Peer Assistance and Review in Montgomery County

From the Marshall Memo #440

“If narrow, test-based evaluation of teachers is unfair, unreliable, and has negative effects on kids, classrooms, and curricula, what’s a better approach?” asks Stan Karp in this thoughtful Rethinking Schools article. “Federal and state plans are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into data systems and tests designed to replace collaborative professional culture and experienced instructional leadership with a kind of ‘psychometric astrology.’ These data-driven formulas lack both statistical credibility and a basic understanding of the human motivations and relationships that make good schooling possible.” 

But what’s the alternative to the powerful momentum of value-added teacher evaluation? Karp points to Montgomery County, Maryland’s Professional Growth System as a model. Here are the main features:

• It is designed to develop and sustain good teaching.
• It has real consequences for persistently poor performance.
• It was negotiated through collective bargaining.
• It’s based on a clear, common vision of high-quality teaching.
• It includes test scores as one of many indicators of student progress and teacher performance, but does not use rigidly weighted formulas.
• It includes strong peer assistance for all novice teachers and those who are underperforming; nearly 5,000 teachers have completed the Peer Assistance and Review process.

In short, Montgomery County takes a broad, qualitative approach to promoting individual and system-wide teacher quality and continuous professional growth while dealing with problem employees.

Six standards of good teaching inform the district’s evaluation rubrics, contractual agreements, protocols, handbooks, and professional development: 

• Commitment to students and their learning;
• Knowledge of subject matter and how to teach it to students;
• Establishing a positive learning environment;
• Frequent assessment of student progress, analysis of results, and follow-up with students;
• Continuous improvement and professional development;
• A high degree of professionalism.

Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) is the heart of Montgomery County’s system. PAR relies on 24 Consulting Teachers, master educators with at least five years of classroom experience in the district. They make a commitment to work for three years as Consulting Teachers and then return to a school for at least two years in a teaching or non-administrative role. Each Consulting Teacher works with 16-18 novice teachers and/or experienced teachers who have been referred to PAR by their principals. Consulting Teachers do informal and formal observations; provide written and verbal feedback; run coaching sessions; support lesson planning, classroom management, and time management; teach model lessons; co-teach; and organize peer observations. Over the last ten years, nearly half of Montgomery County teachers have been through the PAR process, which costs $4,000-$7,000 per participant.

Consulting Teachers don’t formally evaluate, but they document an overall evaluation of Meeting or Not Meeting Standards, which goes to the PAR panel of eight teachers and eight principals. The panel reviews Consulting Teachers’ conclusions and recommends nonrenewal/ dismissal, an additional year of PAR, or release from the program. If either the teacher or the principal disagrees with the panel’s recommendation, there’s an appeal process in which parties can present additional information. Formal challenges to the panel’s final decision are rare. “Teachers overwhelmingly view the process as one that treats teachers fairly and is not a ‘gotcha’ process,” says Chris Lloyd, a high-school teacher who is the union’s vice president. “It’s designed to help teachers grow, not to fire them.” 

But teachers are fired. In the past year, says Karp, there were about 50 hearings involving cases where principals and Consulting Teachers disagreed about whether a teacher was meeting standards. About half of those teachers were referred to a second year of PAR, ten were dismissed, and the remainder no longer needed the program. Over the last decade, 500 teachers have been removed from the classroom. Karp says the fact that more than one professional takes part in the final decision answers one of the biggest complaints about evaluation procedures: arbitrary judgments by one supervisor. 

How is Montgomery County’s student achievement?  Over the past ten years, results on Maryland state tests have improved in every racial, ethnic, and SES subgroup, and achievement gaps have narrowed at all grade levels in ELA and math – by 16 points in grade 3 and 5 math and grade 7 reading, and by 20 points in grade 3 and 5 reading. Eighty-four percent of Montgomery County students go on to college and 63 percent earn degrees. 

“You’re going where the country needs to go,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast. Yet Montgomery County was denied a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education for its evaluation system and had to forfeit $12 million in state Race to the Top funds because its approach does not conform to the federal test-based model. 

“Just as with student assessment,” concludes Karp, “evaluation can be a tool for improving teaching and learning or an instrument of bad policy and external control. The key in both cases is to make sure that people, not tests, are the point of departure and that real collaboration among all parties shapes the process.” 

“Taking Teacher Quality Seriously: A Collaborative Approach to Teacher Evaluation” by Stan Karp in Rethinking Schools, Summer 2012 (Vol. 26, #4, p. 46-50), http://bit.ly/szXDt5; Karp can be reached at stan@rethinkingschools.org.