Evaluating Teachers for Professional Growth

Book excerpt: This book takes a new approach to teacher evaluation by building on and encouraging new best practices in education - constructivist teaching, emotional intelligence and brain research, improved professional development practices, reflective practice, collaborative teacher-administrator relationships. It develops a new evaluation model established by the author - the Growth-Focused Evaluation system - and provides the requisite forms and reproducibles necessary to adopt or adapt the system. Chapters one through six examine the nature of evaluation as a vehicle not only to provide accountability but also to improve success of schools and students; they examine the complexity of the teacher's job and the role of the principal as motivator and leader; and they look at the many factors that contribute to the need for alternative evaluations, and examine various approaches such as reflective practice, self-assessment, portfolios, peer coaching and evaluation. The book then moves into the Growth-Focused Evaluation system, which promotes teacher reflection and examination of practice. Included are processes for working with experienced, beginning, transferring, and marginal teachers.Samples of how to report teacher growth and evaluation are included, as well as ways for teachers to record their own professional growth and activity.An appendix of forms at the end of the book provides masters that can be reproduced as principals develop their own plan, or implement the plan described.