By the time President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced in 2009 that the federal government would distribute $4.35 billion to states purposed for developing more intensive teacher evaluation systems, among other elements, Rhode Island already had begun to overhaul its decades-old evaluation process in favor of one that uses student learning as its central barometer of teacher effectiveness. The Rhode Island Board of Regents had already mandated that every district in the state develop a teacher evaluation system similar to the one desired by Obama.
The state's jump on the federal government put it in a prime position to win money from the Race to the Top fund, Obama's signature education initiative, and in 2010 the president announced that Rhode Island was one of 12 states to win federal funding to implement a teacher evaluation system, encourage charter school innovation, develop data-driven assessment standards and manage several other initiatives. The Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is implementing the new system, developed with approximately $18 million of the $125 million total it has received in federal funds - $75 million in 2010, and $50 million in 2011 - for the first time this year.
New evaluation
As students walked into their classes on the first day of school in September, it probably felt like any other year. But for Rhode Island teachers, the implementation of a new evaluation system means this school year will be markedly different.
In the final days of summer, teachers worked with their schools' principals to establish personal student learning objectives - quantitative measurements tracking student progress over the year - that the state will use to determine their effectiveness as educators.
These objectives represent the most significant innovation in this year's new system. The Race to the Top grant stipulates that Rhode Island must develop a standardized method for judging teacher effectiveness based on performance. Though student learning is often measured through standardized testing, no standardized test exists for the 70 to 75 percent of teachers who work outside of third through eighth grade math and science education. As a result, Rhode Island is mandating that all teachers set between two and four personal student learning objectives to be used in their own performance evaluations.
For example, a gym teacher might administer a physical test of pushups, sit-ups and a run to his students in September, then commit to a 25 percent improvement - more pushups, more sit-ups and a faster run - over the course of the year.
Critics of the objectives contend that teachers who create their own evaluation standards might succumb to the temptation to set easy goals, sacrificing student learning for a better evaluation, said John Tyler, professor of education, economics and public policy at Brown. But officials have expressed hope that principals, who will be rated based on their teachers' abilities to meet their student learning objectives starting this year, will prevent teachers from setting lax standards.
David Upegui, a state-commended science teacher at Central Falls High School, said he is worried that teachers who set high standards for themselves will be at a disadvantage against those who "fudge the numbers." Upegui, who found a state biology test used in Maryland and is administering it to his students at the beginning and end of the year to measure growth, said he was disappointed he was not able to risk a more difficult objective. "I want lower absenteeism rates, but that's too risky, because over 50 percent of my rating is riding on that goal," Upegui said.
Every teacher will also have to establish at least three professional growth goals every year. These assessments are a lot like student learning objectives, but focus on how the teacher can improve his or her technical development. Though an important component of the final effectiveness rating, the professional growth goals are weighted significantly less than student learning objectives.
Targeting effectiveness
Reformers hope that providing principals and administrators with a mechanism, however imperfect, to understand how teachers affect student learning will play a valuable role in fixing Rhode Island's underperforming schools, Tyler said. The student learning objectives are part of a broader effectiveness rating, which will be used to determine which teachers need additional training and - to a limited extent - which teachers can keep their jobs.
In addition to the required student learning objectives, evaluators - usually the teacher's principal, assistant principal or department head - will visit each classroom in the state at least three times for at least 20 minutes over the course of the year. The evaluator will provide the teacher with feedback after every meeting, which will also be used as a factor in the teacher's final effectiveness rating.
Every evaluator undergoes training in order to limit the amount of variability in an assessment and to guarantee that a rating will never be dependent on which evaluator the teacher has that day, Tyler said. The assessments are based on an open standard that measures a teacher's ability to make a difference for his or her students, he said.
Lynn Cristino, a coordinator in the Rhode Island Innovation Evaluation and Support System, defended the standardized criteria during an episode of LaborVision, the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers' online talk show about issues pertaining to teachers. "We're looking at evidence. This is more objective because we've trained all of our evaluators to look for the same things and make objective decisions based on that evidence," Cristino said.
The most controversial element of the evaluation system - tying the effectiveness rating to standardized tests - will not be part of this year's evaluations, because the state needs two years of data to establish a baseline reading on student performance, said Elliot Krieger, the executive assistant for communications in the office of the Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. A portion of the effectiveness ratings for math and science teachers between third and eighth grades will then be connected to their ability to improve their students' scores on state standardized tests.
Contrary to popular belief, Tyler said, teachers are not judged based on their students' total test scores, but rather on how much the students improve in a year, relative to others who began at the same level. A teacher who brings a student's score up from 70 to 75 will receive less credit than one who raises a student's performance from 30 to 50. But unlike some of the nation's other evaluation systems, the ratings do not take the students' race, socioeconomic status or home environment into account.
ord="Maribeth" data-scaytid="9">Maribeth Calabro, the vice president of the Providence Teachers Union, said she is worried that evaluating teachers based on test results might be unfair since examinations are "just a snapshot" of total learning. And the rating "is not encompassing enough of all the factors that go into a testing environment," she said. "For example, we have children with disabilities who are taking the eighth grade NECAP when they are on a first-or second-grade level." Calabro also criticized the inequity of using tests to evaluate some but not all teachers.
Using standardized tests to evaluate teachers remains controversial around the country, and Rhode Island's implementation stands out for its congeniality, Tyler said. The recent teachers strike in Chicago hinged largely on teachers' opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to tie effectiveness ratings to test scores.
The final effectiveness rating will be determined by combining elements of the student learning objectives, professional growth goals, feedback from evaluators and, when applicable, standardized test results. The evaluator will then assign each teacher a rating of highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective.
Rating teachers
Tyler identified two ways in which states and counties use teacher evaluation information as tools for professional development and as a sorting mechanism. Sorting methods use information about student achievement to reward good teachers and fire bad ones, he said. In Rhode Island, "the part that's talked about more is evaluation as a way to make teachers better," he added.
The teacher effectiveness ratings have no bearing on teacher salary, tenure decisions or bonuses. State Senator Donna Nesselbush, D-Pawtucket, introduced a bill in the General Assembly earlier this year that would have required teachers to receive three years of effective ratings before receiving tenure, but the bill did not gain any traction.
Teachers rated highly effective or effective have more leeway in pursuing new pathways of professional development, while those considered developing or ineffective are placed in peer assistance and review programs. These teachers receive observations and counseling from more experienced and successful teachers in an effort to raise their effectiveness ratings and improve student learning, Calabro said.
If teachers receive an "ineffective" rating five years in a row, they will automatically lose their certification and will no longer be permitted to teach in Rhode Island. This policy was not included in the original evaluation plan, but the Board of Regents added it last November.
The evaluation system gives Rhode Island a more comprehensive method for administering professional development, which can be valuable to student learning on its own without changing compensation or dismissal policies, Tyler said. Tyler's research over the past several years has studied whether teachers conforming to standards laid out in evaluation systems - like the one in Rhode Island - can positively affect student learning. He will publish a paper in the journal Education Next in December arguing that improved evaluations correlate with improved student learning.
"We're never going to have an evaluation system that's perfect," Tyler said. "But if we wait for the perfect evaluation system, we're going to still be waiting in 10 years."
New for all
The new evaluation system represents a fundamental change in how teachers are evaluated in the state. In previous years, only non-tenured teachers received annual evaluations, while those with tenure were observed every five years. There was little state guidance or standardization for how teachers were evaluated and little recourse to deal with ineffective teachers.
Not every district implemented the exact state model. The Race to the Top guidelines permit districts to either agree to the state's model or design their own. Providence and a few other districts around the state have signed onto the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers Innovation Consortium's model for evaluations. Providence educators developed the model alongside the state's teachers union, but its core elements remain similar to the "Rhode Island model."
Though teacher evaluations are new to the state this year, elements of the program were introduced last year to iron out kinks in the system before it went statewide. After last year's gradual implementation, the state decided to require teachers to develop fewer student learning objectives, but no other substantial changes were made, Krieger said.
