“Game-Changing” Information Announced About EE Implementation

by Joe Schroeder, Ph.D.

Associate Executive Director, AWSA

In its January 22, 2016 edition of Education Effectiveness (EE) Updates, DPI officials communicated, for the first time in writing,what we consider “game-changing” information for Wisconsin school and district leaders. From our view, these changes demand the immediate attention of any Wisconsin administrator involved in implementing EE. Specifically, DPI announced in late January that it “will not collect educators’ EE scores for 2015-16.” Moreover, looking to the future, “DPI is investigating whether it can remove the reporting requirement entirely.” Read on to learn how these policy changes can impact the use of your time and significantly shift your ability to positively grow teacher practice and student learning.

In their Jan. 22 publication, Katie Rainey, the Director of Educator Effectiveness at DPI, and her team framed the shift through the following statement:

“Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has removed the federal EE requirement. The Wisconsin EE System is still authorized (and required) by Wisconsin statue, but the removal of the federal requirement provides Wisconsin and DPI with room to continue blazing a different, better trail through EE. It allows Wisconsin to focus on what we know is best practice, not what is federally required. Additionally, it will also likely remove the requirement to report educator EE data at the federal level.”

Some major reasons for this shift in DPI not collecting educators’ EE scores included:

  • The ESEA reauthorization, which removed the federal EE reporting requirement
  • The incredibly burdensome nature of the EE data collection process
  • The lack of new and/or meaningful information rendered by EE data collection efforts
  • The emphasis on scorekeeping rather than on meaningful conversations and growth that educatorsregularly derived from the EE data collection and reporting process
  • Ongoing issues with WISEstaff as well as challenges associated with collecting EE data from districts using a variety of tools (e.g., Google, Teachscape, etc.) this school year

Emphasizing the EE Process, Not Final Scores

The general theme of DPI’s efforts to “continue blazing a different, better trail through EE” is centered on a desire to “emphasize the conversations and processes associated with EE and not the final score.” To this end, the first priority of DPI regarding future monitoring of EE without collecting scores is ensuring that districts are engaging in a process that supports teacher and principal professional growth as well as student learning. A specific, practical result of this shift is DPI’s removal of individual educator value-added scores, school-wide reading scores, and graduation rates as standalone reporting measures – instead including them as data points for review as part of the annual localdevelopment of SLOs within the EE process. In sum, this emphasis on the EE process “removes the focus from final scores and instead only emphasizes scores tied to rubric language which can inform practices” as part of the ongoing, formative process of EE at the local level.

More Opportunity for Growing Instructional Practice

Given these very notable EE written announcements to “what we know is best practice, not federally required,” I took the opportunity this past week to revisit with Katie Raineythe following language that was communicated as process requirements in DPI’s EE trainings repeatedly over recent years and which was also included in the most recent publication of the EE Process Policy Manual:

“Complete a minimum of one announced observation of 45 minutes or two announced, 20-minute observations. Document observation evidence within Teachscape. Complete a minimum of one pre-observation conference and one post-observation conference with the teacher. Complete three-to-five unannounced informal mini-observations of about 15-20 minutes and document observational evidence within Teachscape.”

Now, we all know that people now have options around Teachscape, and we expect more developments on this EE technology platform front to arise in coming months. But I include the passage in full because there is one particular “requirement” communicated here which works counter to what we know is best practice.

First, in terms of background, there is a long history of Wisconsin districts requiring at the local level through CBAs (i.e., Collective Bargaining Agreements) at least one formal evaluation for each summative year in an employee’s tenure. Each of these summative evaluations(when one takes into account the pre-observation meeting, the observation, the report composition, and the post-observation meeting) typically requires approximately four hours of administrator time from start to the end of the process. The traditional, announced, summative evaluationis based on an observation of what typically represents a person’s best work rather than his/her typical work. Moreover, these traditional summative evaluations are repeatedly shown through research and anecdotal feedback to have little impact on teacher growth, especially in contrast to other potential coaching/feedback approaches.

In contrast, we have been intrigued at AWSA by the work of Kim Marshall that shows howonerequired, four-hour summative evaluation process of low-impact supervision can be converted into a minimum of eight rapid cycles of 10-15 minute observations plus concise direct feedback and recording/coding in ways that can lead to regular teacher support, feedback, and impact in line with the larger EE goals and research on high-impact learning leadership. My question to Katie was whether administrators in Wisconsin could convert the large amount of time currently devoted to these four-hour, low-impact summative evaluation processes into much more frequent, short-duration, high-impact rapid feedback cycles (as described above)knowing that, in doing so, they were not only in line with research-informed best practice but also assured that they also were in full compliance with DPI policy.

In reply, Katie shared the following:

“Frequent, shorter observations as described above are allowable and encouraged if:

1)Educators agree to the shift

2)The total amount of time spent observing (when adding all the observations together) is equivalent to or more than what is required

3)The process still contains time for high-quality, reflective, formative, and coaching conversations”

Overall, Katie emphasized that “we want to avoid ‘drive-by’ observations, which do not result in feedback. We also want to avoid a process which relies solely on feedback. (Feedback implies an evaluator talking TO an educator, as opposed to WITH an educator.) We want enough time provided across the year to allow for meaningful, reflective, and formative conversations.”

Future EE Monitoring Efforts

Given that summative EE score collection is going away, I also took opportunity to ask Katie what DPI actually will be monitoring / expecting from administrator EE work in the future.

In response, Katie replied that DPI will develop a monitoring process that mimics the EE process. “The process will focus on implementation, not scores. It will identify areas of strength (to promote as models across the state – if provided permission) and areas for growth (which will result in technical assistance suggestions – which are suggestions, not requirements). Any technical assistance suggestions that a district chose to use would come with additional resources and supports at no cost to the district.” Overall, DPI intends to realign supports and resources to this model, where they target services and supports to those who need (and want) them. If, through the process, a district was identified as not implementing the EE System at all,“more formal monitoring would begin and corrective actions would be required.”

Katie summarizes future EE monitoring in this way: “Our basic goal for moving forward is to ‘get out of the way.’ We want to do whatever we can to allow districts to focus on the meaningful processes and work of EE. Actually, I want to allow districts to work on the meaningful work of teaching and learning – and we want to remove any requirements which keep EE feeling like a separate thing (e.g., primarily compliance or reporting aspects). Instead, we want to allow EE to become actions and processes that are just part of good teaching and learning.”

Updating EE Resources

EE resources (e.g., the Process Manual) were last updated in the fall of 2014. According to Katie, the “Teachscape debacle” over that time prevented regular updates to DPI’s EE resources. So there is “probably quite a bit of language in there we will want to revise to better align to how we have been speaking about the EE System for the last year and half.” Overall, Katie emphasized that DPI’s EE team has created a plan for revising EE resources, training modules, and webpages across the next few months to reflect the recent shifts articulated in the late January update. As a result of this plan, the team will “remove any duplicative, out-of-date, or confusing materials” – particularly in line with these recent shifts. In sum, DPI’s EE website “will be reduced to a few pages which contain only the most comprehensive, up-to-date materials.”