As you are probably aware MCL 380.1249 was signed into law on January 4, 2010 requiring “annual evaluations of teachers and administrators”. This new requirement certainly adds responsibility, requirements, and significant costs to school districts’ already strapped budgets.
While teacher evaluation remains a mandatory subject of bargaining, the immediate effect of this section of the school code does not give districts the leeway to wait for existing contracts to expire to address this section of the law, according to consulted legal counsel. Certainly increasing the required frequency of tenured teacher evaluations by 200%, from once every three years to every year, is going to add significant time and responsibility levels to administrative ranks. To compound matters, cutting administration has been the focus of significant budget cuts the past 5+ years in all our districts. Also in many districts, all or most non-tenured teachers have been laid off leaving only tenured teachers in the district, so this requirement is truly a 200% increase in the number of evaluations required over a 3 year period for those districts. Our current system of negotiated employee evaluations, a majority of which are embedded in labor contracts, include processes which may have up to ten separate process steps, including multiple observations over the course of a year. This is actually a required process for non-tenured teachers. While this may have been appropriate and attainable under prior law when our contracts were negotiated, we also had limited number of non-tenured staff and only every third year for tenured teacher to consider. This is an unsustainable process under the requirements of the new law.
While many districts are struggling with the possibility of having to hire outside help to meet these requirements, one philosophy that has surfaced to help address the added time required to complete these additional evaluations is to involve the teachers in the process. The concept of utilizing a mutually acceptable (negotiated) teacher self-evaluation tool could help manage a significant portion of the administrative workload for the additional two annual evaluations beyond the tenure act requirements. This is especially true for that vast majority of teachers whose performance is “satisfactory” or above. The Widget Effect, a recently released study discussing teacher evaluation, uncovered some interesting data regarding teacher evaluation, including the fact that more then 99% of teachers evaluated were found to be “satisfactory” within the report. The report also goes on to discuss the many problems with our current antiquated evaluation systems. I would encourage you to read the Executive Summary, especially if you are involved in developing evaluation tools for your district.
A self-evaluation tool and process can have many positive outcomes. Self-evaluation requires an employee to be reflective and involved in their own performance measures which could lead to more intentional instruction aimed towards the building improvement plan. The administrator would still retain the responsibility for reviewing the self-evaluation, collaboratively making any adjustments, and signing the evaluation as an official record. For this vast majority of teachers that are satisfactory or above, this could significantly address the time requirements for building administrators. One caution is to be sure that this self-evaluation tool meets the standards of the 1976 Beebee v. Haslett Public Schools case, commonly known as the “Beebe Standards” for unsatisfactory removal of a tenured teacher. No business manager wants to pay out the thousands in costs associated with a tenure hearing only to lose AND pay back wages!
A similar self-evaluation tool and process could be used for the administrative evaluation requirement. Obviously the content of the evaluation tool would differ from that of a teacher. While there are as many definitions and interpretations of the definition of administrator as there are school attorneys in Michigan, this requirement may extend to the Chief Financial Officer in your district. If this is the case in your district, you will want to be part of the design phase of that evaluation tool. The uniqueness of our profession lends to the need of an equally unique evaluation tool, likely not the same measures as a principal evaluation tool.
Try to plug yourself into the conversations about educator evaluations that are happening in your districts right now. You may be surprised at what is being proposed in your district with unintended consequences to the district’s bottom line.