Assessment Working Group Meeting Summary - 12_20_13

Summary of Most Recent AWG Meeting

December 20, 2013

Members of the Assessment Working Group met on December 20 to initiate the discussion of best practices in teacher assessment. We initiated this process by reading and discussing, chapter by chapter, Darling Hammond’s (2013) text Getting Teacher Evaluation Right. In addition, we discussed progress of our P-12 partners on the required Minnesota system for evaluating educators, reviewed the Common Metrics (Bush Foundation) metrics, talked about partnerships with the Support Working Group, and pulled together an approach for moving forward.

Darling Hammond Book

We discussed the highlights of the Darling-Hammond book on effective practice in teacher evaluation. High points of the discussion are provided below:

·       Best teacher evaluation practices are based on coherent state standards

·       Best practices assume an interface between assessment and professional development, including

     assistance for struggling teachers

·       The system ought to accommodate not just new, but struggling educators

·       Best practice in measurement as applied to teacher assessment and evaluation accommodates both entry  skills and master performance

·       The best teacher assessment systems tap student attitudes (engagement), student learning outcomes (but without overreliance on value added metrics), observation by trained evaluators, and portfolio-based authentic methods

Teacher Development and Evaluation in Minnesota

Members of the AWG noted that all partner districts were well underway in negotiating models and processes for teacher evaluations as required in Minnesota. The most difficult puzzle piece remains how to equitably employ student outcome data in teacher assessment as required.

Common Metrics

Kathy Dahlberg described data collected via the Common Metrics (CM) activities of NeXT (the Bush Foundation Grant, TPI at SCSU).  The purpose of the CM system is for the 14 “Bush” teacher preparation IHEs to collect a common set of data in a comparable fashion.  One committee goal is to emphasize the use of extant data in the development of metrics with which to meet benchmarks and to evaluate programming sponsored by the grant.  Presumably the four Common Metrics Instruments will be employed in any plans that we develop.

Process and procedure

Next meeting: Members of the working group will review the charges and benchmarks with an eye toward developing  a set of work tasks, prioritize these tasks, and set between-meeting tasks.