Welcome
Last week, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction released teacher effectiveness ratings for each district and charter school in the state. In this week's CommenTerry, I assess the rating system and consider ways that the state can improve this valuable resource.

Bulletin Board

• I encourage everyone to attend a National School Choice Week event. During the week of January 22-28, organizations and groups in every state will hold events to celebrate the families that have benefited (and hope to benefit) from school choice.

-- School choice pioneer Dr. Howard Fuller will be the keynote speaker at the Parents for Educational Freedom in NC (PEFNC) night of celebration event in Greensboro. The event will take place on Tuesday, January 24, at 6:30 p.m. inside the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. Doors will open at 6 p.m. and heavy hors d'oeuvres will be served. This event is free to the public, but attendees must register by clicking here.

-- On January 26, the North Carolina chapter of Americans For Prosperity will host an event featuring political commentator Dick Morris. The event will be held at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte and begin at 6:30 p.m. The event is free but registration is required.

-- AFP-North Carolina will have a simulcast event, Restoring American Exceptionalism--North Carolina Townhall, at Village Hall in Pinehurst. The simulcast of the Charlotte event will begin at 7:00 pm. Sign up for this event here.

• The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle-school and high-school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project web site for further information.
  
  
• In honor of school choice week, visit JLF's research newsletter archive.

The release of teacher and administrator effectiveness results is a huge deal. I do not say it often, but the folks at the NC Department of Public Instruction (NC DPI) deserve "thumbs up" for their effort to increase transparency and accountability in the critical areas of teacher and administrator quality. For years, the John Locke Foundation has been a stalwart proponent of making comprehensive teacher evaluation data available to the public. We are pleased that the state has taken the first step in that direction.

For my purposes here, I will focus on teacher evaluation, but many of my observations also apply to the evaluation of school administrators.

The state's teacher evaluation system addresses five areas -- leadership, fairness, content knowledge, instructional abilities, and self-evaluation (see Facts and Stats below). Evaluators rated teachers in each area according to a five-category scale -- not demonstrated (lowest), developing, proficient, accomplished, and distinguished (highest). The format of the reports is straightforward. For all districts and most schools in the state, NC DPI provides "a breakdown of the number and percentage of teachers who received the each of five possible ratings on the five standards." Individuals may download teacher evaluation documents for school districts and/or charter schools in portable Document Format (.pdf) from the NC DPI website.

The ratings have a few shortcomings. Last school year, the state required evaluations of teachers in their first three years and teachers in the process of renewing their teaching license, so the ratings did not include (or provide a representative sample of) all public school teachers in the state. In addition, the rating system did not include measures of students' academic growth, although education officials promise to add that standard to this year's evaluation cycle. Moreover, NC DPI did not identify individual teachers or grade levels. Their policy is to release aggregate school- and district-wide data only. Finally, there is no online tool to access and analyze the data. The PDF documents that contain data for each school district and charter school can be cumbersome to review. I expect vast improvements in each of these areas in subsequent years.

NC DPI officials insist that the ratings system is a "growth instrument," but the public will invariably compare the ratings to annual outcome measures like test scores and graduation rates. Doing so yields mixed results. For example, the chronically low-performing Halifax County Schools rated the highest percentages of teachers in the Proficient (50.5-64.9 percent) and Accomplished (18.0-32.0 percent) categories across the five standards. This was a rosy assessment for a district that failed to have a school exceed 60 percent proficient on state tests. On the other hand, the district's lowest performing school, Inborden Elementary, had no teachers in the Accomplished or Distinguished category, which we would expect from a school that failed to get a quarter of the students at grade level.

Once state education officials refine the new teacher ratings system, parents in school districts that offer public school choice will be able to use the ratings to make informed decisions about the school that best meets the needs of their children. For those parents who do not have those opportunities, the teacher evaluation system could be a powerful catalyst for fundamental reform of public education in North Carolina.

Random Thought

When students at Draper (Utah) Corner Canyon High chose the "cougar" mascot, they had the Brigham Young University Cougars in mind. According to the Canyons School District school board meeting minutes, the one female and six male members of the board rejected the students' choice because various Urban Dictionary definitions of "cougar" objectified single, middle-aged women.

I am pretty sure that every Urban Dictionary definition objectifies someone or something.

Facts and Stats

Evaluation standards for teachers included the following categories:

• Teachers demonstrate leadership.
• Teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students.
• Teachers know the content they teach.
• Teachers facilitate learning for their students.
• Teachers reflect on their practice.

The NC Department of Public Instruction will introduce a sixth standard for teachers this year. It will "evaluate the extent to which they affect student growth."

Mailbag

I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at tstoops@johnlocke.org.

Education Acronym of the Week

NCTEP -- North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Process

Quote of the Week

"Quality teachers and principals make all the difference to students and their learning."
-- June Atkinson, NC Superintendent of Public Instruction, January 20, 2012, NC DPI press release.

Click here for the Education Update archive.