Open the Gates

Professional Practice is one of the fundamental principles at the core of education. I described the three fundamental principles (standards, data, and practice) in a recent post.

The current evolution of the story of professional practice is being told with the APPR. Across the state, districts are working on their APPR plans -- plans they hope will not only comply with regulations but also result in better teaching and leading. While districts are working on their APPR plans, administrators are being trained to be Lead Evaluators. The APPR regulations describe nine components about which Lead Evaluators must be trained. Those nine required components are all well and good, but they are not compelling. Being trained in those nine components might not result in effective evaluations. The nine components of training and the best district-made APPR plan can't result in improved student learning if certain conditions are not first in place.

Duffy Miller (and other past and present members of the Danielson Group) is training Network Teams from across the state about how to do teacher evaluations. Before the training about teacher evaluation proceeded too far, Duffy described the three conditions that must be in place for teacher evaluation to have any shot at making a difference; he called them the three "gates" of evaluation. These gates have to be open in order for you to pass through: fairness, reliability, and validity.

You can't pass through to the land of effective and productive teacher evaluation unless teachers perceive the system as fair. Think about how acutely tuned a child's sense of fairness is. Adults are no different. If we don't feel like a system that is being used to judge our performance is fair there is absolutely no way that we will be able to receive and respond to feedback. Our fairness radar works 24-7; we have to have a system that is fair and perceived as fair -- that's the first gate.

The second gate is reliability. A system of evaluation has to be reliable, which means that different evaluators and different contexts result in a similar evaluation and in similar provision of feedback. If the system works differently for different people on different days it is easy to recognize how unlikely it is that the system will produce meaningful learning or change.

The third gate swings on whether the system is valid. This means that the system has to provide the right feedback at the right time. Neither nonspecific feedback nor inaccurate feedback is helpful feedback. It is not valid, growth-producing feedback; it won't produce growth.

So, it is critical that you attend to these gates and make sure you leave them open and unlocked. No APPR plan and no Lead Evaluator Training program hold the key to these three gates if locked. Make deliberate and thorough plans to open them and keep them open.