LM Summer2020_hi

Lessons ... cont’d.

Teacher andprincipal evaluation I became immersed in the teacher and principal evaluation processes through the passage of the Performance Evaluation Review Act (PERA) on January 1, 2010. My thought process on this has evolved over the years. Now that I have matured (at the age of 70) into the leader I am today, I would recommend a drastic change to teacher evaluation. In my opinion, it is of little value to “rate” teachers. Instead, let’s work on improving teaching and learning. Let’s use instructional coaches, properly conduct Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) and use teacher leaders to work on improving teaching. The principal’s job would then be to organize these efforts and collect the data to determine if student learning is improving. We have a drastic shortage of teachers, and the problem is not going to get better anytime soon. Let’s work with and coach teachers, not evaluate teachers with scarce evidence to tell teachers why they are not excellent. I predict that one of the positive outcomes from this pandemic is that we will discover new ways to teach students. That is something Mooresville, NC, was doing way back in 2008. Teachingand instruction Regarding teaching and instruction, I believe that teacher unions and administrators need to be more collaborative players. A prime example of how they can work together to improve education is within the work of the Performance Educators Advisory Council (PEAC). This committee consists of representatives from the two Illinois teacher unions, IASA,

IPA, ROE, ESC, Chicago Public Schools, current teachers, current administrators and ISBE. Several of us have been on this committee since its inception in 2010. This committee has been instrumental in the implementation of the principal and teacher evaluation systems in Illinois. If a lay person was to witness the work of this committee, one could not identify who the administrators were and who were the teachers. We work seamlessly together for the betterment of teaching and instruction. In my opinion, there is one sure fire way to improve teaching and learning and that is to conduct Professional Learning Communities correctly. PLC research has determined that educators need to work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. Dr. John Hattie asserts that collective teacher efficacy has an effect size of 1.57. It consists of the following 5 steps: 1. Common lesson planning. 2. Common formative and summative assessments. 3. Common grading of some summative assessments. 4. Data analysis of student performance by teachers. 5. Professional Development lead by teachers with the highest student achievement results. Through my superintendent career and my tenure at IASA, I have observed that leaders have gone from collaboration to individual decision making and back to collaboration. Let me explain. When I entered the superintendent position in 1989, I was invited to be part of the “Sullivan Group.” The

16 LM Summer 2020