their college-bound kid's GPA, or in their athlete's passing grade. We have lost sight of the LEARNING because we spent so much time measuring the learning with grades, and now all we care about are the grades. This is what makes me weary to trust parents.

I agree that parents are our customers and they should have a say. But I'd like to give them specific, objective criteria on which to "rate" teachers: does the teacher offer tutoring for struggling students? How quickly did the teacher return your phone calls/emails when you had a concern? How satisfied were you with the response? WHY? (Many parents were not satisfied with my response because I didn't say, "Sure, I'll give Johnny an A for that assignment he didn't turn in!" They must provide their rationale, which teachers and administrators will read to decide if it is, well, rational.) If your child was struggling, what did the teacher do to help him/her?

I don't want to give parents the power to evaluate my teaching, because parents do not have a background in education and don't know what it's like to deal with a classroom of students. But I think parents should be asked about the teacher's communication with the parent; approachability, accessibility, how teacher handled parent's complaints/concerns, etc.

Hear, hear!

And if a teacher is not happy, she should be able to leave that job when she realizes she is not the right person for that job, instead of being forced to wait until June (unless she wants to suffer ugly consequences). I realized in December that this gig is not for me, but I'm stuck in the classroom until the end of the year. If we had decent subs in the schools, it would be easier for a teacher to step down, leaving her class with a competent long-term sub.

Part of the reason we have so many bad teachers in schools is that there is no easy way to get out. I tried quitting the profession two years ago, but couldn't get another job outside of education (my job experience was not worth anything to employers outside academia). So when another teaching job came up, I told myself the problems had been with the other school, with the age of those students, blahblah... this would be different! Well, it wasn't.

It's very easy to go from any other job into education (because we are so desperate for people to fill the jobs), but it doesn't really work the other way around. We need to fix that, so the bad apples can get out of the barrel.

I love my students.  I get up and go to work in a dangerous neighborhood knowing the risks and the difficulties involved.  I really, firmly believe that all children deserve a good education.  I love teaching, and the kids love my class (not boasting, they tell me so to my face.)

The administration is making my life a living hell.  Maybe if teachers were supported by rather than attacked by administrators, we wouldn't have such issues with teacher morale and teacher turnover.