Teachers, principals gear up for new evaluation systems

Sommer Frazier, a literacy facilitator at McGehee High School (bottom), and Renee Bennett, principal at Simon Middle School in Conway, along with other statewide school personnel, participate in a training session for BloomBoard, a new Web-based application tool they will be using for teacher observation, evaluation and professional development.
Sommer Frazier, a literacy facilitator at McGehee High School (bottom), and Renee Bennett, principal at Simon Middle School in Conway, along with other statewide school personnel, participate in a training session for BloomBoard, a new Web-based application tool they will be using for teacher observation, evaluation and professional development.

Arkansas public schools are moving forward with new statewide teacher and administrator evaluation systems in the coming 2014-15 school year, after piloting the systems this past year with at least one teacher and one administrator per school.

Until now, Arkansas schools and districts did not have mandatory, standardized evaluation systems for teachers and principals. Instead, every school district made its own decisions about how to handle employee evaluations, which typically amounted to the use of a check-off list of teacher skills.

The evaluation tool for teachers is called the Teacher Excellence and Support System, known by educators and policymakers as TESS. Principals will be evaluated using the Leader Excellence and Development System, known as LEADS.

To aid schools in carrying out the new evaluation systems, the Arkansas Department of Education has entered into a six-figure contract with BloomBoard, a 4-year-old company based in California and Pennsylvania, for an online data collection and management system.

Tasks such as scheduling a classroom observation of a teacher at work, taking notes during the classroom observation, providing feedback to the teacher and creating teacher growth or improvement plans can all be done via a password-protected website. On the same site, teachers can respond to the evaluation, do a self-evaluation, compile evidence or artifacts of their work, and seek resources for help and ideas.

"During the pilot of the evaluation system we really tried to get feedback from teachers and take the pulse of how things were going," said Ivy Pfeffer, Arkansas Department of Education assistant commissioner for human resources. "We knew early on that we were going to need a system for administrators and teachers to collect all the data through the evaluation process and just manage all the work."

That was confirmed by surveys of the teachers and administrators, Pfeffer said.

"Educators overall felt positive about having a system with clear criteria. They appreciate the feedback and support from the administrators," Pfeffer said about the survey results. "But one of the big concerns was the amount of time and the amount of paperwork. Although we had our forms available online, you still had a massive amount of paper to try to print off and do the evaluation."

BloomBoard will streamline the TESS and LEADS process, she said, adding that the BloomBoard data management system isn't itself an evaluation system, but it "powers" the evaluation systems.

To do an employee evaluation using BloomBoard, a school principal would observe a teacher at work in the classroom, using a laptop or a tablet to take notes on the website on what the principal sees and hears the teacher doing, Pfeffer said.

"The administrator can later read through the evidence -- 'The teacher greeted the students as they walked in the door' -- and see that the action aligns with [indicator] 2A or 2B of the evaluation system: 'Creating an environment of respect and rapport,'" Pfeffer said. "Or they may have noted that the teacher verbally read a set of instructions and also referred students to the print version. They could tag that evidence to 3A -- 'Communicating with students.'"

The system allows for the evaluator to share the evidence and evaluation with the teacher. It provides a place for teachers to set goals and make plans for improvement. The teachers can upload student work as evidence of the lessons and teaching strategies that have been used in their classrooms. There are also direct links, or hyperlinks, to videos, documents and other resources to aid with lessons, teaching methods and classroom management.

"You literally have everything you need in one place," Pfeffer said.

The state's new teacher evaluation system will result in the designation of a teacher as "distinguished," "proficient," "basic" or "unsatisfactory."

Ultimately, the rating will reflect both the results of the evaluation and the achievement growth of a teacher's students. The student-growth component will not become part of the rating, however, until there have been two years of results from the state's new student testing program. The new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam will be administered to students this coming school year after being piloted in the 2013-14 school year.

By 2018, the state must include on its annual school performance reports the number of proficient- and distinguished-rated teachers at a school. The BloomBoard system will make the data accessible for the state to comply with that reporting requirement.

It will also help identify areas of weaknesses and training needs, said Becky Gibson, education evaluation program adviser.

"It is a system that will allow for us to watch for trends regionally," Gibson said. "We can collect big data, not individual data, but big data to be sure we are targeting support where it is needed."

The original state contract for the BloomBoard data management system and training was for $495,000, Pfeffer said. The contract was recently amended to add more training at a cost of $35,000.

Training and technical assistance will be available throughout the school year. Some of the training was done in different regions of the state over the past two weeks. BloomBoard personnel conducted 20 half-day sessions for as many as 1,600 "Super Users" in Rogers, Jonesboro, Maumelle and Camden. Super Users are representatives from each school who are tech-savvy and comfortable enough with the new evaluation systems that they can help with the data management system training back at their schools, Pfeffer said.

At Maumelle High, Denise Dayton, a senior learning specialist for BloomBoard, told central Arkansas teachers that the common thread throughout the BloomBoard data management system is the emphasis on professional learning. Gone are the days when paperwork produced by a teacher and other paperwork filled out by a principal may or may not have made it into a folder, she said.

"If I don't have that data, there is nothing I can do to make improvements and track those improvements," Dayton said.

"BloomBoard provides a platform on which evidence can be gathered. It's transparent platform. It's also going to be evidence that is objective," Dayton said. "You can't wake up one morning and say, 'I feel pretty good. I think I've met all my goals.' How do you know that? BloomBoard will collect evidence over the school year, so you can reflect on the progress that has been made."

Brenda Robinson, president of the Arkansas Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, attended one of the training sessions at Maumelle High School last week and came away pleased with the system's interactive features that will allow a teacher and principal to communicate with each other, and allow teachers to share ideas, articles and videos.

"I think it's going to be a good tool," Robinson said. "It's going to help with the evaluation process. I do think it is going to take some time for everyone to get used to it, adjust to it, learn how to use it -- all the ins and outs of it."

Jana Dixon, a library/media specialist at Hot Springs Middle School, said she was using an online, free program to organize her professional growth plan and artifacts or evidence of her work.

"This is going to be more streamlined because it is specifically geared to the evaluation system," Dixon said.

BloomBoard, based in Palo Alto, Calif., and Pittsburgh, was started in 2010 by Jason Lange, who previously worked in an education-focused nonprofit venture philanthropy firm, and Eric Dunn, who previously built learning management systems for students.

The company now does work in 38 states. Arkansas is one of four states using the educator evaluation data management system statewide. The others are Colorado, Connecticut and Delaware.

The name of the company, according to its website, is meant to be a reflection of the company's work -- an online platform or "board" where teachers can grow or "bloom." Any similarity in the company's name to that of a former New York City mayor or to a business news service is "purely coincidental," the website said.

In Arkansas the system is going to make the new evaluation systems more palatable and beneficial to the users, Pfeffer said.

"We're excited about BloomBoard, because it is really going to streamline the evaluation process," she said. "Our ultimate goal is to get to a point where we are not about putting a label on a teacher but about collecting data and using that data to empower educators to make good decisions about their practices. That will make better opportunities for our students."

A section on 07/28/2014

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