DEBORAH GIST
Reevaluating teacher evaluations
SCHOOL:
CHALLENGE:
SOLUTION:
A statewide
evaluation of
teachers to
determine
certification
and tenure
Good teachers inspire children to learn. Bad teachers can
stall children’s growth and
turn them o; to schooling.
To ensure quality instruction in Rhode Island classrooms, state education
commissioner Deborah
Gist is developing a teacher
evaluation system that
will support good teachers
and target low-performing
teachers for remediation
and possible dismissal.
“It’s unequivocal: The
quality of our classroom
teachers is the largest
school-based factor in our
students’ ultimate suc-
cess,” says Gist, 44. “One
of the best ways to help our
teachers is to give them
e;ective feedback on their
performance.”
The state will develop
the system with funding
from the U. S. Department
of Education’s Race to the
Top competition, which
provided grants to 12 states.
Gist wants the system ready
for this fall.
“When you
set the
expectation
for change,
you need to
give folks the
opportunity
to be a part of
that change.”
The evaluations,
partly based on student
growth and achievement,
will be used for state
certification and tenure
decisions and could be
used by local districts to
decide on issues involving
teacher promotion and
compensation. For teachers of math, science and
English in grades t wo to
10, those evaluations will
include their students’
performance on statewide achievement tests.
It’s trickier in the case of
teachers who don’t teach
those subjects, so Rhode
Island will be developing
ways to assess teachers
based on criteria generated by both teachers and
school districts.
In 2010, Gist was
at the center of controversy over the low-performing Central
Falls High School, where
she approved a plan
that removed the entire
teaching and administrative sta;. The ensuing
uproar resulted in a compromise in which teachers were rehired under
a new leadership team.
Some teachers, however,
chose not to return.
“When you set the
expectation for change,
you need to give folks the
opportunity to be a part
of that change,” she says.
“If they choose not to, you
need to move for ward.”
