Teacher evaluation and local control in the US: an investigation into the degree of local control afforded to districts in defining evaluation procedures for teachers in non-tested subjects and grades

Abstract

Many states only recently incorporated indicators of student achievement into teacher evaluation systems for Non-Tested Subjects and Grades (NTSG). This study examines how practices related to the inclusion of student achievement measures vary across states as to the discretion left to districts in defining and implementing evaluation systems for teachers in NTSG. For each state, information about current practices was obtained through document analysis and, when provided, feedback from state department representatives. We find substantial variation in state polices. Some states — notably those that received Race to the Top funding — afford districts with considerably less local control than others. Results presented here provide rich descriptive information and highlight the need for future studies related to local control and teacher evaluation.

Data-based student learning objectives for teacher evaluation

“…The data-based class-wide model had the lowest stability with the correlation of .40. These findings are consistent with Gagnon et al (2017) who have claimed that the SLOs based teacher evaluation differs in terms of (a) assessments selected to measure students' growth, (b) the proportion of SLOs in teacher evaluation, and (c) the amount of guidance on the implementation of SLOs in teaching and evaluating. Moderate reliability is not only an issue for SLOs but also a general issue for other student growth-based teacher evaluation tools (e.g., Lockwood et al, 2007;Papay, 2011).…”

“…Maryland, Michigan and Arizona required SLOs to be used for all teachers, and a few other states applied SLOs for specific subgroups, such as teachers in non-tested subjects (e.g., Mississippi and Georgia states). In a more recent review of teacher evaluation tools, Gagnon, Hall, and Marion (2017) indicated that some type of SLO usage is in place in approximately 66% of the states. They also indicated that some state-level education agencies have oversight of the SLO procedures, while others leave it to the local school districts to monitor.…”

The rise and fall of Missouri’s performance assessment of student teachers: A policy network analysis of the Missouri Pre-Service Teacher Assessment

“…What school districts in Missouri were able to leverage against the MoPTA was the assertion of local control. Although there is scant literature on the role of local control in state policymaking (Wei, 2012), Gagnon et al (2017) explored the degree of local control afforded to school districts by states seeking Race to the Top funding. More specifically, they looked at how states described the discretion that local school districts were given to create their own teacher evaluation systems.…”

Reform of Chinese Universities in the Context of Sustainable Development: Teacher Evaluation and Improvement Based on Hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Model

“…Teacher evaluation as a management tool of education aims to facilitate the growth of the teaching staff [15][16][17][18] and are within the scope of multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM). For example, Ghosh [19] combined the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) in order to evaluate faculty performance in engineering education.…”