Day 3
Discuss one “observation” area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation.
I usually do okay in most of my observation areas, but one area where I've really been struggling is with my Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). These weigh pretty heavily in our evaluations. So much so that if you receive an "effective" ranking in your observations, but don't meet your SLO goals, you could receive an "ineffective" ranking on your evaluation. It's incredibly frustrating. We're told that our SLOs should be rigorous and that we shouldn't set the goal too low. So, for example, this year, one of my goals was that 60% of English 9 students would score a 3 or 4 in the Reading Comprehension section of the PARCC writing rubric (PS - a 4 is the highest score in that category). Seems pretty easy, right? Like 60% of 9th graders should be able to do that, right? Well, it didn't work out that way. I didn't completely fail the goal, but I didn't pass it with flying colors either. I ended the year with an "effective" rating, which is fine, but I want to do better.
The problems I'm seeing with the SLO are:
1. Choosing an appropriate measure for a goal. We thought the rubric part would be easy, but because of timeline issues (everything is due in early February), we couldn't complete enough assessments to really meet the goal. So I need to find a measure that I can give more frequently in order to get more data points.
2. Selecting a reasonable "pass" percentage. 60% is okay. Our administration wants us to go a bit higher. It's not easy to figure out what's going to work.
3. Timeline. We have to have our SLOs written within the first month or so of school, and then final data points and "results" are due in early February. It's not quite enough time to really collect enough data.
I can't fix the timeline issue, but I can work on the measure and the percentage. So that's going to be my focus for this year. Especially since this isn't a formal observation year.
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