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5 Steps to Great Evaluation: A System to Guide Development, Careers

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Opportunity Culture models, which extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for higher pay within budget, change both the content and process of teacher evaluation—for the better. Public Impact’s newest, free, five-step toolkit, Evaluation, Accountability, and Professional Development in an Opportunity Culture: A Practical Guide, gives schools, districts, and states what they need to create an evaluation system that primarily guides teachers’ development and career opportunities.

An accompanying State Policy Brief speaks to anyone who wants laws and other policies to support the Opportunity Culture-style school culture focused on collaboration and excellence.

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How Blended Learning Can Improve the Teaching Profession

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DLN C&C coverHow can blended learning make things better for teachers? See Improving Conditions & Careers: How Blended Learning Can Improve the Teaching Profession, part of the Digital Learning Now! Smart Series, which Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel, Public Impact’s co-directors, wrote with John Bailey of Digital Learning Now! and Carri Schneider and Tom Vander Ark of Getting Smart.

In the report and accompanying infographic, the authors show how blended learning models, including some of Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture designs, can create better opportunities for teachers through more differentiated job models, more time for teacher collaboration, and meaningful teacher development. And the report takes a close look at how an Opportunity Culture uses the benefits blended learning can offer to let excellent teachers:

  • extend their reach in person to more students and to other teachers aspiring to excellence;
  • teach remotely, letting them reach students anywhere and have more flexible careers;
  • have opportunities for “boundless instruction,” expanding their impact by sharing content they create online.

With these possibilities come the need to remove policy barriers to blended learning; the report discusses items policymakers should consider in funding, evaluation, pay/career options, operations, timing and scalability, and performance incentives.

Teacher Evaluation Outside the One-Teacher-One-Classroom Mode

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As more schools use technology and new staffing models to reach more students with personalized learning and excellent teachers, how will evaluation systems keep up? It’s been a heavy lift for pioneering states and districts just to begin measuring the basics in a one-teacher-one-classroom mode. What can schools do to select, develop, and evaluate teachers in new roles—such as those working in elementary specialist teams, blending technology and face-to-face instruction, leading other teachers, or using any of these models while reaching students in remote locations via webcams?

As a start, Public Impact has published the Teacher and Staff Selection, Evaluation, and Development Toolkit, which provides detailed job descriptions and tools for interviewing, selecting, developing, and evaluating staff in these and other new school models. The toolkit helps schools match people to roles in which each person can contribute to excellence and continue developing skills and competencies. The materials are built to dock into existing teacher evaluation systems that include student outcomes and multiple measures.

Public Impact previously published detailed school models that use job redesign and technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, within budget. Most of the models create collaborative teams and enable stronger professional development on the job. In each of these models, teachers have career opportunities dependent upon their excellence, leadership, and student impact. Advancement allows more pay and greater reach. When excellent teachers reach more students, per-pupil funds are freed to cover higher pay and other priorities—in some cases for all teachers, not just the best. Teachers can learn from their outstanding peers. Most important, all students have excellent teachers in charge of their learning. We call this an Opportunity Culture, explained in this infographic.

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