What a way to kick off Teacher Appreciation Week.

There was some strong community participation last night. That's an encouraging sign for our schools and students.

​One of the most contentious things of the last few years has been the new teacher evaluation system and the accompanying pay scale. The implementation has been a bit rocky with 100+ teachers that earned “Distinguished” classification not receiving a pay increase because their salary was higher than the increase.

The old system, PDAS, rewarded teachers based on doing time in DISD rather than looking at their effectiveness. The evaluation included 8 spot observations compared to the 10 you receive under TEI and did not involve looking at test scores or student input like the new system does.

Some see it as a more complete and egalitarian system that rewards hard work and progress, while others see it as a disaster that was the culmination of a district takeover plot engineered by former superintendent Mike Miles and his board allies. Either way, it looks like it's here to stay.

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Top Ten Positive and Negative Moments in Dallas Education 2015

​Positive 04: Social and Emotional Health            Negative 04: Trouble with TEI
Positive 05: Trustees Stop By                                 Negative 05: Student Mother Kicked Out
Positive 06: Supportive Principal                           Negative 06: A Bad Spot Observation
Positive 07: Department Chair Respect               Negative 07: Principals Lying
Positive 08: DISD Student Has Her Baby            Negative 08: Parent thinks their child is stupid
Positive 09: Thanked by a Parent                         Negative 09: Blamed for a DISD Student Fight
Positive 10. Alex Hales and Retired Teacher     Negative 10. Promising DISD Student Gets Pregnant

This was the final spot observation I had for the 2014-2015 school year and I got a 0. I didn’t put up an LO or DOL, I was lecturing, and I did exactly 0 MRS. My AP that was evaluating me was and still is a wonderful woman. She was very supportive and pulled me aside just to tell me that by the rubric she couldn’t give me more than a 0 because of what she saw.

To be fair to myself, I erased the LO and DOL to write more on the board for my lecture and forgot to put it back up, but she was right, my room wasn’t what the rubric wanted. My kids were learning, but it didn’t look how it was supposed to. She offered me the opportunity to get observed again. I appreciated the opportunity.

“Give me a zero” was my response to this generous offer. Respectfully, I told her that the other 9 observations I received were good and I appreciated the opportunity, but that I would take what I earned that day because I was ready for the observations to be over and didn’t care about my evaluation scores.

Still beat the district ACP average for the 2nd year in a row, but it was still a downer that despite my kids getting what they needed from my lesson, my class was still considered ineffective. I understand the rules. I also know what was best for them that day.

Follow us on Facebook; Twitter; iTunes; Soundcloud; Stitcher

Related Articles:
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Top Ten Positive and Negative Moments in Dallas Education 2015

Positive 06: Supportive Principal                          Negative 06: A Bad Spot Observation
Positive 07: Department Chair Respect               Negative 07: Principals Lying
Positive 08: DISD Student Has Her Baby            Negative 08: Parent thinks their child is stupid
Positive 09: Thanked by a Parent                         Negative 09: Blamed for a DISD Student Fight
Positive 10. Alex Hales and Retired Teacher     Negative 10. Promising DISD Student Gets Pregnant

There are very few things that make me sit down and blog after 5pm. Outside of something game changing like a school shutting down or a new superintendent being hired, I'm all blogged out for the day  around then. Principals lying to teachers? That really gets me fired up.

If I hear one more teacher ask if climate surveys impact their pay under TEI, I'm going to call a poorly attended press conference on the matter. Where is this coming from? Principals walking around to PLC's saying that climate surveys "aren't for airing out [the campus'] dirty laundry" and that "[climate surveys] affect our pay." Is that true?

The answer? NO!

As a teacher, your TEI scores are not impacted by pay; however, your principal does feel the sting of a poor climate survey.

I know, could this just be a rumor? If I hadn't heard this principal on multiple occasions, some blogged about here, make things up, I'd check a few more sources. I'm a blogger, not an investigative journalist. I'll leave that to the pros like Tawnell. 

What I did check on was my TEI knowledge. I reached out to a few people that know it way better than I to so that I could ease some of the fears floating around this evening. Climate surveys don't impact the pay of teachers. 

This doesn't just upset me because it's dishonest. Everyone lies. We'll talk about why principals lie in the morning. 

It upsets me because when principals do this, they are clearly bullying and taking advantage of people that aren't paying close enough attention to the details of these complex systems. 

It's cowardly and it's mean. Teachers can't dig into this stuff because they're busy helping kids. Show some compassion and some respect.

Benefit of the doubt - I understand that some administrators are poorly informed too. Even if that's true and it isn't the intentional spread of misinformation, it's still using this "we're all in it together" sentiment to strong arm teachers into cooking the books for you. You're still in the position of power even when you're smiling with your arm around them. Not nice.

I got to wake up to a thought provoking article from Jim Schutze this morning. Very nice way to come back from break.

I think it did a particularly good job of paint the picture of the shaky ground education is on in the US, but also the changes being made here in Dallas. Specifically, it talks about TEI and the national focus Dallas has attracted because of it. Yes, it has the customary "Miguel Solis went to Harvard and he's on board with the idea so it must have some merit" stuff you see in most Dallas education reform articles these days, but what I love about Jim Schutze's writing is that he doesn't just end the article there. He's thorough and places our local changes and struggles in a national context. I get a bit stuck in the Dallas bubble most of the time with education talk but it's true that Dallas is at the forefront of educational change in the country.

I don't tell him enough (or ever), but I'm a fan. Thanks for writing. Back to the discussion at hand. 

No Child Left Behind and the debates surrounding it are bringing to light the deep fractures in the educational community. The teachers unions, Diane Ravitch, and Republican power brokers have found themselves strange bedfellows in their resistance to what is being collectively referred to as "reform." Locally, TEI has been that thing drawing most of the heat, but nationally, the movement to try to make teaching more professional by holding teachers to higher standards is a hot topic. Jim says it all way better than I can so I encourage you to read his write up from this morning; however, I do think simplifying union priorities to maintaining a high population of bad teachers doesn't get to real problem.

Should we be coaching up or coaching out? I think firing teachers and getting new bodies in the classroom isn't the end all be all solution. The training in is going to have to happen regardless. I understand removing people that show resistance to improvement and cooperation, but that shouldn't be step one. I think that's more the priority of unions, not protecting bad teachers just because they're teachers. TEI is supposed to identify, for the purpose of improving, teachers that are struggling. The criticism is that it's being used as a tool for punishment.

The other flawed assumption that Jim highlights is that all teachers pushed out were good teachers. Not all of the people fired, forced out, or that quit are good teachers. TEI got rid of some teachers that were just plain bad at their job, but I'd argue that, absent the ability to show someone how to improve, firing is a much more extreme move than is required.

There is distrust of the system and accusations of dishonesty on both sides. Honesty is what systems like TEI are supposed to bring. When we invite honesty into our lives, you don't get to control what comes to light. We have to accept that not all teachers are good. Not all changes to our educational system are good. The truth about what we're dealing with is a high number of unprepared children that grow up, get thrown into the world, and end up swallowed by it.

I've had my issues with TEI and been angry with it. I've also supported it and the idea behind it. It's not perfect, but it does take a more complete picture of a teacher. This is not me saying I think everything that happened with teacher pay and compensation was perfect, but purely talking about the potential for helping improve teachers, looking at more than just the show we put on in the classroom on observation day is a good thing, if the teachers and the feedback are both honest that is.

A special note to all the principals out there that give everyone a 1, then a 2, and eventually a 3 at the end of the year to say that your staff is "growing": Cut it out! Help your teachers improve. 

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My first year teaching, I used to get the same feedback on every observation my principal did: "Where's the teach?" Like other first year teachers, I had NO IDEA what this meant. She put this on several of our observations and all of us together could not figure out what this meant. When we'd do peer evaluations we'd put that on our comments we'd leave, mostly as a joke, and would laugh about it later.

Here's the thing, the feedback we got that was in plain language was extremely helpful, but this "where's the teach" comment was so distracting, that it got in the way of my implementing some of the other more obvious suggestions because, in my head, I decided all of the feedback made no sense.

Finally, I decided to stop being confused and went to talk to my principal. We had one on one conferences after every observation, so I'm not sure why I took so long to ask. Maybe I was too shy about admitting I didn't understand something? Who knows, but once I asked she explained. The real question was "what are you teaching today and how is your instruction leading yoru students toward that objective?" Why didn't she just say that?! 

The crazy thing is that now I do that to my students and am trying to stop.

When I was growing up, teachers would return essays with all kinds of symbols and codes that I needed a special book to decode. That's not an exaggeration, there was a required book that we all had that had a glossary of symbols in the back. I'm not that cryptic, but I do put words like "weak" or "Needs Work" or random question marks all over the place. 

It's no wonder the revisions comeback with few of the changes I want to see. How am I fixing it? Doing what my principal did, having one on one conferences. I'm putting "come see me" if I have so many comments that I can't just write it on the paper.

How did I get this way? Since when did I become a person that replicates the things I didn't like that other people did to me? Why did I decide to do EXACTLY what I didn't think was helpful as a student and a new teacher? Sometimes I amaze myself in a bad way.

Step 1 to high quality feedback is clear precise language. That goes for teachers, administrators, and students.

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Why Evaluation Systems Fail

People Cheat. This destroys evaluation systems. Story to follow.

TEI, DTR, PDAS, and everything else that comes to mind, have pros and cons. Some have more cons depending on who you ask, but I want to focus on why they fail rather than if people like them or not. 

3 Examples: The first time a principal evaluates a teacher, they give them 1/3 in every category because it is the first evaluation. The principal evaluates another teacher, this time on the second evaluation, and gives them 2/3 in every category after a 5 minute observation, 3 of which were before class started. For a third and different teacher about to have their third evaluation, the principal approaches the teacher and tells the teacher they are going to give them all 3s.

Yes these are all real. Some of them happened today. Yes in DISD. "Really? I'm so shocked!" No you aren't, now shhh and keep reading.

Which ones of these are cheating? ALL OF THEM. Here's why.

Evaluation systems are supposed to be objective, especially when they involve performance based pay, school acceptablility ratings, etc. Telling a teacher they are going to get a 3 before even evaluating them is messed up not just to that teacher in particular, but to every other teacher in the district. Let me break it down.

The teacher - If you are going to be told what your "grade" is without even being observed, what is the point in trying to do anything other than whatever you want? The answer is for the benefit of the students, but if that is less of a concern, seriously, why change your behavior or do anything extra if it doesn't matter? Why are you even bothering me? Stay in your office like the Fear the Walking Dead Principal and leave me alone.

Every other teacher - If someone is getting higher scores than you regardless of how well they do their job, that's wrong. They are potentially making more money than you because they are at an IR school faking the numbers to get out of the hole or a "high achieving" school cheating to stay on top. In short, the system is based on luck. You luck out if you get a desperate administrator trying to make a name for themselves and get their picture in the paper. You luck out if your school can't afford any mistakes. You luck out if you teach a subject that needs to show improvement or all the suits from the state will show up and start messing with everyone.

Complex systems don't work if all the parts don't work. If you're going to have a system where you increase money based on pay, you need to have enough money to pay the people that meet that standard, not artificially keep the numbers low by messing with evaluations. If you're going to hire administrators that watch these things, you need to hire people with the integrity and knowledge to honestly evaluate AND provide feedback to help EVERYONE reach the top. Seems like common sense right?

All this to show growth? How about actually putting in the work, making your teachers better, and showing real growth by teaching your students something?

How is Superintendent Hinojosa's DISD Leadership today?

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TEI and DTR aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Whether you agree with it or not, too much money was spent on it and there's enough people that like it to keep it around for a bit. DISD doesn't do a great job explaining DTR, or other things, so third parties can be helpful in making sure you get the information you're looking for. Stand For Children does a pretty good job of getting information to people that are looking for it in a safe, neutral environment. Here's why I like their sessions:

1. It's not put on by district folks so I don't feel like I'll get retaliated against for being honest.
2. DISD usually sends some unprepared central staff person with a slide deck they haven't practiced and I hate that.
3. There's usually snacks which means i'm not picking between dinner and information.
4. I get to meet a bunch of teachers from different grade levels and schools which I don't usually get to do.
5. The information is unfiltered and unbiased. Even if you disagree with that, the space is open enough for you to be able to say that.

Now, I realize that over the course of the last few years people have started to try and lump Stand and Stacey Hodge into the educational axis of evil in Dallas. Most of those people probably got so upset at the title they are already gone. While personally I've only met a few people as sincerely committed to the success of our students as Stacey, I understand the frustration of some people and the need to put every group and person into a category in order to make sense of everything. Regardless of what you believe, I still encourage you to go. If you are interested at all in pursuing DTR and you aren't one of the people choosing to ignore it out of protest, this is the best place to get information and ask your questions. 

The event is Wednesday, September 16, 2015 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM (CDT) 1933 E Levee St Dallas, TX 75207
Info on the info session