If nearly every teacher in your district receives one of the top two ratings, you already know the problem. The evaluation gets done, but the follow-up that helps a teacher improve often never starts. TNTP’s 2009 Widget Effect study found that in districts with two ratings, more than 99% of teachers were rated satisfactory, and 73% of teachers said their evaluation hadn’t identified any area for development. Of those with one flagged, only 45% got useful support.
That research is 17 years old, so we’re asking whether it still holds, and what it takes for an evaluation to lead somewhere.
We’ll explore:
- What happens after an evaluation, and who follows up
- What helps evaluators give honest, useful feedback to teachers
- How evaluation connects to professional learning
- How to bring stakeholders to the table to improve processes
