Resources for early childhood teachers in teacher evaluation systems

The Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) wanted to know how states are incorporating early childhood teachers in their teacher evaluation systems, and additionally, whether requirements for evaluating early childhood teachers are different from teachers of higher grades. CEELO has done extensive work and produced many resources on teacher evaluation in early education classrooms, including producing a policy report on an extensive study of 11 states. In addition, an Executive Summary  outlines the report’s policy recommendations and findings. There is also an annotated bibliography, Selected Resources to Support Early Childhood Teachers in State Educator Evaluation Systems, a collection of resources that were helpful in gathering information on teacher evaluation.

Some resources CEELO found especially helpful in collecting information were New Jersey’s Teacher Evaluation Support Document for Pre-K & K, which helps evaluators think about using the Danielson rubric with an early childhood perspective in order to evaluate these teachers fairly, and provides sample early childhood Student Growth Outcome charts; and Rhode Island’s Online Modules, video toolkits for creating SLOs and developing assessment.

Teacher evaluation has been at the forefront of education policy in the past few years. Teacher evaluation systems link the results of methods to evaluate teacher effectiveness to targeted professional development to help teachers grow in their profession. Evaluating birth-through-third-grade teachers in public schools is especially important, because we know that a teacher’s impact on children’s learning during the early years affects long-term educational outcomes (see our post from last week). Knowing where states are headed in creating policy to ensure every child is in a quality classroom–and taught by a high quality teacher–is important in making this issue a priority for policymakers. States are beginning to include guidance and supports for early childhood teachers in teacher evaluation protocols, rolling out new tools and rubrics for teachers and evaluators to better understand the process.

CEELO found that states vary on where they are in terms of implementation, and how teachers are licensed and evaluated. States are also responding to changes in teacher evaluation policy by increasing and targeting professional development to make sure educators understand this changing system. For example, New Jersey uses evaluation scores to determine a pathway to targeted professional development. All states have unique ways of sharing information, whether through regional education networks or online databases. This process is ongoing and states will continue to evolve every school year as new research and information becomes available on best practices.

The Center on Great Teachers and Leaders Databases on State Teacher and Principal Evaluation Policies includes a number of databases that track teacher and principal teacher evaluation policies. This site also offers users the option of comparing up to three states on their teacher or principal evaluation systems. This includes a variety of resources on professional development and online tools with state-specific contexts.

In order for progress to be made in teacher evaluation, CEELO recommends ensuring inter-department coordination and involvement on evaluation changes and suggestions. This is particularly important in making decisions related to early education classrooms, since many states are just beginning to implement programs to evaluate early childhood teachers. Continuing to encourage targeted professional development efforts also ensures that educators are aware of changing policies, and maintains coherence among educators keeping up with the changes.

–Michelle Horowitz is a Research Assistant at the National Institute for Early Education Research and the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes.