Want to Build a Better Teacher Evaluation? Ask a Teacher

Reformers have invested massive financial resources and political capital in new teacher-evaluation systems, but early results show that these policies won’t lead to improvements on their own. To generate more effective teaching through evaluations, teachers, principals, and school system leaders need to embrace a culture of ongoing two-way feedback and a commitment to continuous improvement. Surveys are a critical component of well-designed continuous-improvement systems, which high-performing organizations inside and outside the education sector have adopted as a reliable, cost-effective means of gathering and valuing front-line perspective. Surveying teachers, and acting on the results, respects teachers’ voice, provides diagnostic information regarding principals and schools, and provides an invaluable, authentic lens into classroom implementation. Used well, teacher surveys just might save evaluation reform from itself.

The problems evaluation reform is trying to address are deep-seated issues of culture and management. There is still an aversion to distinguishing based on performance; principals haven’t been expected to provide rigorous feedback, and teachers aren’t accustomed to receiving critical appraisals. But perfunctory evaluations are a symptom, not the cause, of lackluster performance management, and inserting test scores into the equation won’t produce meaningful evaluations of teachers on its own. The changes that require the most attention relate to building the will and capacity of leaders and inspiring teachers to embrace evaluation as an improvement strategy, and these aren’t easily advanced through quick fixes in policy.

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