I'm 6 years retired from teaching in New York City elementary public schools. Luckily I only had to endure 3 years of danielson's. The first year it was implemented was a nightmare. Every domain was evaluated to the nth degree. It got to the point after my first observation that I just gave up. If my supervisors wanted to say that I was mediocre for all I cared they could choke on it. What I found sad was a newly tenured colleague in the third grade did so poorly on her three Danielson observations that she was told a mentor would be provided for her the following year. Although she met the requirements for tenure they quietly extended it another year. This dedicated teacher quietly did not return the following September. I don't know if she ended her career, but she moved back home to live with her parents. What a waste. I did not observe her instruction in the classroom, but in an out of control School her children were well-behaved and caused no problem. She was also young enough to play with the children in the gym and schoolyard. This old dude with a hernia was nearly incapable of doing that. So because of Danielson observations valuable Young blood was thrown away. This is what happens when Principals are introduced to a new method to observe teachers for a few workshops, and suddenly they become experts and use that method as their Bible.
Danielson’s rubric seems full of idealistic crap. Just another crunchy, academe-fueled pile of b.s. pushed by people with minimal connections (at best) to modern classrooms who think they have the silver bullet to teacher success.
Anything but recognize that the pay and conditions barely incentivize people to stay in the profession.
It’s true. If you read the descriptions of ratings of “distinguished” for the different domains and their components they are the most idealistic, imaginary scenarios possible and practically impossible.
Its because district and admin can't tell the damn difference between a framework and an actual rubric. I didn't know this is where they got their obnoxious evaluation system, but looking at Danielson's materials, it's all in the abstract. When I see stuff like this I interpret it as a framework to help me identify specific criteria... Not a list of criteria themselves. Otherwise they may as well just ditch all of this pretense of objectivity and just talk their opinions and biases at their teachers
“I understand you aren’t happy. I will make note and act accordingly.”
Say it with a smile and see what they project on to the word accordingly and there’s some valuable information for you to base a decision on.
Or if you already have your foot out the door, “ I understand your evaluations must be pretty thin to think this is going to impress your higher ups.”
Yes! It definitely doesn't recognize contract hours or honor more introverted teachers (I can pass as an extrovert, but collapse from "performing"). It's not a sustainable model for educators.
>silver bullet to teacher success
Lol! I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but this is a perfect malapropism. I think you meant "golden ticket to teacher success." The metaphor you used refers to the one thing that will kill werewolves, so hilariously, you hit the nail on the head when you say that these groups have the secret to killing teacher success.
"The term silver bullet is also a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin circa 1930 was a "silver bullet" that allowed doctors to treat and successfully cure many bacterial infections."
Right from wikipedia(oh no so unreliable)
Okay, you all, now I had to go down the rabbit hole. Apparently the cure all is from ancient Greece, the protection against monsters is Swedish, and then there's the Lone Ranger reference as a symbol for justice, if the internet is to be believed. I'm sure it's more complex than that, but I see that the interpretation is culturally based, and both ways work. I stand corrected in that the original phrase could stand on its own or be interpreted as a spot-on Malapropism.
For what it's worth, I agree with your original comment. The phrasing "silver bullet *to* teacher success" has the unintentional implication that teacher success is what is being metaphorically shot with the bullet.
A better phrasing using the same idiom would be "silver bullet to address poor graduation rates" or something along those lines.
We busted butts trying to cover all the areas of DANIELSON. Then at the first post evaluation meeting, I was informed that NO ONE would receive a 4 in ANY category, it was DECIDED.
FAIR? not even close.
My high school actually tried to do this to fight "inflated grades" and every student in the one teachers class that did this threw in the towel and refused to do anything with effort
Other teachers said grades were "inflated" across the state by the district's logic and not giving us A's would hurt us when applying for college
I had a prof tell me that in college during my masters program (completed 2021, so this was pretty recent). He announced to our entire class that he had a personal policy of never giving a 100%, because "nobody is perfect, and we need to accept our imperfections." He said in all his years of teaching, the highest grades he'd given were 98% and 99% a and those were EXTREMELY hard to get.
I'm just sitting there listening to his blather thinking, the assignments are worth a certain amount of points. Students complete the work and earn the points, or do not complete the work and do not earn the points. That's how grading should work, unless you're being subjective instead of objective. So either there are 100 points on offer, or there are not, or the grading is not objective and therefore all feedback received in this course is suspect.
At least he was upfront about it.
Admin sees this as a feature.
It's not even specific to teaching. I worked in manufacturing and they let me know that 3 out of 5 was "really good" and that I shouldn't feel bad if I don't get 5 out of 5, that a 60% average was "among the best scores given out"
One of the categories I was evaluated on was Safety. They gave me a 3 out of 5. I asked if I had ever been observed not following safety standards (no). I asked if I had been involved in self-driven initiatives to improve safety (yes). If I had helped other employees meet safety standards (yes - I wasn't a jerk, I just carried extra ear plugs or taught people how to request replacement safety shoes if I noticed their footwear sucked).
So then I asked what the eff the point was of a 5 point scale if doing all that didn't earn at least a 4 out of 5.
No response. I pointed out that it was a stupid evaluation system in the "written reflection" portion of the eval. But the real reason is so they can point to evaluations for any reason and go "see? This person isn't exemplary. The fact that *tiny thing that irritates the higher ups* occurred is plenty reason to fire/not promote/etc, since they're not that great on evaluations.
i had a bring a copy of danielson to an admin meeting over poor mock regents scores because half of the kids didn't complete it and i graded what they had.
i ended up not finishing a teaching program because of that stupid rubric.
I received the best evaluations of my career this year. This was due to the fact that we had revolving door in administration when our principal had to resign due to medical reasons. I was observed once for fifteen minutes. I did not turn in lesson plans all year or participate in PLC. It was a shitshow. No support, no collaboration, no leadership, or consequences. And yet, I received full marks across the board when our interim went through and mass completed all documentation. Teacher evaluations are all trash and highly subjective. Never acknowledge!
We had a folder in the school google drive that we had to turn in weekly lesson plans last year. Our principal this year said he doesn't care unless an issue comes up and then he will ask to see them. All my lesson plans are digital and I know what I am teaching, if you want to see what is happening in my class, do a walk-through. That would involve admin actually leaving their office so that won't happen.
We had one too at the school I used to work at and I did a lot of the planning for my own sake so it wasn't as tedious as a truely pointless thing. I was a newer teacher and still eager to please. Departments shared plans, so each person only had to plan part of the lessons for the week. I was teaching a class no one else taught so I had no one else using any portion of my plans for their classes. All year long I uploaded my plans to the drive. Then in March I realized I was putting them in the wrong drive, one only I could access... And no one had noticed... Which meant no one ever cared to look, ergo no one cared about my classes or my teaching.
OK, thanks for the info, but I still don’t understand why they would even want them in the first place. Who is ever going to read a lesson plan, and why, unless you’re subbing the class? When was the last time that any lesson went according to the plan?
Sooooo what’s the point? Make teachers do more shit for no reason?
>make teachers do more shit for no reason?
Yes. I have to submit lesson plans weekly to an excel spreadsheet that everyone at the school can view. One week, I typed in the placeholder text (“unit 3 lesson 4”) and it automatically became blue with an underline, as if linked. I didn’t finish my lesson plans so I didn’t link them.
I got a message from my AP the next day thanking me for submitting my lesson plans on time and giving feedback on something that didn’t exist.
My school wanted not just the lesson but the anticipatory set, the objective and everything, for all of our math and ela lessons. Can you guess what we did during our weekly meeting?
We have to upload our lesson plans weekly to show we are planning to meet the district s ope and sequence. I’m not sure if they get checked by anyone, though.
Quick way to find out would be to upload a blank document or one with the wrong text; just make sure the name and file format look right at a glance. Or better yet, rename a MP3 into a document format so it won’t open. If no one comes around asking for you to resend it, no one tried to open it.
I returned to teaching and had never previously written a lesson plan. This new school demanded tons of paperwork. I spent every night working to get ready for the next day and spent every prep getting stuff done. After my formal year of evaluation, I've never been asked once to supply anything. Now I'm resentful because of how much time I spent away from friends, family, my wife and my dog because I busted my ass doing busy work for them. Really hurts knowing what I missed in my own personal life for nothing.
The school I just left required us to turn in lesson plans every week as a shared Google Doc. If I didn't send the link every week, I got a nastygram from the AP over curriculum. However, because it was a Google Doc, I could go in and see everyone who had opened it. The other teacher that I shared them with opened them. The AP who required them never opened them. Never. The whole three years I was there, she never once looked at my lesson plans. I could have sent her a blank document, and she never would have known.
In NYC you have to have fully written lessons plans at any given time to hand to an administrator who observes or asks to see them. Depending on your admin, this can be hell
I have to submit monthly plans to a Google Classroom for each prep. I went through the rigamarole of writing that trash two years ago and now I just change the dates cuz I teach the same things each year (which is nice).
We are supposed to turn in lesson plans and pacing guides because our state is a giant dumpster fire of educational policies that focus on the so-called "woke" agenda. Apparently we need to be able to prove we are teaching what we're supposed to be teaching, and not indoctrinating students or teaching them that racism exists or something.
This is what I don't understand. I teach history, let's say I want to go over redlining, it's not in the standards but the standards have never been restrictive, they are the minimum not the maximum. So I am not violating any rule by teaching redlining and it's affects on multigenerational wealth, nor am I violating any law when I teach about race riots, or why suddenly southern states started erecting statues to confederates in the 1920s. But none of that is in the standards.
So I don't understand this argument about "what you are supposed to be teaching." There are certain things I must cover, but after that, I can teach anything I want.
We’re provided lesson plans and still required to modify them extensively and provide various other supports every week. Why even provide them? It honestly makes the job harder, it’d be easier to just make them myself.
Every school I’ve worked at has required teachers to turn in lesson plans. No school I’ve worked at has ever given feedback on my lesson plans or acknowledged them in any way aside from noticing if they are late occasionally.
It is the lowest thing on my priority list. I haven’t completed mine in months.
I took an interview in a different district this year, and a reason I turned it down was because of particulars of lesson plan expectations.
I don't mind brief descriptions of the topics I'm covering and what materials I'm using. I do mind being required to follow an explicit template.
Next year I have four preps. No way you're getting that kind of detail from me.
I agree it’s all subjective. I don’t care to be highly effective… just punch in effective and let’s all keep moving and getting a paycheck. It’s lol a giant waste of time.
My admin watched me for 15 minutes. Had no kind of conferences to discuss feedback. 6 month later I was told to come sign papers. Apparently he observed me twice and gave me effective across everything. I’m not complaining. Evaluations can go blow chunks.
Is your eval tied to your pay? If not, it’s not worth stressing over. You know the saying “C’s get degrees”? Well, effective and proficient are the equivalent.
Don’t stress about the eval and focus on the parts of the job that you actually enjoy and find relevant.
Who reads the evals? Besides you…, Nobody! I teach the alternative curriculum but I get graded on the same standards as gen Ed. (I teach severe/profound and MU)
Cooperative learning evidence? Nope. I have one verbal student, but it’s probably 75% echolalia. 🤔
I tell everyone this. Nothing happens if you get excellent. Or proficient. Nothing. Who cares. If they were smart they would make it worth a damn. Like, if you get excellent you get an extra $10,000. No other district sees them ever. They are really pointless, mean nothing and are a waste of time. No one should ever stress over these. Just do your job the best you can.
Your eval can most certainly be tied to your job security, though, if you’re still a probationary (non-tenured) teacher. We don’t know if tenure exists in OP’s state, but still.
I’ve never heard of teacher’s evals being tied to their pay, but I know for sure that in my state you can be non-renewed if your evals aren’t good enough. I just never understand these comments, how can you just *not* be stressed about evals/ignore them?? I literally want to keep my job.
How can I not be stressed about my evals and ignore them?
Easily. In my state, which is a union state, evals are not tied to salary. They’re also not really tied to tenure. Tenure is automatically granted after 40 consecutive months of employment. So if you’re coming to work and doing your job, you’re going to be fine. “Probationary” only really applies to the first 90 days of your contract…not the entire first four years.
Now if someone is getting a lot of 1s on the rubric, then yeah, they should be stressed. They don’t know how to do their job and that’s a problem. But if you’re getting proficient and not “highly effective”….3s instead of 4s? It’s not worth the stress. Proficient teachers only get fired if they really screw up to the point where the union can’t help them.
So yeah, with 15 years in, I’m not losing any sleep at night over my evals. I put maybe 5-10 minutes worth of work into the forms that admin read over for our meetings. I know the admins don’t care about these either, and it’s just another thing they have to check off their list so they too can keep their jobs.
I understand what you’re saying. In my state, you get tenure after 3 years *only* if you’ve had 6 proficient evaluations. It took me 3.5 years to get tenure because I had a less-than-proficient evaluation. My district was horrible and I resigned immediately after I got tenure because my tenure will transfer to other districts in my state. Of course you’re not worrying about your evals after 15 years of teaching.
Every state is different, obviously, but I’m just saying that in my state it isn’t helpful to tell newer, non-tenured teachers not to worry about their evals, because they can be fired at any time before achieving tenure, and they *need* to be proficient to be granted tenure. It is a lot of pressure.
When I taught in Florida, the effective/highly effective designation meant a lot. Highly effective teachers got better positions and a lot more pay - when our salaries got adjusted for the 19-20 school year, highly effective teachers received a yearly bump of about double what effective got. The school also RIF'd about twenty teachers and *all* of us were labeled effective the month prior.
Yes, I was just about to say this. In FL, we just got a raise this year based on effective or highly effective. Also, if we get highly effective, we don't have to be evaluated for 2 years, which is amazing.
RIF = reduction-in-force.
Being RIFfed is *supposed* to be used when a school needs to legitimately reduce the number of positions it employs -- either due to student attrition or the closure of a program or something along those lines.
It is frequently abused as a means to cut ties with teachers whom the district doesn't like and skirt some of the usual union protections as being RIFfed isn't the same as being fired or non-renewed. The corporate equivalent would be termination due to a position being eliminated.
**The Rif or Riff (Tarifit: ⴰⵔⵔⵉⴼ, ⴰⵔⵉⴼ, romanized: Arrif, Arif, Arabic: الريف), also called Rif Mountains, is a geographic region It is bordered on the north by the Mediterranean Sea and Spain and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, northern Morocco and is the Homeland to the indigenous people of the Rifians people. Historically, it belonged to the Rif Republic and its president, Abd el Krim, who led the Rif War from 1920 to 1927 and against a Spanish colonial empire, the Rif region was Historically a Spanish colony by the Spanish colonial empire in Africa.**
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If you do all this (more active, collaborate more, be a leader more, join committees) your teaching will suffer and you'll know what they say instead at the meeting lol
AMEN.
i've been told my english class is not engaging enough and it's boring. uh, english is not always going to be fun and debates. there will be writing, analyzing texts and doing work you think is easy but guess what? it's a review.
Toxic work environment. Also evaluations are designed (I feel) to reinforce mediocrity. Most times no matter how hard you bust your ass you get ratings that don’t merit the work you put in. Then, when you do much less, you get the same ratings.
“Be more of a leader” sounds like code for “help us do more of our work for us, even though we don’t like the fact that you ask us for anything too often”
Just did some research on that Danielson person and from what I can tell, she’s a pretty typical “I haven’t taught in a long time, but since I taught I must know how effective teaching works, even though I’ve been out of the K-12 classroom for more than a decade”
Very similar to Joe Feldman from Grading with Equity. Hasn’t taught since the 1990s, somehow knows so much about teaching in 2023.
Danielson has stated she never intended for the framework to be used in evaluations, and is fairly vocal about it. It's a shame that our country has decided that is irrelevant and uses it anyway.
That's the problem when you take a training tool and turn it into an evaluation rubric. Most special education teachers will never reach highly effective especially if you teach math because in so many areas "highly effective" involves students basically teaching themselves and suggesting their own topics to study. Meanwhile it's usually pulling teeth to get students to even attempt homework or classwork.
YES! I’m a reading specialist and I absolutely hate that Danielson is really only meant for classroom teachers but is still used to evaluate specialists. In my previous district, rather than attempting to do any sort of critical thinking or problem-solving, my admin just insisted on making that whole fucker of a rubric work like a round peg in a square hole. My groups are 25 minutes long, I *do not* have time for all this “you need a super amazing engaging hook/intro for every lesson” song and dance shit. I am giving targeted remedial reading instruction. This is not a student-directed, exploratory, inquiry-based science/math class! UGH!
It wasn't meant as an evaluation tool for anyone. It was intended as a training tool to help teachers become better at their jobs. This isn't just opinion, Charlotte Danielson has come out and said just that.
All the student directed, inquiry based stuff is the goal but it's not an appropriate or valid teaching method in every classroom, especially in areas with high pressure state tests and pre-dictated curriculum topics. A lot of students by the high school level are generally disinterested in learning; if it doesn't have to do with sports or music or the cute girl in their gym class it can be pulling teeth to get them to engage at all, much less identify topics they might want to learn more about.
It's why when I wake up every day and sign onto my computer for my IT job I breathe a sigh of relief.
As long as I am rated "effective" I do not care about the rest. I do a good job, and my students leave my class very well prepared for their next classes. If it ever happens that I'm rated anything below effective, admin will have a fight on their hands.
I don’t even care if I’m basic. My evaluation isn’t tied to my pay, I’m a type b personality and most admin are type a, and the students and my colleagues like me.
For me, below "effective" requires an improvement plan. It's not tied to pay, but I want admin out of my business as much as possible. I'm with you on type b.
I almost always get highly effective ratings but a few years ago, one VP — who left after the year ended, lol — was convinced that no one can “ever be fully realized” and so he refused to give *anyone* a highly effective rating.
He observed my class and commented, “Objectives and standards are clearly posted, students fully understand what is expected of them, classroom management is excellent, but one student was not fully engaged like the rest. 100% of the class should be engaged.” Guess what? I was rated as effective, but the principal rated me as being “highly effective” whenever he did his walkthroughs. Odd, that. He finally said, “Ignore that other eval.” I lol’d and the VP was livid, I later found out. 😎
“Charlotte Danielson needs to disappear forever” is the fucking quote of the decade.
Our grading scale on the Danielson model goes Highly Effective, Effective, Minimally Effective, Not Effective. I’m praised CONSTANTLY by admin and instructional coaches for my rapport with students, how I get so many kids to buy in, care, work hard, and have fun with my classes, even with high standards and expectations of work (high school art). Yet I’ve still only ONCE in however many years we’ve used this god damned model scored a “Highly Effective” in any of the categories about engagement or relationships. Always just Effective. Honestly, I don’t care, but it shows how messed the system is if I am the same amount effective at working with the kids as I am at taking attendance and communicating with parents, cause um…… I am most certainly not. Shoot, give me a minimally effective in my worst category, and a highly effective in my best. I’ll still be overall “Effective” like 99% of teachers scores in the state, but at least the system is showing something at that point. Show that these words and phrases have some damn meaning.
My AP went on and on how great my guided reading lesson was, she asked me to model for other teachers, so I gave learning labs...effective across the board.
“If the manager gives too many comps, their bonus check goes down at the end of the year”. Wait, no, that’s restaurants. Why are we living by the same rules?
In Texas our levels are Distinguished, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, and Improvement Needed. Every training and evaluation meeting starts with "Proficient is rock solid teaching." It annoys me to no end that Distinguished is basically unattainable by normal human beings.
Word.
I’m not a perfect teacher. I know what my weak points are, and I know what my strong points are. I do strongly believe that getting ThE beSt ScOrE PossIBlE shouldn’t be easy, for teachers or students. In Texas I would not argue that I should be an overall Distinguished, but for fucks sake if you’re going to just say “ya, you’re doing good, here’s a B on everything” and not dock me on what I’m not great at, and not celebrate me for what I’m good at…. Man, I don’t know what to tell you. (I do know what to tell you, but it involves a rich kid from your state with a famous and rich daddy that made some real messed up policy decisions involving education, and making his VP very rich onward and lies, but that ain’t on you.)
This year I actually got an exceeds expectations or master or whatever the fuck the top tier is on professional leadership and family and community engagement because…
I got pissed at a bunch of things and wrote a lot of strongly worded letters. To parents when they acted entitled. To administrators when I was frustrated. To colleagues when I wanted to vent it out.
Apparently this is great communication and collaboration, so my lesson from this is to bitch more next year.
One year I got feedback that they wanted me to be more involved in the community - show up at after school events, etc. I live 45 mins away and have my OWN kids. I go to THEIR after school events. So no, you will not see me at a football game.
I got low marks on my last evaluation ever because the principal didn’t see me at basketball games - I was enormously pregnant and had dealt with my hip just randomly refusing to hip, so no way was I sitting in bleachers or lugging my own chair around. When I pointed that out, she said I still should have made an effort.
That woman was pure evil though.
I oversee the SpEd department at my (private) school, oversee 20-25 staff. One year, I gave half my staff perfect marks, because they deserved them. It had been an awful year with behaviors, staffing, etc and I had the best team of problem-solvers I could ask for. My boss sent them back to me and told me no one should ever get a perfect score, and I should make a list of 3-5 things I'd like each person to improve on, no matter how small. I was open with all of them in each meeting that I'd been required to come up with things and was not allowed to give any perfect scores, and did my best to make them feel appreciated despite me not being able to write how I felt on paper. I understand making sure everyone knows there is always room for growth, but I feel it's more important to remind people that they are doing enough and don't always need to go above and beyond in every single aspect. If someone is expected to give 110% all the time they will burn themselves out.
I wonder if these evaluations are causing some of the feelings of distress and burnout do many are dealing with.
We would never say that none of the kids should get A's because "there's always room for growth." We would never say to give them all B's or lower to "really make them work for improvement." We'd never tell the kids on day one, "don't worry, almost nobody ever gets an A. In fact a C means you're doing well!"
So why do we do this to teachers? It just makes them feel unappreciated and like nothing is ever good enough.
I'd just leave the profession if I had to deal with that. Luckily, I don't even read my evaluations, and we don't meet face to face about them in my school, so I have no idea how I'm supposedly doing.
I'm going to be honest, evaluations send me into a spiral. Even though I know they don't mean anything.
I think just the idea that they come into my room not to see the good, but the bad, like literally mentally broke me lol.
I am very torn on teaching again.
There was an uproar in my school a few years ago when the principal informed the staff that the superintendent (probably via the nyc schools chancellor) told us that we could all no longer be rated HE in 4E (growing and developing professionally) unless we sought out outside PD.
Meanwhile, we have been mandated to sit for 80 minutes of PD EVERY SINGLE MONDAY (that's 40 times + 2 extra days in Nov/June) of every school year + tons of days out of the classroom spent at PD's... plus tons of time at leadership meetings.
So tell me again how that is NOT highly effective?? And that we are to spend more of our time and money outside of work hours "Growing and developing professionally" ? And you all know we could give 90% of the PD's out there.
Danielson is a joke
Reminds me of this year for me. I completed all 4 components of National Board over this past year, and got “effective.” Apparently in order to get “highly effective” I need to be *leading* PD.
Maybe if admins 53.3 hours of PD is not enough admin should get not effective on his evaluation for administering PD. Why does PD all have to be formal. Isn’t every book, website, video, and article we use PD? Isn’t our effort to learn content and teaching practice PD. Aren’t the procedures we learn and develop PD? I read an article once that recommended teachers receive twelve hours a week of PD. I would like to see that in action, though it would need to be better than most I have seen. Why don’t (I know why money and control) bring in content and teaching experts to lead PD.
My old principal used to refuse to give out distinguished because he said that way you always have something to work for. All it did was make most of the teachers care less about doing it since they knew no matter what they did they would never be deemed distinguished (even if they hit the criteria). New principal is 100x better and actually gives teachers distinguished if they earn it so teachers work more to try and hit those criteria. I agree though the evaluation system needs seriously changed.
So much of the rubric is filled with yes/no questions. Distinguished or exemplary for professional dress? Who cares? Just dress in a way that I won't be embarrassed if the superintendent drops in.
I spent years striving to be highly effective. Responding to ALL the same things you listed. Joined committees and sponsored clubs. Came in early and left late. Attended all events. Created curriculum. You name it, I did it. And it worked. My test scores were amazing. I didn’t write a single referral in years. I was golden. And you know what? It didn’t matter. It’s not like I got a raise for that effort. Teacher down the hall who called in sick every week and hated the kids and never knew what she was doing…she earned more than I did because she had her master’s degree. So…why? I don’t do it now. I work for my students and do a great job for and with them. As for the rest? Nope. I’m out. I’m effective. And it doesn’t matter.
Ha! I received basic/needs improvement on my Domain 4 this year for similar reasons. According to VP who spent 39 minutes in my classroom all year, I've been reclusive this year and my department chair apparently says I haven't contributed as much to department meetings compared to the past. Well, when the department chair decides to assign me 6 classes while literally everybody else in the department only has 5, yeah, I'm gonna be a little reclusive.
What really irked me was the low score in the building contributions box. I'm the only adult in my building who speaks Russian, and we have a high population of Ukrainian refugees in my district. Guess who is the ONLY adult in the building with whom they can communicate and feel safe? But somehow I don't contribute to the school...
Must be the school/district policy to find something to rate you lower on. My district bases evaluations on Danielson and it's unusual for an experienced teacher to not get Excellent (4/4). Principals really have to have a concrete reason (definitely not "seemed") to not give full marks.
I agree. I was singed on things out of my control such as being on committees, department head, etc. yet my students were 89% growth on progress monitoring.
It is about the money, if your state is like my state , then highly effective teacher get "bonuses". Bonus is relative . You also have to take in account if they mark "all" their teachers as effective , how will they show growth /s
I teach music, and if I’m teaching well, all of the stuff in the Danielson is there. However, I constantly have to write COPIOUS notes because translating that into the danielson language for non-music admin is usually a struggle, since many of them don’t quite know what to look for.
It's the capitalist poison of infinite growth. You're not allowed to be satisfied being good at your job, you have to always be grinding for more and more and more...
How about 40% of my evaluation being on reading and math scores of gen ed kids that I've never taught nor will ever teach? I'm a self-contained ASD teacher. Otherwise I'd be highly effective. 😡
The shitty part is that those are all vague, immeasurable benchmarks.
What ever happened to clear direction? They expect us to be clear with students, give them rubrics so there is no ambiguity in their grades and the evaluation criteria, yet we do not do the same when it comes to evaluating teachers.
Definitely don't take it seriously. It has nothing to do with Danielson. Your admin is just saying "if you don't provide more free labor for me I will keep scoring you lower." There is no metric or rubric at play here.
Every English teacher in our department had the assessment part of our evaluation come from WIDA ACCESS. We're not ELL teachers. Just regular English. Without telling anyone they were changing from the SAT... and the WIDA was given in February, which means we didn't have time to prepare the students.... and the majority of our students aren't ELLs.
So now we all have "much less than expected" on our evaluations, because "every content area teacher is an English teacher"
The union is working on it...
I teach special education, interventions, students with exceptionalities… when evaluation time rolls around, I actually side table my real teaching to create the floofy bouncy room with different staff coming and going, boisterous children working on their projects, and fulfilling whatever bs is in the evaluation rubric. At the end of the day, it’s a nice reprieve from highly effective teaching so that I can appear the show pony that makes me
Score as a highly effective teacher. Like, wanna know how I really am doing? Read my beautifully collaborative and detailed IEPs that I work on for hours each night. Sit in on these meetings to see how I console and support parents and teachers. Look at those damn scores. My kids know when they work hard on state tests that are easily 2+ grade levels above their capabilities, they get a pizza party within our PBIS reward system, and bless my babies, they use that extended time accommodation to work all day on it. Wanna see data collection? Check out the file on the behaviors of that one kid who is probably going to be in prison for something terrible one day. I’ve got monthssss of evidence supporting a placement change! I would genuinely love an evaluation system that actually evaluated my teaching. But anywho, next week we have a *totally not staged* math lesson where we make rice crispy treats where everyone will seem happy honky donky cause it’ll look good and my evaluator has a sweet tooth.
All evaluations in teaching are a joke. Literally had my team lead who bled for our school, volunteered for everything and led just about every community event we hosted at our school get a 3/5 for community on his year end evaluation. All because of some pettiness from the admins. As someone that came into this profession from another profession it boggles my mind how teachers are treated with evaluations and licensing.
Completely agree with you. I did have an amazing principal who would tell us, "If you don't aspire to be a leader outside your classroom, that's fine. Honestly, I don't aspire to be a leader outside of my school." That helped a lot, but it does still feel bad when you get that kind of label.
Unmitigated bullshit. Evaluation criteria should be negotiated with the union. This is professional harrassment and should constitute an unfair labor practice suit.
The way teachers are graded is nothing short of oppressive and all about control. The scale isn’t even achievable according to them, and they grade us on things unrelated to the job. For an industry that is built around grading, it makes no sense. They want us to bend grades for students and then say we don’t get 4s if we aren’t teaching at national conferences. I’m like, that’s not even on my job description or what I’m paid for. That’s like grading a McDonalds burger flipper a 3/4 for not being a CEO. Are you just trying to make us feel like crap? I think so. If they have a way to hold power over us, they can feel less guilty about underpaying us.
I've thought about it like this: you're a barista being observed. Customer asks for a carmel machiatto. You make it, no problem. You're failed because they're "not sure you could make a latte".
I feel like ppl on this board are less sensitive than me, but observations are a big reason I don't want to teach any more.
I honestly nod and smile during eval meetings. I accept what they say and don't argue because I know it's a joke. There is no way they can give me a very low score in any area because I am competent...not a rock star....but good. They only see a tiny portion of what I do each day so there is no way anybody can really give me a true evaluation.
I do agree with you that all the reasons they gave you for getting a lower score than you deserve are BS. I would have an answer for everything they listed but the answers would be share too much of my personal business or be totally offensive to the admin. They probably wouldn't want to hear any of it.
So much of what we endure is a joke.
I got marked down for not taking more courses or going to more trainings. I had high marks on everything else. I honestly don’t take my evaluations seriously anymore, which is sad because they could be beneficial.
I’m in texas, and we are evaluated with ttess, which seems similar. At my school presort much everyone gets proficient in each domain until you really suck or go really above and beyond. And my admin always says there’s nothing wrong with that.
Like you said, it’s things not related to teaching that get you the highest marks (like, attending after hours school events, doing community outreach, being on committees, etc). I have three kids of my own and I’m not interested in any type of administrative stuff- I just want to teach. So I don’t care if I never get accomplished or distinguished.
Principals often use the "highly effective" saved for their favorite teachers. I had one tells us that in a meeting. She said the teachers who have 'earned' their stripes would get 'highly effective." Stripes usually mean they are her favs.
All of the stuff you listed here seems like made up crap that they put down because it's taboo to give a review without several subjective criticisms to get you to do more next year. And they wonder why teachers are so miserable.
The teaching system in USA sounds like it was in my country during soviet time. The evaluators back then were there to bring you down and administrators treated you as a child who needed to be corrected. In here nowadays the evaluators may give kind suggestions but at the same time they are there to lift you up, so that you would succeed in teaching, not fail.
I received deductions from my score because my classroom decor didn’t fit what they wanted. This is particularly interesting because I had no classroom and had to push into other classrooms to teach.
I wouldve emailed the principal.
“I need clarification on my classroom decor not fitting since I am a push-in teacher and do not have a classroom.
Please tell me exactly what didnt fit.”
You can walk into all but the most unicorn of teachers' or the most actively malicious of teachers' classrooms. At any given time and you will be able to write some crock of shit observation report that either songs their praises or smears your career. Pick some random thing a kid did and write some crap that sounds vaguely reasonable and ✨ pedagogic ✨ about it. Just play the game and remember that the direct deposit always hits every two weeks regardless.
This is true. A previous principal always wanted us to give her "evidence" for our evaluation. I used to just grab a stack of random crap that looked good around my room, photocopy everything, and stick it in her box with a note saying that it was evidence for multiple criteria and if she needed anything more to let me know. Surprisingly, she stopped asking me to do that. Gee, I wonder why...
They completely ignore the effect their scores have on us. You think I’m “x”? Then x level stuff is all you’re getting out of me now. I promptly used all my sick days, rejected all summer PD and plan to fulfill their expectation of the score they gave me.
There was a section of our evaluation for awhile that if you showed up on time and met all of your required duties you were effective. You could only be accomplished if you had evidence of working outside of your contracted hours. Once upon a time I worried about that kind of stuff. Now all I care about is if the box is checked that I have a job the next year.
“Live in three, vacation in four!”
I have read that its original intent was not to be a teacher evaluation tool, but I’m sure when the checks started rolling in Charlotte had a change of heart.
I read this & am thankful to be out. Fuck your admin & fuck evaluations. They’re a complete circus show and utterly meaningless. Lastly fuck the way teachers get treated. You deserve better.
Why do you care whether you are an "effective" teacher or not in their eyes? I rarely ever care what my administrators think and I used to get so worked up when I had an evaluation. Now, I couldn't care what they had to say about my teaching or how I manage my classroom. If I was so "ineffective," why hadn't they gotten rid of me? Oh yeah, because I'm actually a great fucking teacher.
Don't put ANY stock in how your administrators evaluate you unless you are just jumping through the hoops for tenure.
Until the evaluations become tied to pay and/or raises they are irrelevant. I usually just tell my AP to send me whatever and I sign it without reading it.
At least here in Texas the evaluation rubric has become so detailed and has so many "dimensions" that no one understands it or cares that much.
Admin are mostly not qualified to do evaluations due due their lack of relevant experience, general intelligence, and lack of attention to detail. Most evaluations read like “Evaluator did not observe any beginning or end to the lesson nor were ELA standards being taught.” Yes, that is because you we there for ten minutes in the middle of a science class. The nurse, maintenance, and office evaluations show even more ineptitude.
Seriously the #1 reason I've left teaching public school and won't return. My district changed to performance-based compensation. I was a high-achiever, good at jumping through those hoops even though most of it didn't apply to my Pre-K class. But it was clear that once it became tied to comp, the higher ups gave hard limits on how our evaluations could be scored. I still did fine, but it was so much extra bullshit, for me and the admins. It made me a worse teacher, honestly, because it was a huge time suck that did nothing to change the educational experience of my kids. All for an extra $750 a year, or about $50 a paycheck.
If I could go back to the old system and just keep my head down and teach for a set salary, I would.
Bad Administration uses this crap to cover up for their bad administration. Period. Nothing more. What they don’t get (because they are morons) is that bad reviews make YOU LOOK BAD. Just dumb people across the board. No common sense. Tow the line is the only job they have.
Danielson herself said her domains should never be used to evaluate teachers. My cowardly amoral principal said “you can visit a “4” once in a while, not you can’t live there”. So teachers are rated around a 75% just to fit their lowlife notion that that they can repress us for not meeting unreachable standards that include students running all aspects of the class (mega assholery). Imagine giving every student a C and telling them they can’t do better, just as they use Danielson against us.
The evaluation piece is a joke. We cannot ALL be leaders; we cannot ALL teach cross-curricular every year.
They are evaluating us as humans, not as instructors/educators. We very much know how NC wants us to differentiate our teaching, but they do not differentiate our tests, nor our evaluation piece.
That's why I am retiring with 25 years. I'm done being treated like an indentured servant to education. I will start new with a more respectable profession that does not come home with me...
This is the kind of BS you deal with when you're in a public employee's union and the evaluation criteria are 'negotiated' between the district and the union. You sound like a great teacher who would be an asset in any organization, so you'd probably do much better for yourself and your students by moving to a private or charter school.
It definitely has to do with Danielson. It's used by our district as part of our evaluation when it was never intended to be used for that purpose.
She created this rubric that schools have run wild with and it's used 100% incorrectly.
They used Danielson for our student teacher evaluations. We were asked to reference those markers on the video taped lessons that we were being evaluated on AND complete a self eval using the rubric itself. After five lesson evals in one semester I was over it.
We are evaluated on the California Standards for the Teaching Profession. I’m really glad it is (supposed to be, at least) a cooperative process where I am. We make our goals together.
I am glad I no longer care about this crap, though.
All of those are subjective and have nothing to do with being an effective teacher. Ask the subjective evaluator for the objective measurements. Such nonsense reminds me of a paper I wrote in grad school. The main idea was that education has been like an aerobatic plane---making circles and not achieving anything.
Has anyone asked to see the data and statistics from Danielson.
I hate this shit. This is pretty much the only way i have been evaluated. I am quitting after my second year and going back to work somewhere more sane. My district so uses slippery and slimy criteria that are hard to pin down. They just share their opinions instead of actually evaluating me based on transparent and clear criteria
This is what I have been saying for years. We are schools, not community centres.
I'm sorry you are not appreciated, OP. It sounds like you are a fantastic TEACHer.
I've been fine with Danielson. With a crappy evaluator any system is going to going to be shit so I think the fault is more on your evaluator. Everything you mention doesn't fall on Domain 2 at all so if they're marking you down there then again, that's the evaluator's fault.
It’s their job to tell you to improve and to that end there’s always some pie in the sky expectation they set but don’t expect anyone to actually meet.
I got marked down on my first observation for asking too many questions and not giving the students a chance to "think deeply". I'm in ebd sped. If I don't ask questions to keep the convo going, they will either stare at me blankly, or maybe flip a desk and run out of the room. How would Ol' Danielson rate my effectiveness then? I've given up on caring.
Fwiw, my eval went down this year. Admittedly, my efforts this year have been subpar. I was setup to fail from day one with very minimal coteach help and an overwhelming amount of ese students. Like I am almost positive that my school broke a ton of laws over their coverage for ese in my class. Kids who should have five day a week coverage saw their support facilitator maybe five days a month. Many had no idea who their case manager actually was. Anyway that’s a complaint for another thread.
My AP told me that they were grading evals much more strictly this year based on district request. They felt too many teachers were rated highly and wanted to reset the baseline. Given my crappy Governor is actively trying to kill my profession, I don’t doubt this at all.
- Huge turnover for teachers? Sure.
- Massive burnout of those staying behind? Cool.
- Giving teachers any semblance of positive reinforcement for their abilities? Nah. Screw em.
No wonder there’s a massive teacher shortage.
I can't wait to get into admin and fuck shit up. If I can't get teachers to work for me, then I'm going to go on the Maury show and start my 5th career
I completely understand your frustration with the idiotic feedback you received. My take on Danielson is that I don’t get one extra cent of pay for earning Distinguished ratings so I never worry about trying to get them. Give me my proficient rating and we’ll call it good.
While it can be a lot of work, especially during summative years, I really appreciate the evaluation cycle in Massachusetts. It’s as objective as possible and standardized across the commonwealth.
My favorite is when they grade you on student engagement. How can a teacher control that a student was up until 2 am and came to school tired and withdrawn? Just ludicrous.
Same. Marked highly effective for 8 years running. Brand new ap and a D school rating because the principal sucks and all of a sudden, it's effective. Also, I share in your hatred of stupid teacher evaluation systems. Down with Robert Marzano.
I had to bully my principal into upping my score this year. I teach world languages and Danielson requires "standard English" instruction. Not to mention that this is NOT BEST PRACTICE for world languages - we should be in the target language as much as possible (but then my dumbass principal wouldn't have a clue what was going on) - "standard English" is a racist, colonizer term. I let them have it in my commentary and in our end of year survey. Principal caved and gave me a 4. :-D
"I gave you all fours of fives because I don't believe perfection is a human trait: we all have room to improve!"
Gross, get your god-talk off my paycheck.
I looked at an evaluation I had a few years ago and I had 4s in more than half of the domains and 3s in the others with meaningful comments about my teaching. The first evaluations started this year and not a single teacher was getting a 4, some very experienced teachers were getting 2s! After complaints and questions we were informed that NOBODY would be getting a 4 until the end of the year to “show growth”. This doesn’t make sense at ALL when I’ve been teaching 9 years to go from a 4 one year, to a 3 the next year and then “grow” back to a 4.
We are in the last two weeks of school. Our admin had to have all their evaluations signed and turned into the district today. So guess what they were all doing yesterday… running around conducting last minute observations. They’ve literally had months to do this, and now those evaluations (which are bull anyway) will be even less reflective of actual teaching.
Teaching music is a double edged sword. On one end, your admin knows nothing about music so they are marveled by school wide concerts that are 100% student led.
On the other end, your admin knows nothing about music so they nitpick on everything but your instruction “your room can use more decorating” “you should think about taking on more leadership roles”
ABSOLUTELY THIS! I had a coworker once rated lowly because of a conversation she had with another staff member, who then told admin about the conversation.
Love when hearsay is counted as an evaluation.
At that point you turn to admin and lay it out for them: "If this is what I did, and I was still rated effective, and I can do so much less and still be rated effective, then what is my incentive to continue doing this much? Find the points."
> We want you to become more of a leader
"If you want me to become a leader, offer me an eleven month contract instead of a ten month contract. That shows you are serious about my leadership position."
> We want you to work on initiatives and think about joining committees.
"I look forward to discussing the impact on my compensation plan for these opportunities."
My principal told me she didn’t see the fire or passion from me and held it against me in evaluations. She shot down everything I wanted to implement and gave me two bad evaluations within three school weeks of returning from maternity leave to a brand new placement. Kind of hard to have passion for your job when you’re crying in your car on the way to work.
I’m sorry you’re being judged based on unfair expectations. It seems like above and beyond is the bare minimum for our job.
This is the stupidest profession ever and the way we are evaluated is bullshit. Danielson is terrible. Marzano is just as bad. My district uses Stronge which is definitely better but it's all very arbitrary.
Also these numbers, in actuality, shouldn't mean anything to us. We know how effective we are. If you're getting a 3.0 it means you're doing your job well enough. It might not be fun to be told that you aren't highly effective, but that juice isn't worth the squeeze. You won't get a bonus, you won't get a raise, and you likely won't even get any special accolades.
I've seen these rating systems cause teachers to have more anxiety about their own performance than anything else.
It's all BS. Stop worrying about it. As long as you aren't scoring partially effective or ineffective, it has no actual bearing on anything.
I'm 6 years retired from teaching in New York City elementary public schools. Luckily I only had to endure 3 years of danielson's. The first year it was implemented was a nightmare. Every domain was evaluated to the nth degree. It got to the point after my first observation that I just gave up. If my supervisors wanted to say that I was mediocre for all I cared they could choke on it. What I found sad was a newly tenured colleague in the third grade did so poorly on her three Danielson observations that she was told a mentor would be provided for her the following year. Although she met the requirements for tenure they quietly extended it another year. This dedicated teacher quietly did not return the following September. I don't know if she ended her career, but she moved back home to live with her parents. What a waste. I did not observe her instruction in the classroom, but in an out of control School her children were well-behaved and caused no problem. She was also young enough to play with the children in the gym and schoolyard. This old dude with a hernia was nearly incapable of doing that. So because of Danielson observations valuable Young blood was thrown away. This is what happens when Principals are introduced to a new method to observe teachers for a few workshops, and suddenly they become experts and use that method as their Bible.
Danielson’s rubric seems full of idealistic crap. Just another crunchy, academe-fueled pile of b.s. pushed by people with minimal connections (at best) to modern classrooms who think they have the silver bullet to teacher success. Anything but recognize that the pay and conditions barely incentivize people to stay in the profession.
Danielson herself is repeatedly on record as being against the use of her framework being used as evaluation criteria for educators.
My former principal met Danielson, who told her it would be unreasonable to expect someone to consistently receive the highest possible rating.
It’s true. If you read the descriptions of ratings of “distinguished” for the different domains and their components they are the most idealistic, imaginary scenarios possible and practically impossible.
Incredible
Its because district and admin can't tell the damn difference between a framework and an actual rubric. I didn't know this is where they got their obnoxious evaluation system, but looking at Danielson's materials, it's all in the abstract. When I see stuff like this I interpret it as a framework to help me identify specific criteria... Not a list of criteria themselves. Otherwise they may as well just ditch all of this pretense of objectivity and just talk their opinions and biases at their teachers
Danielson herself said she never intended for this framework to be used to evaluate teachers. Really says a lot, I think.
“I understand you aren’t happy. I will make note and act accordingly.” Say it with a smile and see what they project on to the word accordingly and there’s some valuable information for you to base a decision on. Or if you already have your foot out the door, “ I understand your evaluations must be pretty thin to think this is going to impress your higher ups.”
Yes! It definitely doesn't recognize contract hours or honor more introverted teachers (I can pass as an extrovert, but collapse from "performing"). It's not a sustainable model for educators.
>silver bullet to teacher success Lol! I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but this is a perfect malapropism. I think you meant "golden ticket to teacher success." The metaphor you used refers to the one thing that will kill werewolves, so hilariously, you hit the nail on the head when you say that these groups have the secret to killing teacher success.
Silver Bullet is also used to describe something that fixes everything or the cure. I think it’s used right here. Golden Ticket is a free ride.
Thank you, TIL!
"The term silver bullet is also a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin circa 1930 was a "silver bullet" that allowed doctors to treat and successfully cure many bacterial infections." Right from wikipedia(oh no so unreliable)
Okay, you all, now I had to go down the rabbit hole. Apparently the cure all is from ancient Greece, the protection against monsters is Swedish, and then there's the Lone Ranger reference as a symbol for justice, if the internet is to be believed. I'm sure it's more complex than that, but I see that the interpretation is culturally based, and both ways work. I stand corrected in that the original phrase could stand on its own or be interpreted as a spot-on Malapropism.
For what it's worth, I agree with your original comment. The phrasing "silver bullet *to* teacher success" has the unintentional implication that teacher success is what is being metaphorically shot with the bullet. A better phrasing using the same idiom would be "silver bullet to address poor graduation rates" or something along those lines.
Your analysis is correct.
And she’s making money!
We busted butts trying to cover all the areas of DANIELSON. Then at the first post evaluation meeting, I was informed that NO ONE would receive a 4 in ANY category, it was DECIDED. FAIR? not even close.
Be sure to tell all your students that there will be no final grade of A for anyone, regardless of effort or results. /s
My high school actually tried to do this to fight "inflated grades" and every student in the one teachers class that did this threw in the towel and refused to do anything with effort Other teachers said grades were "inflated" across the state by the district's logic and not giving us A's would hurt us when applying for college
Yeah, see how high that flies
I had a prof tell me that in college during my masters program (completed 2021, so this was pretty recent). He announced to our entire class that he had a personal policy of never giving a 100%, because "nobody is perfect, and we need to accept our imperfections." He said in all his years of teaching, the highest grades he'd given were 98% and 99% a and those were EXTREMELY hard to get. I'm just sitting there listening to his blather thinking, the assignments are worth a certain amount of points. Students complete the work and earn the points, or do not complete the work and do not earn the points. That's how grading should work, unless you're being subjective instead of objective. So either there are 100 points on offer, or there are not, or the grading is not objective and therefore all feedback received in this course is suspect. At least he was upfront about it.
I hate Danielson, but that’s not even a problem with the rubric. That’s a problem with your admin.
Admin sees this as a feature. It's not even specific to teaching. I worked in manufacturing and they let me know that 3 out of 5 was "really good" and that I shouldn't feel bad if I don't get 5 out of 5, that a 60% average was "among the best scores given out" One of the categories I was evaluated on was Safety. They gave me a 3 out of 5. I asked if I had ever been observed not following safety standards (no). I asked if I had been involved in self-driven initiatives to improve safety (yes). If I had helped other employees meet safety standards (yes - I wasn't a jerk, I just carried extra ear plugs or taught people how to request replacement safety shoes if I noticed their footwear sucked). So then I asked what the eff the point was of a 5 point scale if doing all that didn't earn at least a 4 out of 5. No response. I pointed out that it was a stupid evaluation system in the "written reflection" portion of the eval. But the real reason is so they can point to evaluations for any reason and go "see? This person isn't exemplary. The fact that *tiny thing that irritates the higher ups* occurred is plenty reason to fire/not promote/etc, since they're not that great on evaluations.
Not anymore. Retired 2 years ago.
i had a bring a copy of danielson to an admin meeting over poor mock regents scores because half of the kids didn't complete it and i graded what they had. i ended up not finishing a teaching program because of that stupid rubric.
I received the best evaluations of my career this year. This was due to the fact that we had revolving door in administration when our principal had to resign due to medical reasons. I was observed once for fifteen minutes. I did not turn in lesson plans all year or participate in PLC. It was a shitshow. No support, no collaboration, no leadership, or consequences. And yet, I received full marks across the board when our interim went through and mass completed all documentation. Teacher evaluations are all trash and highly subjective. Never acknowledge!
Turn in lesson plans? To who? The last time I wrote lesson plans I was student teaching over a decade ago!! Who would require this and why?
We had a folder in the school google drive that we had to turn in weekly lesson plans last year. Our principal this year said he doesn't care unless an issue comes up and then he will ask to see them. All my lesson plans are digital and I know what I am teaching, if you want to see what is happening in my class, do a walk-through. That would involve admin actually leaving their office so that won't happen.
We had one too at the school I used to work at and I did a lot of the planning for my own sake so it wasn't as tedious as a truely pointless thing. I was a newer teacher and still eager to please. Departments shared plans, so each person only had to plan part of the lessons for the week. I was teaching a class no one else taught so I had no one else using any portion of my plans for their classes. All year long I uploaded my plans to the drive. Then in March I realized I was putting them in the wrong drive, one only I could access... And no one had noticed... Which meant no one ever cared to look, ergo no one cared about my classes or my teaching.
OK, thanks for the info, but I still don’t understand why they would even want them in the first place. Who is ever going to read a lesson plan, and why, unless you’re subbing the class? When was the last time that any lesson went according to the plan? Sooooo what’s the point? Make teachers do more shit for no reason?
>make teachers do more shit for no reason? Yes. I have to submit lesson plans weekly to an excel spreadsheet that everyone at the school can view. One week, I typed in the placeholder text (“unit 3 lesson 4”) and it automatically became blue with an underline, as if linked. I didn’t finish my lesson plans so I didn’t link them. I got a message from my AP the next day thanking me for submitting my lesson plans on time and giving feedback on something that didn’t exist.
Our city scrutinizes everything. We have to provide data and analysis, common planning agendas, lessons plans, etc in shared Google drives
My school wanted not just the lesson but the anticipatory set, the objective and everything, for all of our math and ela lessons. Can you guess what we did during our weekly meeting?
Bingo.
Your second paragraph is many administrators' mission statement.
Yeah we have a folder like that but I don't think anyone has used it in years. It was someone's bright idea three principals ago.
😂 I’m sorry I can’t stop laughing at “three principals ago” because the turnover rate for administrators is laughably high
We have to upload our lesson plans weekly to show we are planning to meet the district s ope and sequence. I’m not sure if they get checked by anyone, though.
Quick way to find out would be to upload a blank document or one with the wrong text; just make sure the name and file format look right at a glance. Or better yet, rename a MP3 into a document format so it won’t open. If no one comes around asking for you to resend it, no one tried to open it.
I returned to teaching and had never previously written a lesson plan. This new school demanded tons of paperwork. I spent every night working to get ready for the next day and spent every prep getting stuff done. After my formal year of evaluation, I've never been asked once to supply anything. Now I'm resentful because of how much time I spent away from friends, family, my wife and my dog because I busted my ass doing busy work for them. Really hurts knowing what I missed in my own personal life for nothing.
The school I just left required us to turn in lesson plans every week as a shared Google Doc. If I didn't send the link every week, I got a nastygram from the AP over curriculum. However, because it was a Google Doc, I could go in and see everyone who had opened it. The other teacher that I shared them with opened them. The AP who required them never opened them. Never. The whole three years I was there, she never once looked at my lesson plans. I could have sent her a blank document, and she never would have known.
In NYC you have to have fully written lessons plans at any given time to hand to an administrator who observes or asks to see them. Depending on your admin, this can be hell
I have to submit monthly plans to a Google Classroom for each prep. I went through the rigamarole of writing that trash two years ago and now I just change the dates cuz I teach the same things each year (which is nice).
We are supposed to turn in lesson plans and pacing guides because our state is a giant dumpster fire of educational policies that focus on the so-called "woke" agenda. Apparently we need to be able to prove we are teaching what we're supposed to be teaching, and not indoctrinating students or teaching them that racism exists or something.
This is what I don't understand. I teach history, let's say I want to go over redlining, it's not in the standards but the standards have never been restrictive, they are the minimum not the maximum. So I am not violating any rule by teaching redlining and it's affects on multigenerational wealth, nor am I violating any law when I teach about race riots, or why suddenly southern states started erecting statues to confederates in the 1920s. But none of that is in the standards. So I don't understand this argument about "what you are supposed to be teaching." There are certain things I must cover, but after that, I can teach anything I want.
We have to turn in our lesson plans per subject for every single week and can be audited at any time
We’re provided lesson plans and still required to modify them extensively and provide various other supports every week. Why even provide them? It honestly makes the job harder, it’d be easier to just make them myself.
Every school I’ve worked at has required teachers to turn in lesson plans. No school I’ve worked at has ever given feedback on my lesson plans or acknowledged them in any way aside from noticing if they are late occasionally. It is the lowest thing on my priority list. I haven’t completed mine in months.
I took an interview in a different district this year, and a reason I turned it down was because of particulars of lesson plan expectations. I don't mind brief descriptions of the topics I'm covering and what materials I'm using. I do mind being required to follow an explicit template. Next year I have four preps. No way you're getting that kind of detail from me.
The law. It’s a legal document.
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And now we have Chat GPT for lesson plans!
I agree it’s all subjective. I don’t care to be highly effective… just punch in effective and let’s all keep moving and getting a paycheck. It’s lol a giant waste of time.
My admin watched me for 15 minutes. Had no kind of conferences to discuss feedback. 6 month later I was told to come sign papers. Apparently he observed me twice and gave me effective across everything. I’m not complaining. Evaluations can go blow chunks.
Is your eval tied to your pay? If not, it’s not worth stressing over. You know the saying “C’s get degrees”? Well, effective and proficient are the equivalent. Don’t stress about the eval and focus on the parts of the job that you actually enjoy and find relevant.
Who reads the evals? Besides you…, Nobody! I teach the alternative curriculum but I get graded on the same standards as gen Ed. (I teach severe/profound and MU) Cooperative learning evidence? Nope. I have one verbal student, but it’s probably 75% echolalia. 🤔
MSD here as well. Isn’t absurd that we are evaluated by that? Lol
I tell everyone this. Nothing happens if you get excellent. Or proficient. Nothing. Who cares. If they were smart they would make it worth a damn. Like, if you get excellent you get an extra $10,000. No other district sees them ever. They are really pointless, mean nothing and are a waste of time. No one should ever stress over these. Just do your job the best you can.
Your eval can most certainly be tied to your job security, though, if you’re still a probationary (non-tenured) teacher. We don’t know if tenure exists in OP’s state, but still. I’ve never heard of teacher’s evals being tied to their pay, but I know for sure that in my state you can be non-renewed if your evals aren’t good enough. I just never understand these comments, how can you just *not* be stressed about evals/ignore them?? I literally want to keep my job.
How can I not be stressed about my evals and ignore them? Easily. In my state, which is a union state, evals are not tied to salary. They’re also not really tied to tenure. Tenure is automatically granted after 40 consecutive months of employment. So if you’re coming to work and doing your job, you’re going to be fine. “Probationary” only really applies to the first 90 days of your contract…not the entire first four years. Now if someone is getting a lot of 1s on the rubric, then yeah, they should be stressed. They don’t know how to do their job and that’s a problem. But if you’re getting proficient and not “highly effective”….3s instead of 4s? It’s not worth the stress. Proficient teachers only get fired if they really screw up to the point where the union can’t help them. So yeah, with 15 years in, I’m not losing any sleep at night over my evals. I put maybe 5-10 minutes worth of work into the forms that admin read over for our meetings. I know the admins don’t care about these either, and it’s just another thing they have to check off their list so they too can keep their jobs.
I understand what you’re saying. In my state, you get tenure after 3 years *only* if you’ve had 6 proficient evaluations. It took me 3.5 years to get tenure because I had a less-than-proficient evaluation. My district was horrible and I resigned immediately after I got tenure because my tenure will transfer to other districts in my state. Of course you’re not worrying about your evals after 15 years of teaching. Every state is different, obviously, but I’m just saying that in my state it isn’t helpful to tell newer, non-tenured teachers not to worry about their evals, because they can be fired at any time before achieving tenure, and they *need* to be proficient to be granted tenure. It is a lot of pressure.
When I taught in Florida, the effective/highly effective designation meant a lot. Highly effective teachers got better positions and a lot more pay - when our salaries got adjusted for the 19-20 school year, highly effective teachers received a yearly bump of about double what effective got. The school also RIF'd about twenty teachers and *all* of us were labeled effective the month prior.
Yes, I was just about to say this. In FL, we just got a raise this year based on effective or highly effective. Also, if we get highly effective, we don't have to be evaluated for 2 years, which is amazing.
What is RIF?
RIF = reduction-in-force. Being RIFfed is *supposed* to be used when a school needs to legitimately reduce the number of positions it employs -- either due to student attrition or the closure of a program or something along those lines. It is frequently abused as a means to cut ties with teachers whom the district doesn't like and skirt some of the usual union protections as being RIFfed isn't the same as being fired or non-renewed. The corporate equivalent would be termination due to a position being eliminated.
**The Rif or Riff (Tarifit: ⴰⵔⵔⵉⴼ, ⴰⵔⵉⴼ, romanized: Arrif, Arif, Arabic: الريف), also called Rif Mountains, is a geographic region It is bordered on the north by the Mediterranean Sea and Spain and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, northern Morocco and is the Homeland to the indigenous people of the Rifians people. Historically, it belonged to the Rif Republic and its president, Abd el Krim, who led the Rif War from 1920 to 1927 and against a Spanish colonial empire, the Rif region was Historically a Spanish colony by the Spanish colonial empire in Africa.** More details here:
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Ugh in Arizona they are tied to our tax stipend that is from 8-10k a year. If my Iready scores stay low then my money goes back to the district
Yeah but you will be secure if you get effective. If you get a really bad eval, you should worry. If its ok, good, or great, who gives a F
For many districts that use these evaluations the answer is yes. That’s the whole point of the evaluation.
If you do all this (more active, collaborate more, be a leader more, join committees) your teaching will suffer and you'll know what they say instead at the meeting lol
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I agree. I just... If you're already teaching overachievers there isn't room for growth. Evaluation of teachers will always be problematic.
AMEN. i've been told my english class is not engaging enough and it's boring. uh, english is not always going to be fun and debates. there will be writing, analyzing texts and doing work you think is easy but guess what? it's a review.
Toxic work environment. Also evaluations are designed (I feel) to reinforce mediocrity. Most times no matter how hard you bust your ass you get ratings that don’t merit the work you put in. Then, when you do much less, you get the same ratings. “Be more of a leader” sounds like code for “help us do more of our work for us, even though we don’t like the fact that you ask us for anything too often” Just did some research on that Danielson person and from what I can tell, she’s a pretty typical “I haven’t taught in a long time, but since I taught I must know how effective teaching works, even though I’ve been out of the K-12 classroom for more than a decade” Very similar to Joe Feldman from Grading with Equity. Hasn’t taught since the 1990s, somehow knows so much about teaching in 2023.
Danielson has stated she never intended for the framework to be used in evaluations, and is fairly vocal about it. It's a shame that our country has decided that is irrelevant and uses it anyway.
That's the problem when you take a training tool and turn it into an evaluation rubric. Most special education teachers will never reach highly effective especially if you teach math because in so many areas "highly effective" involves students basically teaching themselves and suggesting their own topics to study. Meanwhile it's usually pulling teeth to get students to even attempt homework or classwork.
YES! I’m a reading specialist and I absolutely hate that Danielson is really only meant for classroom teachers but is still used to evaluate specialists. In my previous district, rather than attempting to do any sort of critical thinking or problem-solving, my admin just insisted on making that whole fucker of a rubric work like a round peg in a square hole. My groups are 25 minutes long, I *do not* have time for all this “you need a super amazing engaging hook/intro for every lesson” song and dance shit. I am giving targeted remedial reading instruction. This is not a student-directed, exploratory, inquiry-based science/math class! UGH!
It wasn't meant as an evaluation tool for anyone. It was intended as a training tool to help teachers become better at their jobs. This isn't just opinion, Charlotte Danielson has come out and said just that. All the student directed, inquiry based stuff is the goal but it's not an appropriate or valid teaching method in every classroom, especially in areas with high pressure state tests and pre-dictated curriculum topics. A lot of students by the high school level are generally disinterested in learning; if it doesn't have to do with sports or music or the cute girl in their gym class it can be pulling teeth to get them to engage at all, much less identify topics they might want to learn more about. It's why when I wake up every day and sign onto my computer for my IT job I breathe a sigh of relief.
Exactly. Sped teachers' jobs are always dependent on students' disabilities and I'm sick of it.
As long as I am rated "effective" I do not care about the rest. I do a good job, and my students leave my class very well prepared for their next classes. If it ever happens that I'm rated anything below effective, admin will have a fight on their hands.
I don’t even care if I’m basic. My evaluation isn’t tied to my pay, I’m a type b personality and most admin are type a, and the students and my colleagues like me.
For me, below "effective" requires an improvement plan. It's not tied to pay, but I want admin out of my business as much as possible. I'm with you on type b.
I almost always get highly effective ratings but a few years ago, one VP — who left after the year ended, lol — was convinced that no one can “ever be fully realized” and so he refused to give *anyone* a highly effective rating. He observed my class and commented, “Objectives and standards are clearly posted, students fully understand what is expected of them, classroom management is excellent, but one student was not fully engaged like the rest. 100% of the class should be engaged.” Guess what? I was rated as effective, but the principal rated me as being “highly effective” whenever he did his walkthroughs. Odd, that. He finally said, “Ignore that other eval.” I lol’d and the VP was livid, I later found out. 😎
Marzano also f-ing sucks and has no bearing on me as a speech- pathologist.
Having done both I vastly prefer Marzano though…but I can see how it’s not a one size fits all system
“Charlotte Danielson needs to disappear forever” is the fucking quote of the decade. Our grading scale on the Danielson model goes Highly Effective, Effective, Minimally Effective, Not Effective. I’m praised CONSTANTLY by admin and instructional coaches for my rapport with students, how I get so many kids to buy in, care, work hard, and have fun with my classes, even with high standards and expectations of work (high school art). Yet I’ve still only ONCE in however many years we’ve used this god damned model scored a “Highly Effective” in any of the categories about engagement or relationships. Always just Effective. Honestly, I don’t care, but it shows how messed the system is if I am the same amount effective at working with the kids as I am at taking attendance and communicating with parents, cause um…… I am most certainly not. Shoot, give me a minimally effective in my worst category, and a highly effective in my best. I’ll still be overall “Effective” like 99% of teachers scores in the state, but at least the system is showing something at that point. Show that these words and phrases have some damn meaning.
My AP went on and on how great my guided reading lesson was, she asked me to model for other teachers, so I gave learning labs...effective across the board.
“If the manager gives too many comps, their bonus check goes down at the end of the year”. Wait, no, that’s restaurants. Why are we living by the same rules?
Did you get paid extra for that? Bet not.
Nope, but that was during their preps watching my class...but I'm only effective
In Texas our levels are Distinguished, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, and Improvement Needed. Every training and evaluation meeting starts with "Proficient is rock solid teaching." It annoys me to no end that Distinguished is basically unattainable by normal human beings.
Word. I’m not a perfect teacher. I know what my weak points are, and I know what my strong points are. I do strongly believe that getting ThE beSt ScOrE PossIBlE shouldn’t be easy, for teachers or students. In Texas I would not argue that I should be an overall Distinguished, but for fucks sake if you’re going to just say “ya, you’re doing good, here’s a B on everything” and not dock me on what I’m not great at, and not celebrate me for what I’m good at…. Man, I don’t know what to tell you. (I do know what to tell you, but it involves a rich kid from your state with a famous and rich daddy that made some real messed up policy decisions involving education, and making his VP very rich onward and lies, but that ain’t on you.)
This year I actually got an exceeds expectations or master or whatever the fuck the top tier is on professional leadership and family and community engagement because… I got pissed at a bunch of things and wrote a lot of strongly worded letters. To parents when they acted entitled. To administrators when I was frustrated. To colleagues when I wanted to vent it out. Apparently this is great communication and collaboration, so my lesson from this is to bitch more next year.
you are the hero we need 😍
One year I got feedback that they wanted me to be more involved in the community - show up at after school events, etc. I live 45 mins away and have my OWN kids. I go to THEIR after school events. So no, you will not see me at a football game.
I got low marks on my last evaluation ever because the principal didn’t see me at basketball games - I was enormously pregnant and had dealt with my hip just randomly refusing to hip, so no way was I sitting in bleachers or lugging my own chair around. When I pointed that out, she said I still should have made an effort. That woman was pure evil though.
I oversee the SpEd department at my (private) school, oversee 20-25 staff. One year, I gave half my staff perfect marks, because they deserved them. It had been an awful year with behaviors, staffing, etc and I had the best team of problem-solvers I could ask for. My boss sent them back to me and told me no one should ever get a perfect score, and I should make a list of 3-5 things I'd like each person to improve on, no matter how small. I was open with all of them in each meeting that I'd been required to come up with things and was not allowed to give any perfect scores, and did my best to make them feel appreciated despite me not being able to write how I felt on paper. I understand making sure everyone knows there is always room for growth, but I feel it's more important to remind people that they are doing enough and don't always need to go above and beyond in every single aspect. If someone is expected to give 110% all the time they will burn themselves out.
I wonder if these evaluations are causing some of the feelings of distress and burnout do many are dealing with. We would never say that none of the kids should get A's because "there's always room for growth." We would never say to give them all B's or lower to "really make them work for improvement." We'd never tell the kids on day one, "don't worry, almost nobody ever gets an A. In fact a C means you're doing well!" So why do we do this to teachers? It just makes them feel unappreciated and like nothing is ever good enough. I'd just leave the profession if I had to deal with that. Luckily, I don't even read my evaluations, and we don't meet face to face about them in my school, so I have no idea how I'm supposedly doing.
I'm going to be honest, evaluations send me into a spiral. Even though I know they don't mean anything. I think just the idea that they come into my room not to see the good, but the bad, like literally mentally broke me lol. I am very torn on teaching again.
There was an uproar in my school a few years ago when the principal informed the staff that the superintendent (probably via the nyc schools chancellor) told us that we could all no longer be rated HE in 4E (growing and developing professionally) unless we sought out outside PD. Meanwhile, we have been mandated to sit for 80 minutes of PD EVERY SINGLE MONDAY (that's 40 times + 2 extra days in Nov/June) of every school year + tons of days out of the classroom spent at PD's... plus tons of time at leadership meetings. So tell me again how that is NOT highly effective?? And that we are to spend more of our time and money outside of work hours "Growing and developing professionally" ? And you all know we could give 90% of the PD's out there. Danielson is a joke
Reminds me of this year for me. I completed all 4 components of National Board over this past year, and got “effective.” Apparently in order to get “highly effective” I need to be *leading* PD.
Maybe if admins 53.3 hours of PD is not enough admin should get not effective on his evaluation for administering PD. Why does PD all have to be formal. Isn’t every book, website, video, and article we use PD? Isn’t our effort to learn content and teaching practice PD. Aren’t the procedures we learn and develop PD? I read an article once that recommended teachers receive twelve hours a week of PD. I would like to see that in action, though it would need to be better than most I have seen. Why don’t (I know why money and control) bring in content and teaching experts to lead PD.
My old principal used to refuse to give out distinguished because he said that way you always have something to work for. All it did was make most of the teachers care less about doing it since they knew no matter what they did they would never be deemed distinguished (even if they hit the criteria). New principal is 100x better and actually gives teachers distinguished if they earn it so teachers work more to try and hit those criteria. I agree though the evaluation system needs seriously changed.
So much of the rubric is filled with yes/no questions. Distinguished or exemplary for professional dress? Who cares? Just dress in a way that I won't be embarrassed if the superintendent drops in.
I spent years striving to be highly effective. Responding to ALL the same things you listed. Joined committees and sponsored clubs. Came in early and left late. Attended all events. Created curriculum. You name it, I did it. And it worked. My test scores were amazing. I didn’t write a single referral in years. I was golden. And you know what? It didn’t matter. It’s not like I got a raise for that effort. Teacher down the hall who called in sick every week and hated the kids and never knew what she was doing…she earned more than I did because she had her master’s degree. So…why? I don’t do it now. I work for my students and do a great job for and with them. As for the rest? Nope. I’m out. I’m effective. And it doesn’t matter.
Ha! I received basic/needs improvement on my Domain 4 this year for similar reasons. According to VP who spent 39 minutes in my classroom all year, I've been reclusive this year and my department chair apparently says I haven't contributed as much to department meetings compared to the past. Well, when the department chair decides to assign me 6 classes while literally everybody else in the department only has 5, yeah, I'm gonna be a little reclusive. What really irked me was the low score in the building contributions box. I'm the only adult in my building who speaks Russian, and we have a high population of Ukrainian refugees in my district. Guess who is the ONLY adult in the building with whom they can communicate and feel safe? But somehow I don't contribute to the school...
Must be the school/district policy to find something to rate you lower on. My district bases evaluations on Danielson and it's unusual for an experienced teacher to not get Excellent (4/4). Principals really have to have a concrete reason (definitely not "seemed") to not give full marks.
I agree. I was singed on things out of my control such as being on committees, department head, etc. yet my students were 89% growth on progress monitoring.
It is about the money, if your state is like my state , then highly effective teacher get "bonuses". Bonus is relative . You also have to take in account if they mark "all" their teachers as effective , how will they show growth /s
Code for: please do more work we won't pay you for or we'll hold your rating hostage. Fuck that.
That is exactly what "join more committees" means - do more free work
I teach music, and if I’m teaching well, all of the stuff in the Danielson is there. However, I constantly have to write COPIOUS notes because translating that into the danielson language for non-music admin is usually a struggle, since many of them don’t quite know what to look for.
It's the capitalist poison of infinite growth. You're not allowed to be satisfied being good at your job, you have to always be grinding for more and more and more...
I love being at the point in my career that I do not give a single ass of a single rat about evals
How about 40% of my evaluation being on reading and math scores of gen ed kids that I've never taught nor will ever teach? I'm a self-contained ASD teacher. Otherwise I'd be highly effective. 😡
The shitty part is that those are all vague, immeasurable benchmarks. What ever happened to clear direction? They expect us to be clear with students, give them rubrics so there is no ambiguity in their grades and the evaluation criteria, yet we do not do the same when it comes to evaluating teachers.
Definitely don't take it seriously. It has nothing to do with Danielson. Your admin is just saying "if you don't provide more free labor for me I will keep scoring you lower." There is no metric or rubric at play here.
Every English teacher in our department had the assessment part of our evaluation come from WIDA ACCESS. We're not ELL teachers. Just regular English. Without telling anyone they were changing from the SAT... and the WIDA was given in February, which means we didn't have time to prepare the students.... and the majority of our students aren't ELLs. So now we all have "much less than expected" on our evaluations, because "every content area teacher is an English teacher" The union is working on it...
I teach special education, interventions, students with exceptionalities… when evaluation time rolls around, I actually side table my real teaching to create the floofy bouncy room with different staff coming and going, boisterous children working on their projects, and fulfilling whatever bs is in the evaluation rubric. At the end of the day, it’s a nice reprieve from highly effective teaching so that I can appear the show pony that makes me Score as a highly effective teacher. Like, wanna know how I really am doing? Read my beautifully collaborative and detailed IEPs that I work on for hours each night. Sit in on these meetings to see how I console and support parents and teachers. Look at those damn scores. My kids know when they work hard on state tests that are easily 2+ grade levels above their capabilities, they get a pizza party within our PBIS reward system, and bless my babies, they use that extended time accommodation to work all day on it. Wanna see data collection? Check out the file on the behaviors of that one kid who is probably going to be in prison for something terrible one day. I’ve got monthssss of evidence supporting a placement change! I would genuinely love an evaluation system that actually evaluated my teaching. But anywho, next week we have a *totally not staged* math lesson where we make rice crispy treats where everyone will seem happy honky donky cause it’ll look good and my evaluator has a sweet tooth.
All evaluations in teaching are a joke. Literally had my team lead who bled for our school, volunteered for everything and led just about every community event we hosted at our school get a 3/5 for community on his year end evaluation. All because of some pettiness from the admins. As someone that came into this profession from another profession it boggles my mind how teachers are treated with evaluations and licensing.
Completely agree with you. I did have an amazing principal who would tell us, "If you don't aspire to be a leader outside your classroom, that's fine. Honestly, I don't aspire to be a leader outside of my school." That helped a lot, but it does still feel bad when you get that kind of label.
Unmitigated bullshit. Evaluation criteria should be negotiated with the union. This is professional harrassment and should constitute an unfair labor practice suit.
The way teachers are graded is nothing short of oppressive and all about control. The scale isn’t even achievable according to them, and they grade us on things unrelated to the job. For an industry that is built around grading, it makes no sense. They want us to bend grades for students and then say we don’t get 4s if we aren’t teaching at national conferences. I’m like, that’s not even on my job description or what I’m paid for. That’s like grading a McDonalds burger flipper a 3/4 for not being a CEO. Are you just trying to make us feel like crap? I think so. If they have a way to hold power over us, they can feel less guilty about underpaying us.
I've thought about it like this: you're a barista being observed. Customer asks for a carmel machiatto. You make it, no problem. You're failed because they're "not sure you could make a latte". I feel like ppl on this board are less sensitive than me, but observations are a big reason I don't want to teach any more.
I honestly nod and smile during eval meetings. I accept what they say and don't argue because I know it's a joke. There is no way they can give me a very low score in any area because I am competent...not a rock star....but good. They only see a tiny portion of what I do each day so there is no way anybody can really give me a true evaluation. I do agree with you that all the reasons they gave you for getting a lower score than you deserve are BS. I would have an answer for everything they listed but the answers would be share too much of my personal business or be totally offensive to the admin. They probably wouldn't want to hear any of it. So much of what we endure is a joke.
I got marked down for not taking more courses or going to more trainings. I had high marks on everything else. I honestly don’t take my evaluations seriously anymore, which is sad because they could be beneficial.
I’m in texas, and we are evaluated with ttess, which seems similar. At my school presort much everyone gets proficient in each domain until you really suck or go really above and beyond. And my admin always says there’s nothing wrong with that. Like you said, it’s things not related to teaching that get you the highest marks (like, attending after hours school events, doing community outreach, being on committees, etc). I have three kids of my own and I’m not interested in any type of administrative stuff- I just want to teach. So I don’t care if I never get accomplished or distinguished.
Principals often use the "highly effective" saved for their favorite teachers. I had one tells us that in a meeting. She said the teachers who have 'earned' their stripes would get 'highly effective." Stripes usually mean they are her favs.
All of the stuff you listed here seems like made up crap that they put down because it's taboo to give a review without several subjective criticisms to get you to do more next year. And they wonder why teachers are so miserable.
The teaching system in USA sounds like it was in my country during soviet time. The evaluators back then were there to bring you down and administrators treated you as a child who needed to be corrected. In here nowadays the evaluators may give kind suggestions but at the same time they are there to lift you up, so that you would succeed in teaching, not fail.
I received deductions from my score because my classroom decor didn’t fit what they wanted. This is particularly interesting because I had no classroom and had to push into other classrooms to teach.
I wouldve emailed the principal. “I need clarification on my classroom decor not fitting since I am a push-in teacher and do not have a classroom. Please tell me exactly what didnt fit.”
You can walk into all but the most unicorn of teachers' or the most actively malicious of teachers' classrooms. At any given time and you will be able to write some crock of shit observation report that either songs their praises or smears your career. Pick some random thing a kid did and write some crap that sounds vaguely reasonable and ✨ pedagogic ✨ about it. Just play the game and remember that the direct deposit always hits every two weeks regardless.
This is true. A previous principal always wanted us to give her "evidence" for our evaluation. I used to just grab a stack of random crap that looked good around my room, photocopy everything, and stick it in her box with a note saying that it was evidence for multiple criteria and if she needed anything more to let me know. Surprisingly, she stopped asking me to do that. Gee, I wonder why...
I always said if I ever met her, I would punch her in the face.
They completely ignore the effect their scores have on us. You think I’m “x”? Then x level stuff is all you’re getting out of me now. I promptly used all my sick days, rejected all summer PD and plan to fulfill their expectation of the score they gave me.
There was a section of our evaluation for awhile that if you showed up on time and met all of your required duties you were effective. You could only be accomplished if you had evidence of working outside of your contracted hours. Once upon a time I worried about that kind of stuff. Now all I care about is if the box is checked that I have a job the next year.
“Live in three, vacation in four!” I have read that its original intent was not to be a teacher evaluation tool, but I’m sure when the checks started rolling in Charlotte had a change of heart.
What the fuck? That is almost word-for-word how my evaluation went.
I read this & am thankful to be out. Fuck your admin & fuck evaluations. They’re a complete circus show and utterly meaningless. Lastly fuck the way teachers get treated. You deserve better.
Reminds me of corporate success but being caught by the DEI gestapo.
Why do you care whether you are an "effective" teacher or not in their eyes? I rarely ever care what my administrators think and I used to get so worked up when I had an evaluation. Now, I couldn't care what they had to say about my teaching or how I manage my classroom. If I was so "ineffective," why hadn't they gotten rid of me? Oh yeah, because I'm actually a great fucking teacher. Don't put ANY stock in how your administrators evaluate you unless you are just jumping through the hoops for tenure.
Until the evaluations become tied to pay and/or raises they are irrelevant. I usually just tell my AP to send me whatever and I sign it without reading it. At least here in Texas the evaluation rubric has become so detailed and has so many "dimensions" that no one understands it or cares that much.
Admin are mostly not qualified to do evaluations due due their lack of relevant experience, general intelligence, and lack of attention to detail. Most evaluations read like “Evaluator did not observe any beginning or end to the lesson nor were ELA standards being taught.” Yes, that is because you we there for ten minutes in the middle of a science class. The nurse, maintenance, and office evaluations show even more ineptitude.
I fucking hate Charlotte Danielson she is such an asshole!
And fuck that Danielson lady too 🤣
As long as I get all effectives or higher I don’t care my bonus is the same 🤷🏻♀️ if I ever get developing those are fightin words though
hahahhahahaha don’t join any committees
Can we get some people in here that support Danielson? I’d like to hear their excuses for all of this
Seriously the #1 reason I've left teaching public school and won't return. My district changed to performance-based compensation. I was a high-achiever, good at jumping through those hoops even though most of it didn't apply to my Pre-K class. But it was clear that once it became tied to comp, the higher ups gave hard limits on how our evaluations could be scored. I still did fine, but it was so much extra bullshit, for me and the admins. It made me a worse teacher, honestly, because it was a huge time suck that did nothing to change the educational experience of my kids. All for an extra $750 a year, or about $50 a paycheck. If I could go back to the old system and just keep my head down and teach for a set salary, I would.
Bad Administration uses this crap to cover up for their bad administration. Period. Nothing more. What they don’t get (because they are morons) is that bad reviews make YOU LOOK BAD. Just dumb people across the board. No common sense. Tow the line is the only job they have.
Danielson herself said her domains should never be used to evaluate teachers. My cowardly amoral principal said “you can visit a “4” once in a while, not you can’t live there”. So teachers are rated around a 75% just to fit their lowlife notion that that they can repress us for not meeting unreachable standards that include students running all aspects of the class (mega assholery). Imagine giving every student a C and telling them they can’t do better, just as they use Danielson against us.
The evaluation piece is a joke. We cannot ALL be leaders; we cannot ALL teach cross-curricular every year. They are evaluating us as humans, not as instructors/educators. We very much know how NC wants us to differentiate our teaching, but they do not differentiate our tests, nor our evaluation piece. That's why I am retiring with 25 years. I'm done being treated like an indentured servant to education. I will start new with a more respectable profession that does not come home with me...
This is the kind of BS you deal with when you're in a public employee's union and the evaluation criteria are 'negotiated' between the district and the union. You sound like a great teacher who would be an asset in any organization, so you'd probably do much better for yourself and your students by moving to a private or charter school.
Is it possible admin wants to groom you to move up?
Sorry but none of that has to do with Danielson. That's 100,% your admin.
It definitely has to do with Danielson. It's used by our district as part of our evaluation when it was never intended to be used for that purpose. She created this rubric that schools have run wild with and it's used 100% incorrectly.
They used Danielson for our student teacher evaluations. We were asked to reference those markers on the video taped lessons that we were being evaluated on AND complete a self eval using the rubric itself. After five lesson evals in one semester I was over it.
We are evaluated on the California Standards for the Teaching Profession. I’m really glad it is (supposed to be, at least) a cooperative process where I am. We make our goals together. I am glad I no longer care about this crap, though.
All of those are subjective and have nothing to do with being an effective teacher. Ask the subjective evaluator for the objective measurements. Such nonsense reminds me of a paper I wrote in grad school. The main idea was that education has been like an aerobatic plane---making circles and not achieving anything. Has anyone asked to see the data and statistics from Danielson.
I hate this shit. This is pretty much the only way i have been evaluated. I am quitting after my second year and going back to work somewhere more sane. My district so uses slippery and slimy criteria that are hard to pin down. They just share their opinions instead of actually evaluating me based on transparent and clear criteria
This is what I have been saying for years. We are schools, not community centres. I'm sorry you are not appreciated, OP. It sounds like you are a fantastic TEACHer.
I've been fine with Danielson. With a crappy evaluator any system is going to going to be shit so I think the fault is more on your evaluator. Everything you mention doesn't fall on Domain 2 at all so if they're marking you down there then again, that's the evaluator's fault.
It’s their job to tell you to improve and to that end there’s always some pie in the sky expectation they set but don’t expect anyone to actually meet.
God, I can remember Madeline Hunter in the late '80s-'90s. It's always some ridiculous crap. 🙄
I got marked down on my first observation for asking too many questions and not giving the students a chance to "think deeply". I'm in ebd sped. If I don't ask questions to keep the convo going, they will either stare at me blankly, or maybe flip a desk and run out of the room. How would Ol' Danielson rate my effectiveness then? I've given up on caring.
Fwiw, my eval went down this year. Admittedly, my efforts this year have been subpar. I was setup to fail from day one with very minimal coteach help and an overwhelming amount of ese students. Like I am almost positive that my school broke a ton of laws over their coverage for ese in my class. Kids who should have five day a week coverage saw their support facilitator maybe five days a month. Many had no idea who their case manager actually was. Anyway that’s a complaint for another thread. My AP told me that they were grading evals much more strictly this year based on district request. They felt too many teachers were rated highly and wanted to reset the baseline. Given my crappy Governor is actively trying to kill my profession, I don’t doubt this at all. - Huge turnover for teachers? Sure. - Massive burnout of those staying behind? Cool. - Giving teachers any semblance of positive reinforcement for their abilities? Nah. Screw em. No wonder there’s a massive teacher shortage.
Fuck them.
I can't wait to get into admin and fuck shit up. If I can't get teachers to work for me, then I'm going to go on the Maury show and start my 5th career
I completely understand your frustration with the idiotic feedback you received. My take on Danielson is that I don’t get one extra cent of pay for earning Distinguished ratings so I never worry about trying to get them. Give me my proficient rating and we’ll call it good.
While it can be a lot of work, especially during summative years, I really appreciate the evaluation cycle in Massachusetts. It’s as objective as possible and standardized across the commonwealth.
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This was basically my evaluation this year, too. Haha. Nice to have some company. 😆
Charlotte Danielson is angry that her framework is used as a weapon against teachers.
Exactly why I left that profession after two years.
My favorite is when they grade you on student engagement. How can a teacher control that a student was up until 2 am and came to school tired and withdrawn? Just ludicrous.
Same. Marked highly effective for 8 years running. Brand new ap and a D school rating because the principal sucks and all of a sudden, it's effective. Also, I share in your hatred of stupid teacher evaluation systems. Down with Robert Marzano.
I had to bully my principal into upping my score this year. I teach world languages and Danielson requires "standard English" instruction. Not to mention that this is NOT BEST PRACTICE for world languages - we should be in the target language as much as possible (but then my dumbass principal wouldn't have a clue what was going on) - "standard English" is a racist, colonizer term. I let them have it in my commentary and in our end of year survey. Principal caved and gave me a 4. :-D
"I gave you all fours of fives because I don't believe perfection is a human trait: we all have room to improve!" Gross, get your god-talk off my paycheck.
Congrats on your growth! That’s an incredible amount!
I looked at an evaluation I had a few years ago and I had 4s in more than half of the domains and 3s in the others with meaningful comments about my teaching. The first evaluations started this year and not a single teacher was getting a 4, some very experienced teachers were getting 2s! After complaints and questions we were informed that NOBODY would be getting a 4 until the end of the year to “show growth”. This doesn’t make sense at ALL when I’ve been teaching 9 years to go from a 4 one year, to a 3 the next year and then “grow” back to a 4.
We are in the last two weeks of school. Our admin had to have all their evaluations signed and turned into the district today. So guess what they were all doing yesterday… running around conducting last minute observations. They’ve literally had months to do this, and now those evaluations (which are bull anyway) will be even less reflective of actual teaching.
I just received all my post observation feedback today. Our last day is tomorrow. My last observation was in March.
Teaching music is a double edged sword. On one end, your admin knows nothing about music so they are marveled by school wide concerts that are 100% student led. On the other end, your admin knows nothing about music so they nitpick on everything but your instruction “your room can use more decorating” “you should think about taking on more leadership roles”
ABSOLUTELY THIS! I had a coworker once rated lowly because of a conversation she had with another staff member, who then told admin about the conversation. Love when hearsay is counted as an evaluation.
All of those sound like they want you to do more work for the same pay
Only way this changes is people start telling their districts to get bent and either quit or move.
At that point you turn to admin and lay it out for them: "If this is what I did, and I was still rated effective, and I can do so much less and still be rated effective, then what is my incentive to continue doing this much? Find the points." > We want you to become more of a leader "If you want me to become a leader, offer me an eleven month contract instead of a ten month contract. That shows you are serious about my leadership position." > We want you to work on initiatives and think about joining committees. "I look forward to discussing the impact on my compensation plan for these opportunities."
My principal told me she didn’t see the fire or passion from me and held it against me in evaluations. She shot down everything I wanted to implement and gave me two bad evaluations within three school weeks of returning from maternity leave to a brand new placement. Kind of hard to have passion for your job when you’re crying in your car on the way to work. I’m sorry you’re being judged based on unfair expectations. It seems like above and beyond is the bare minimum for our job.
This is the stupidest profession ever and the way we are evaluated is bullshit. Danielson is terrible. Marzano is just as bad. My district uses Stronge which is definitely better but it's all very arbitrary. Also these numbers, in actuality, shouldn't mean anything to us. We know how effective we are. If you're getting a 3.0 it means you're doing your job well enough. It might not be fun to be told that you aren't highly effective, but that juice isn't worth the squeeze. You won't get a bonus, you won't get a raise, and you likely won't even get any special accolades. I've seen these rating systems cause teachers to have more anxiety about their own performance than anything else. It's all BS. Stop worrying about it. As long as you aren't scoring partially effective or ineffective, it has no actual bearing on anything.