Improving Teacher Development and Evaluation by Solution Tree

teachers and educational leaders a clear, concise, research-informed, translatable, and subsequently usable guide to not only help develop good teachers but also evaluate teachers in support of their continuous

A Guide for Leaders, Coaches, & Teachers

development and genuine growth.”

—AUDREY AMREIN-BEARDSLEY Teacher development and evaluation systems have a long history in education, but the history of their shortcomings is

K–12 school leaders, instructional coaches, and teachers will:

• Recognize the failure of past teacher evaluation efforts and its relationship with stagnant teacher development

“At last, a comprehensive and practical guide to leverage the teacher appraisal process and impact professional growth. This is a must-read for anyone charged with supporting teachers on their professional growth journeys. Improving Teacher Development and Evaluation will become your go-to book as you’re working to help teachers grow!”

—JOHN AND SHEILA ELLER Authors, Score to Soar: Moving Teachers From Evaluation to Professional Growth

and self-rating on elements of effective instruction

• Receive protocols and strategies for coaching teachers and providing feedback evaluation to improve their effectiveness and encourage teacher development

• Learn new, more reliable methods of scoring teachers’ classroom practices and students’ academic growth

Visit MarzanoResources.com/reproducibles/ITDE to download the reproducibles in this book.

Warrick

• Restructure systems of classroom observation and

MarzanoResources.com

Rains

• Discover the beneficial influence of teacher reflection

Marzano

just as long. Improving Teacher Development and Evaluation: A Guide for Leaders, Coaches, and Teachers introduces transformative, research-based processes for supporting teacher growth and reliably evaluating performance. Authors Robert J. Marzano, Cameron L. Rains, and Philip B. Warrick provide in-depth background on teacher development and evaluation, make a strong case for the need to reconceptualize both systems, and present specific suggestions for improvement. Teachers cannot become great unless they are given the time, support, and tools to grow in their professional practice. Encourage individual growth and treat teachers as professionals with this new paradigm of development and evaluation.

Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University

Improving Teacher Development & Evaluation

“Once again, Marzano and colleagues offer

Copyright © 2021 by Marzano Resources Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher and the authors. 555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 888.849.0851 FAX: 866.801.1447 email: info@MarzanoResources.com MarzanoResources.com Visit MarzanoResources.com/reproducibles/ITDE to download the reproducibles in this book. Enter the unique access code found on the inside front cover to unlock exclusive content. Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Marzano, Robert J., author. | Rains, Cameron L., author. | Warrick, Philip B., author. | Simms, Julia A., other. Title: Improving teacher development and evaluation : a guide for leaders, coaches, and teachers / by Robert J. Marzano, Cameron L. Rains, Philip B. Warrick with Julia A. Simms. Description: Bloomington, IN : Marzano Resources, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020014996 (print) | LCCN 2020014997 (ebook) | ISBN 9781943360291 (paperback) | ISBN 9781943360307 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Teachers--Rating of. | Teachers--Training of. | Observation (Educational method) | School supervision. | Teachers--In-service training. Classification: LCC LB2838 .M37685 2021 (print) | LCC LB2838 (ebook) | DDC 371.14/4--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014996 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014997 Production Team President and Publisher: Douglas M. Rife Associate Publisher: Sarah Payne-Mills Art Director: Rian Anderson Managing Production Editor: Kendra Slayton Production Editor: Laurel Hecker Content Development Specialist: Amy Rubenstein Editorial Assistants: Sarah Ludwig and Elijah Oates

Table of Contents Visit MarzanoResources.com/reproducibles/ITDE to download the reproducibles in this book. Enter the unique access code found on the inside front cover to unlock exclusive content.

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Brief History of Teacher Development, Supervision, and Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Problems With Common Approaches to Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Toward a Better Model of Teacher Development and Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Part I: Improving Teacher Development Chapter 1 Understanding Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Common Misconceptions Regarding Experienced Teachers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Different Types of Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 A Process for Deliberate Practice in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Chapter 2 Reflecting on Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Utilizing an Instructional Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Self-Rating and Setting Goals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Focusing on Goal Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Internalizing the Model of Instruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Adjusting Growth Goals or Setting New Goals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

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Chapter 3 Coaching Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The Distinction Between Coaching and Evaluation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 The Coaching Cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Structures and Protocols for Coaching. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Focused Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Instructional Rounds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Administrators as Coaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Part II: Improving Teacher Evaluation Chapter 4 The Perils of Observing Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Errors in Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Consequences of Observational Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Chapter 5 Principles for Successful Classroom Observations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Focus Classroom Observation on a Viable Set of Observational Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Use a Conjunctive Approach to Summarize a Teacher’s Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Invite Teachers to Submit Nonobservational Evidence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Continually Update Each Teacher’s Current Status. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Compare Observation Scores to Self-Evaluation Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Interpret Scores as Teacher Capacity Indices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Chapter 6 The New Paradigm for Teacher Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Scoring Classroom Practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Evaluating Teachers Based on Student Growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Putting Scores Together and Documenting Key Decisions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Ta b l e of C o nte nt s

Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Appendix A Teacher Self-Rating Scales for the Forty-Three Elements of the NASOT Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Appendix B Design Area Observational Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Appendix C Tracking Form for Teacher Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

181

Appendix D Tracking Form for Design Areas, Observational Categories, and Elements. . . . . 185 References and Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

About the Authors

Robert J. Marzano, PhD, is cofounder and chief academic officer of Marzano Resources in Denver, Colorado. During his fifty years in the field of education, he has worked with educators as a speaker and trainer and has authored more than fifty books and two hundred articles on topics such as instruction, assessment, writing and implementing standards, cognition, effective leadership, and school intervention. His books include The New Art and Science of Teaching, Leaders of Learning, Making Classroom Assessments Reliable and Valid, The Classroom Strategies Series, Managing the Inner World of Teaching, A Handbook for High Reliability Schools, A Handbook for Personalized Competency-Based Education, and The Highly Engaged Classroom. His practical translations of the most current research and theory into classroom strategies are known internationally and are widely practiced by both teachers and administrators.

Cameron L. Rains, EdD, is director of school improvement for Solution Tree, where he works with schools, districts, and state education agencies to ensure all students are learning at high levels. Previously, Cameron was a teacher, an instructional coach, and an administrator in multiple capacities. Most recently, he served as the assistant superintendent for Clark-Pleasant Community School Corporation in Indiana, where the schools and district were recognized as certified High Reliability Schools™.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Iona College in New York, a master’s degree from Seattle University, and a doctorate from the University of Washington.

He earned a bachelor of science in elementary education and a master of science in educational leadership from Indiana University. He also holds an educational specialist degree and a doctorate in educational leadership from Ball State University.

To learn more about Robert J. Marzano, visit www.MarzanoResources.com.

Cameron is passionate about school improvement and applying research findings in the school environment. He has coauthored many articles and books, including Leading a High Reliability School, Stronger Together: Answering the Questions of Collaborative Leadership, and Professional Learning Communities at Work and High Reliability Schools: Cultures of Continuous Learning.

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Philip B. Warrick, EdD, spent the first twenty-five years of his education career as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and superintendent and has experience leading schools in the states of Nebraska and Texas. He was named 1998 Nebraska Outstanding New Principal of the Year and was the 2005 Nebraska State High School Principal of the Year. In 2003, he was one of the initial participants to attend the Nebraska Educational Leadership Institute, conducted by the Gallup Corporation at Gallup University in Omaha. In 2008, Phil was hired as the campus principal at Round Rock High School in Round Rock, Texas. In 2010, he was invited to be an inaugural participant in the Texas Principals’ Visioning Institute, where he collaborated with other principals from the state of Texas to develop a vision for effective practices in Texas schools. In 2011, Phil joined the Solution Tree–Marzano Resources team and works as an author and global consultant in the areas of high reliability school leadership, instruction and instructional coaching, assessment, grading, and collaborative teaming. He earned a bachelor of science from Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska, and earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. To book Philip B. Warrick for professional development, contact pd@MarzanoResources.com.

Julia A. Simms is vice president of Marzano Resources. A former classroom teacher, she and her team develop research-based resources and provide support to educators as they implement them. Her areas of expertise include effective instruction, learning progressions and proficiency scales, assessment and grading, argumentation and reasoning skills, and literacy development. She has coauthored ten books, including A Handbook for High Reliability Schools, Coaching Classroom Instruction, Questioning Sequences in the Classroom, Teaching Argumentation, Teaching Reasoning, and The New Art and Science of Teaching Reading. Julia received a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and master’s degrees in educational administration and K–12 literacy from Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado.

Introduction

This book is for teachers, coaches, and educational leaders who are interested in transforming the related processes of teacher development and teacher evaluation into dynamic forces for personal growth at the individual teacher level and improved institutional effectiveness at the school level. Ideally, educators should treat these two endeavors in a manner that builds on their inherently symbiotic relationship. Teacher evaluation provides evidence of teachers’ areas of strength and highlights opportunities for improvement. Teacher development efforts should directly and positively affect teachers’ pedagogical skills, particularly in those areas where improvement is warranted. Over the years, teachers’ skills should grow continually, resulting in higher evaluation scores and the overall improvement of the teaching workforce. Of course, enhanced student learning occurs as a direct consequence of these developments. The logic behind improving teachers’ skills to improve student learning is almost self-evident. Students’ knowledge gain is directly related to the quality of their teachers. While most people accept this generalization without challenge, this was not always the case. It was not until the 1970s that researchers began to acknowledge large differences in achievement between students from different teachers’ classrooms (Hanushek, 1971). Decades of studies followed that confirmed the finding that individual teachers can have a substantial impact on student achievement (Aaronson, Borrow, & Sander, 2003; Gordon, Kane, & Staiger, 2006; Kane,

Rockoff, & Staiger, 2006; Murnane & Phillips, 1981; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004). Many of these studies came from researchers in the field of economics. Ultimately, this line of research popularized the idea that the individual teacher is the most important alterable factor in determining student achievement.

A Brief History of Teacher Development, Supervision, and Evaluation The topic of teacher development has always been a component of education in the United States, even though it hasn’t always been explicit. In the early days of U.S. education, development was a tacit component of the process of teacher supervision. From this perspective, teacher development efforts stretch back over three centuries. In the 1700s and early 1800s, schooling was largely a parochial endeavor, with schools closely tied to and controlled by the local church and community. Teachers and administrators typically were clergy, or laypersons supervised by clergy, in the local community. When schools in urban areas began to grow into larger, more complex systems, lead teachers began assuming the role of supervisor as the job of teaching became more complex. By the mid-1800s, the position of lead teacher transitioned into the role of an administrator in larger school systems. During this time, an awareness of 1

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the importance of some pedagogical skills emerged as a component of effective teaching (Marzano, Frontier, & Livingston, 2011). In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a more scientific approach to education began to take hold. The thinking was that science-based management strategies can be applied to any complex system, including schools. As part of the scientific approach to managing schools, administrators provided feedback to teachers regarding specific things they were expected to do and not do. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution, this approach developed deep roots in teacher evaluation. These early days of teacher evaluation became an “authoritative, inspectional supervision” (Glanz, 2018, p. 7) where supervisors looked for specific elements of instruction and corrected staff when these elements were not present in the classroom. One might say that supervision and evaluation during these early years adopted a deficit model. Teachers were scrutinized to determine what they were omitting or doing incorrectly, and corrective action was applied.

The Rise of Modern Supervisory Models By the mid-1900s, the deficit model had declined in favor of a more interactive approach. Specifically, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, clinical supervision was the dominant model for teacher supervision (Bruce & Hoehn, 1980). These efforts were solidified in two texts: Robert Goldhammer’s (1969) book Clinical Supervision: Special Methods for the Supervision of Teachers and Morris Cogan’s (1973) book Clinical Supervision. The clinical supervision model outlined a highly collaborative approach between the teacher and the supervisor. Goldhammer (1969) identified the following five steps in this supervision model. 1. Preobservation conference to plan the observation 2. Observation

3. Organization of data from the observation and analysis 4. Postobservation conference to discuss and reflect on the lesson 5. Analysis of the supervisor’s practices The process of clinical supervision intended for the teacher and evaluator to engage in collective dialogue that led to teacher development (Goldhammer, 1969). Although supervision was the main emphasis, evaluation was the summative conclusion of the supervision process. An overt principle of this methodology was that supervisors were not supposed to approach supervision or evaluation with any preconceived notions of what good teaching is (Cogan, 1973). As Edward Pajak (2000) stated, clinical evaluation was to be a “vehicle for developing professionally responsible teachers who were capable of analyzing their own performance [with an] emphasis on reflective problem solving” (Pajak, 2000, p. 5). While the intentions of the clinical supervision model were to have a collegial, reflective dialogue to improve teaching in a partnership between supervisor and teacher, that is not how clinical supervision played out. As clinical supervision and the five steps in the model spread rapidly, supervisors began to view the five steps themselves as the outcome of the evaluation process. Simply completing the steps meant the evaluation was done well. This reality was profoundly different from what the creators of clinical supervision envisioned. However, the five steps of clinical supervision continue to shape many common evaluation processes. The 1980s saw the rise of alternative supervision and evaluation models, including those that allowed for mentoring, peer coaching, and action research (Ganz, 2018). Allan A. Glatthorn (1984), in his book Differentiated Supervision, made the argument that teachers should have some control of their supervision and evaluation and have a say in what they are going to work on. In addition, Carl D. Glickman (1985), in his book Supervision

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of Instruction: A Developmental Approach, made the case that the most important goal of evaluation was to help teachers develop. This era became known for developmental supervision. The 1980s also saw the emergence of the iconic seven-step lesson model from Madeline Hunter (1980, 1984). The seven steps were as follows. 1. Anticipatory set 2. Objective purpose 3. Input 4. Modeling 5. Checking for understanding 6. Guided practice 7. Independent practice This approach to designing lessons became extremely popular and soon became part of what evaluators expected to see when they observed lessons. Hunter’s seven-step lesson represented the first widely used model of instruction in the field of education. It was also about this time that supervision became more explicitly associated with evaluation. By the 1990s, teacher evaluation had become overt, in no small part due to Charlotte Danielson’s (1996, 2007) seminal work, Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Danielson brought a framework for teaching and a framework for evaluating together. The framework included the following four domains. 1. Planning and preparation 2. Classroom environment 3. Instruction 4. Professional responsibilities Each domain had several component parts (seventy-six in total) with accompanying rubrics to help provide clarity. It was intended to be a complete model that captured the complexities of teaching. This allowed the supervision and evaluation process to illuminate specific details of teachers’ classroom practices.

Teacher Evaluation as a Paper Chase Even though teacher evaluation theories and models had become quite detailed, the actual process of evaluation was a vacuous endeavor resulting in little useful information amenable to teacher development. This was most notably outlined in The New Teacher Project’s report “The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness” (Weisberg, Sexton, Mulhern, & Keeling, 2009). The report described the failure of U.S. teacher evaluation systems to identify and react to differences in teacher effectiveness. It highlighted the underlying dynamic of the actual practice of teacher evaluation: the unstated belief that “teachers are interchangeable parts” (p. 9). This runs contrary to the extant research in the field. There are, as previously noted, vast differences in performance between teachers, leading to differences in student achievement. The false notion that teachers can be used interchangeably, with no discernable effect on students, was referred to as the widget effect—the premise that teachers are like widgets that can be arbitrarily replaced. The report offered a scathing review of the evaluation systems of the time, stating: The Widget Effect is rooted in the failure of teacher evaluation systems to produce meaningful information about teacher effectiveness. In theory, an evaluation system should identify and measure individual teachers’ strengths and weaknesses accurately and consistently, so that teachers get the feedback they need to improve their practice and so that schools can determine how best to allocate resources and provide support. In practice, teacher evaluation systems devalue instructional effectiveness by generating performance information that reflects virtually no variation among teachers at all. This fundamental failing has a deeply insidious effect on teachers and schools by institutionalizing indifference when it comes to performance. As a result, important variations between teachers vanish. Excellence goes

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unrecognized, development is neglected, and poor performance goes unaddressed. (p. 10)

The authors found that: In districts that use binary evaluation ratings (generally “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory”), more than 99 percent of teachers receive the satisfactory rating. Districts that use a broader range of rating options do little better; in these districts, 94 percent of teachers receive one of the top two ratings and less than 1 percent are rated unsatisfactory. (p. 6)

It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the Widget Effect on perceptions of the state of teacher supervision and evaluation by educators and noneducators. It was clear that massive change was required immediately. There were four recommendations made in the report: 1. Adopt a comprehensive performance evaluation system that fairly, accurately, and credibly differentiates teachers based on their effectiveness in promoting student achievement. 2. Train administrators and other evaluators in the teacher performance evaluation system and hold them accountable for using it effectively. 3. Integrate the performance evaluation system with critical human capital policies and functions such as teacher assignment, professional development, compensation, retention, and dismissal. 4. Adopt dismissal policies that provide lower-stakes options for ineffective teachers to exit the district and a system of due process that is fair but efficient. “The Widget Effect” quickly became widely cited and used. At about the same time, a federal push for changes to teacher evaluation came through President Barack Obama’s 2009 Race to the Top (RTT) initiative.

Race to the Top On July 24, 2009, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced a $4.35 billion grant program known as Race to the Top. The grant was a major component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a response to the financial crisis of 2007–2008) and was designed to spur nationwide education reform. It offered significant funding to states that were willing to—among other criteria—overhaul their teacher evaluation systems. To receive funding, states had to design and implement a new evaluation system that included two components: student learning gains and teacher adherence to professional standards. As described in the U.S. Department of Education’s document A Blueprint for Reform (2010): “We will elevate the teaching profession to focus on recognizing, encouraging, and rewarding excellence. We are calling on states and districts to develop and implement systems of teacher and principal evaluation and support” (p. 4). The document goes on to say that the new evaluation system must be able to differentiate teachers based on their professional expertise and the academic growth of their students. Race to the Top had four core education-reform focuses. They were: 1. Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy; 2. Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction; 3. Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; 4. Turning around the lowest-achieving schools. (U. S. Department of Education, 2009, p. 2)

Race to the Top also required a comprehensive, state-level approach to reform. This became a huge catalyst for change as states rushed to implement

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new systems of teacher evaluation to meet the third reform priority and position themselves for possible funds from the federal government. The overhaul of teacher evaluation swept the United States. This continued with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, which gave states and school districts far more autonomy to implement local reforms. By 2016, forty-four states had implemented teacher evaluation reforms (Steinberg & Donaldson, 2016).

Problems With Common Approaches to Evaluation The emphasis on student growth and adherence to professional teaching standards did not achieve their intended outcomes. Once data became available, it became clear that the bright promise of teacher evaluation as a tool for teacher and school improvement articulated by RTT was not being realized. The data disclosed at least three major problem areas. One major problem was the differential impact that high-achieving and low-achieving students have on classroom observation scores and the categorical evaluation ratings for teachers. Whether a teacher has high-achieving incoming students or low-achieving incoming students appears to skew the observational scores as well as the overall rating. Teachers working with high-achieving students received higher scores than their peers working with lower performing students. In addition, these score differences are “above and beyond that which might be attributable to aspects of teacher quality that are fixed over time” (Steinberg & Garrett, 2016, p. 312). A second problem area was the overall lack of reliable observational scores. This was illustrated in a set of publications collectively referred to as “Measures of Effective Teaching,” funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which chapter 4, page 47, explores in depth). Briefly, the researchers

found the reliability of observational scores to be quite low (that is, the scores did not accurately and consistently measure what they intended to measure) due to the presence of multiple types of errors, including not sampling a teacher’s full range of instructional strategies, misclassifying observational evidence, assigning low scores because an entire class period was not observed, and so on. Following the RTT initiative, one of the major findings of the research on observational data was that the number of observations required to obtain a comprehensive picture of a teacher’s pedagogical practices far exceeds the number of observations typically made in the teacher evaluation process (Marzano & Toth, 2013). The third problem area was the accuracy of valueadded measures (VAMs). VAMs are computed as measures of what students have learned from a particular teacher in a particular class. The amount each student has learned is calculated using sophisticated mathematical equations that take into account each student’s knowledge before he or she started receiving instruction from the teacher. These equations can also account for factors like socioeconomic status, home support for schooling, how long the student has been in the teacher’s class, and so on. When these background factors are all accounted for, the remainder is thought of as a pure measure of what each student learned from a particular teacher. While on the surface this seems like a foolproof method of calculating student learning, scrutiny led to criticism of the nature and function of VAMs. Robert J. Marzano and Michael D. Toth (2013) summarized some of the early criticism of VAMs, including the finding that teachers receive vastly different scores depending on the type of equation that is used. Quite literally, one equation might classify a teacher as highly effective, but another equation applied to the same data might classify the teacher as merely effective. Being classified as effective versus highly effective simply because of the equation that is used within the evaluation

IMPROVING TE ACHER DE V ELOPMEN T & E VA LUATION

system can mean a difference in a teacher’s salary level, status in terms of tenure, or both. Even more severe consequences can occur if different equations produce classifications of needs improvement versus unsatisfactory. Perhaps the most provocative criticism of VAMs came from Marianne Bitler, Sean Corcoran, Thurston Domina, and Emily Penner (2019), who compared the variation of teacher effects as measured by VAMs with the variation of teacher effects as measured by student height. Obviously, teachers have no control over their students’ height, yet the researchers found statistically significant results showing “that the estimated ‘effects’ on height are nearly as large as the variation in teacher effects on math and reading achievement” (p. 2). The researchers cautioned against the use of VAMs, stating: Taken together, our results provide a cautionary tale for the use and interpretation of value-added models as they are often used in practice. We show that—simply due to chance—teacher effects can appear quite large, even on outcomes teachers cannot plausibly affect. (p. 3)

Bitler and colleagues were trying to make a point with their study: a teacher’s rating based on their students’ VAM scores might be more a function of chance variation than it is the actual learning of their students. With countless hours of evaluation model development, professional development for teachers and evaluators, numerous legislative changes to evaluation processes, and billions of dollars spent on reform, it makes sense to ask the question, Has evaluation improved? While there might be some evidence of some improvement within some metrics, the system as a whole does not seem to be doing a markedly better job identifying poor teachers (Kraft & Gilmour, 2017; Lash, Tran, & Huang, 2016). Probably the most definitive answer to the question comes from a study conducted by Matthew A. Kraft and Allison F. Gilmour (2017) that compiled the performance of teachers across twenty-four states that engaged in substantial evaluation reform.

The report, Revisiting the Widget Effect: Teacher Evaluation Reforms and the Distribution of Teacher Effectiveness, found that new evaluation systems “have not resulted in greater differentiation among teacher performance ratings” (p. 18). For all intents and purposes, the widget effect seems to remain alive and well in schools.

Toward a Better Model of Teacher Development and Evaluation An examination of the research cited throughout this introduction could easily lead one to give up on the bright promise that teacher evaluation can work hand-in-hand with teacher development to create better teachers and a better educational system. While it is probably accurate to say that the reform movement spawned by RTT has failed, we believe it is also accurate to say that educators can learn from that effort and build a next-generation system that improves significantly on all previous efforts. That is the purpose of this book. To this end, we have organized the remaining chapters of this book into two parts: (1) improving teacher development and (2) improving teacher evaluation. In part I, on teacher development, readers will find a detailed discussion of the nature of expertise (chapter 1) and how to develop expertise in teachers through teacher self-reflection (chapter 2) and focused coaching (chapter 3). This is the place to start—building a system that develops the expertise of every teacher in a systematic, personalized, and meaningful way. In part II, on teacher evaluation, readers will find a discussion of the inherent problems with classroom observations (chapter 4), along with a concrete way to solve such problems (chapter 5). This section also includes specific steps about how to generate reliable and valid teacher evaluation scores and how to use them in a manner that improves the teaching workforce (chapter 6).

P A R T

O N E

Improving

Tea ch er Development

Chapter 1

Understanding Expertise

Common Misconceptions Regarding Experienced Teachers Generally, there is consensus that teachers experience rapid improvement over the first few years of teaching. There is disagreement, however, regarding whether teachers actually continue to get better beyond their first few years of teaching. Multiple studies purport that teachers plateau in expertise after about five years of teaching (Boyd, Lankford, Loeb, Rockoff, & Wyckoff, 2008; Clotfelter, Ladd,

& Vigdor, 2006; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; The New Teacher Project, 2012). Some of this research has been called into question since the mid2010s. Specifically, Tara Kini and Anne Podolsky (2016) argued that these studies only compared the differences in student achievement between different teachers who are at different points in their careers, therefore failing to take into account individual teacher growth over time compared with their own performance (that is, fixed effects). Kini and Podolsky (2016) cited multiple studies that indicate that individual teachers do continue to grow throughout their careers. Further, Anne Podolsky, Tara Kini, and Linda Darling-Hammond (2019) reviewed the research on teaching experience and expertise in the United States and found that when researchers use a fixed-effects analysis (that is, comparing individual teachers to their own performance over time), results indicate that teachers continue to make small improvements well into their careers. They concluded that teachers with more experience are more able to positively impact student achievement within their classrooms throughout their careers once they have attained a level of competence where they have a comprehensive view of the teaching and learning process.

To transform the teacher development process within Kâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;12 education, one must understand the nature of expertise and how to achieve it. Teachers and other professionals can only develop expertise over a substantial period of time, but time alone is insufficientâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;expertise requires effective practice. This focused effort is often missing in education. New teachers improve rapidly at the start of their careers simply as a function of repetition and exposure to new situations, but traditional teacher development systems fail to support continued growth once this novice effect tapers off. This chapter will provide an alternative view of expertise in education by correcting misconceptions of experienced teachers, explaining different types of practice, and presenting a process for deliberate practice that leads to expertise.

While the research may not be conclusive as to whether teachers actually plateau after the first five years of their careers or grow slightly after that point, it does seem clear that the traditional

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1. Less experienced and younger teachers have a go-getter attitude. 2. More experienced teachers do not have anything left to prove. 3. More experienced teachers burn out, leading to a lack of growth. 4. Less experienced teachers work harder because they are less comfortable in their positions. Our experience with teachers has been quite different from these opinions. We have worked with as many experienced teachers who are go-getters as we have worked with younger, less experienced teachers who are go-getters. We have encountered many experienced educators who are still working to get better and improve schooling for their students. Teacher burnout seems as prevalent, and perhaps more prevalent, with less experienced teachers than among those with more experience. Finally, we have worked with countless teachers with a great deal of experience who continue to work very hard at their craft. We believe that all teachers can improve their pedagogical skills regardless of their current skill levels and regardless of their years of experience. Even if teacher growth does in fact flatline after five years, we are convinced that this trend can be mitigated. To do this, however, individual teachers and the school systems in which they work must be cognizant of the different types of practice and use those types accordingly.

Different Types of Practice An analysis of the research on expertise reveals key phases and actions for teacher growth and development, especially after the initial phase of rapid growth ends. Here we rely heavily on the work of Anders Ericsson. Ericsson was a Conradi Eminent Scholar and professor of psychology at Florida State University and was recognized as one of the world’s premier researchers on human performance and expertise. For over forty years, he studied experts and how they achieved expertise. This study led him to research and analyze experts across multiple fields for many decades, charting their paths to expertise. Ericsson’s work has been widely cited, adopted, and adapted, including in Malcom Gladwell’s (2008) book, Outliers: The Story of Success. In their 2017 book, Peak: Secrets for the New Science of Expertise, Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool highlight three types of practice that people engage in across all fields that lead to varying levels of improvement: naïve practice, purposeful practice, and deliberate practice.

Naïve Practice Naïve practice, according to Ericsson and Pool (2017), involves simply practicing or doing something over and over and expecting to get better at it. This works when you have never engaged in or are relatively new to the skill you are practicing. For example, none of the authors of this text can play the violin. If we all picked up violins and began to practice feverishly, we would improve, to a point. That is accurate for new skills. Naïve practice only works temporarily, until one has gained enough skill to plateau. This is one of Ericsson’s biggest criticisms of Outliers (Gladwell, 2008) and the alleged ten-thousand-hour rule of practice to become an expert. Engaging in ten thousand hours of naïve practice will not make anyone an expert. With teaching, it stands to reason that naïve practice would work for those who have not taught before (that is, teachers at the beginning of their careers).

educational systems and structures for growing expert teachers are not very effective. If, in fact, teachers do plateau after five years, it likely has more to do with the system’s deficiencies than it does the traits of individual teachers. In our cumulative conversations with educators across the United States as to how it could be possible that teachers plateau after five years of experience, we find that the following opinions are common.

Understanding Exper tise

The issue in education is that almost all of the practice that teachers engage in is naïve practice. One cannot develop expertise through continual naïve practice. If teachers do reach a plateau after five years of experience, this could be one major reason why. To push through this plateau effect (if it, in fact, exists), teachers need to engage in purposeful practice, or even better, deliberate practice.

Purposeful practice, according to Ericsson and Pool (2017), consists of practice that meets four criteria, as follows. 1. Defining clear, specific goals 2. Staying focused 3. Receiving feedback 4. Getting out of one’s comfort zone Educators can engage in purposeful practice in their schools, although the existing structures and systems in schools do not necessarily support or reward it. For example, teachers typically receive feedback from their supervisors about their teaching in general. This notwithstanding, many teachers go the entire year without feedback on a well-defined, specific goal. When supervisors do give feedback on specific goals, the frequency of the feedback is typically only a few times per school year. In addition, when the purposeful practice is tied to teacher evaluation systems, the process is often contrived because the teachers know they are being measured. This can lead to educators selecting goals that they know they can easily achieve rather than those they really need to work on. If growth and development of teaching expertise are the goals, this is not good enough. As we explain in subsequent sections, there are solutions to these issues. Purposeful practice allows people to continue to improve beyond what is possible with naïve practice, but it still has limits. The best approach for the development of expertise—and in fact, a required component for experts across all fields—is

large doses of deliberate practice over the course of many years.

Deliberate Practice Deliberate practice includes the criteria for purposeful practice, but it also includes additional characteristics. According to Ericsson and Pool (2017): 1. Deliberate practice develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do and for which effective training techniques have been established . . . [It is] overseen by a teacher or coach who is familiar with the abilities of expert performers and with how those abilities can be developed. 2. Deliberate practice takes place outside of one’s comfort zone and requires the student to constantly try things that are just above his or her abilities. 3. Deliberate practice involves well defined, specific goals. . . . It is not aimed at improving some vague overall improvement. 4. Deliberate practice . . . requires a person’s full attention and conscious actions. It isn’t enough to simply follow a teacher’s or coach’s directions. 5. Deliberate practice involves feedback and modification of efforts in response to that feedback. Early in the training process, much of the feedback will come from the teacher or coach, who will monitor progress, point out problems, and offer ways to address those problems. With time and experience students must learn to monitor themselves, spot mistakes, and adjust accordingly. 6. Deliberate practice both produces and depends on effective mental representations. Improving performance goes hand in hand with improving mental representations; as one’s performance improves, the representations become more detailed

Purposeful Practice

IMPROVING TE ACHER DE V ELOPMEN T & E VA LUATION

and effective, in turn making it possible to improve even more. 7. Deliberate practice nearly always involves building or modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically; over time this step-by-step improvement will eventually lead to expert performance. (pp. 99â&#x20AC;&#x201C;100)

A Process for Deliberate Practice in Education Operationalizing deliberate practice and setting up the systems to structure it requires planning and support. We propose that there are six overt steps that schools and districts can take to this end. 1. Develop or utilize a model of instruction that is based on a research-validated approach to teaching, such as The New Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano, 2017). 2. Have teachers self-rate on the model and set growth goals for two or three elements that are opportunities for improvement. Ensure these elements and their associated strategies represent a stretch for the teacher or are slightly outside his or her comfort zone. 3. Have teachers focus intensely on the growth goal areas. Intense focus includes recording progress, noting the strategies attempted and the results, keeping anecdotal evidence of improvement over time (such as artifacts of practice), and reflecting on continual growth and development. 4. Provide teachers with continual feedback on the growth goal areas from a coach

5. Ensure teachers internalize the model of instruction. It should become their mental representation of expert teaching. 6. Over time, have teachers change and adjust their goals such that they work on the entirety of the instructional model. These action steps are effective at the systems level for the staff of an entire school or district, as well as at the individual level with one teacher. Engaging in these steps repetitively over time will lead to teacher growth and development. Based on Ericssonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work around the development of expertise, one can reasonably conclude that without engaging in deliberate practice as outlined in these steps it will be virtually impossible for a teacher to truly become an expert. In action, this means that to develop teaching expertise, teachers must internalize a comprehensive model of instruction, selfrate on the model, set goals based on desired areas of improvement, work to get better in those areas, receive and act on feedback in growth goal areas, and continue the process over and over throughout their careers. We address each step in detail in chapters 2 and 3 (pages 15 and 31).

Conclusion This chapter discussed the nature of expertise because understanding expertise is a prerequisite to designing systems that help all teachers reach this status. Traditional approaches to teacher development have been haphazard and inadequate. In some cases, teacher growth has been merely an incidental result of time spent in the classroom, leading to the misperception that experienced teachers cannot improve further. In fact, all teachers can improve

Given the research on practice, we believe that every school or school system should embrace the ultimate goal of making deliberate practice a standard operating procedure for its teachers.

who has a better understanding of and performance in the element on which they are working. Over time, help teachers adjust their practice to ensure they continuously improve on the selected element.

Understanding Exper tise

throughout their careers by applying the research on expertise. The most important feature of the research on expertise for schools and districts to understand and embrace is that it requires deliberate practice, as opposed to naĂŻve or purposeful practice. Deliberate practice requires structures that go

well beyond simply engaging in teaching for a long period of time. Mental models, goals, focus, and feedback are some of the key elements of deliberate practice that leads toward expertise. In the next chapter, we discuss aspects of teacher development associated with reflection and individual activities.

A Guide for Leaders, Coaches, & Teachers

development and genuine growth.”

—AUDREY AMREIN-BEARDSLEY Teacher development and evaluation systems have a long history in education, but the history of their shortcomings is

K–12 school leaders, instructional coaches, and teachers will:

• Recognize the failure of past teacher evaluation efforts and its relationship with stagnant teacher development

—JOHN AND SHEILA ELLER Authors, Score to Soar: Moving Teachers From Evaluation to Professional Growth

and self-rating on elements of effective instruction

• Receive protocols and strategies for coaching teachers and providing feedback evaluation to improve their effectiveness and encourage teacher development

• Learn new, more reliable methods of scoring teachers’ classroom practices and students’ academic growth

Visit MarzanoResources.com/reproducibles/ITDE to download the reproducibles in this book.

Warrick

• Restructure systems of classroom observation and

MarzanoResources.com

Rains

• Discover the beneficial influence of teacher reflection

Marzano

Professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University

Improving Teacher Development & Evaluation

“Once again, Marzano and colleagues offer