I attended with the Michigan Council for Educator Effectiveness in Garden City on October 3rd. They conducted a meeting which lasted about 1.5 hours and allowed individuals to observe their meeting. Following the official meeting there was a question and answer session. Some of the discussion items during their meeting included administrtor evaluation tools, the state of the current pilot projects across the state, Student Growth measures, and potential vendors that could be hired to assist in data analysis.
During the question and answer session, some of the pilot districts expressed concerns regarding their progress and the support/complexities involved. Some of those concerns included the administration of growth measure, and the timeline for evaluations. I went up to the microphone and make the following comments.
1. I first thanked the committee for their hard work as I recognized (as I believe most of us do) regarding the huge task that has been given to the committee.
2. I mentioned that although Dearborn was initially interested in the pilot, we could not afford to change to a new system because we have been vested in a system that is aligned with the Danielson Framework. I further commented that we have a system of positive communication and have developed a working relationship with our stakeholders including union groups where input is valued by all. This has allowed us to come up with a better evaluation model for both teachers and administrators.
3. I asked if they have any recommendations on what we should do to get ready for next year. Areas of need include the student growth assessment piece as we are obligated to weight evaluation by 25% in that area for the 2013-14 school year. I mentioned that we might need to adopt a norm referenced assessment. The pilot districts are using NWEA in grades k-6. Explore, plan and ACT are being used at the high school level.
4. I asked if the recommendations would be a framework or if they were going to recommend a specific model that we must use. If they endorse a specific model then much of the work that we have done the past 7 years will be eliminated.
Here is the link the website for the Michigan Council for Educator Effectiveness. They are thinking of adding a blog to their site. https://www.mcede.org/