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Teacher Rating Form and Teacher Termination Procedure Review
Professional Development Activity

Submitted by: Dr. David Goodin
5/18/2012

Examination of Current Teacher Rating Form In order to fully address the rating of a teacher both the observation and evaluation forms for Spring – Ford will be examined in section one of this paper. The observation form that is used in Spring - Ford was created by the district using Charlotte Danielson’s “The Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument” as a guide. Danielson’s work was originally published in 1996 and has gone through a few revisions. The most recent edition was published in 2011. Danielson established four areas, or domains, that are focused on. The domains are: 1) Planning and Preparation 2) Classroom Environment 3) Instruction and 4) Professionalism. With each domain Danielson a created rubric to help evaluate a teachers performance. The rubric has four levels of performance; unsatisfactory, basic, proficient, and distinguished. Danielson spoke at the 2012 ASCD convention in Philadelphia and addressed her framework. She indicated that most teachers are in the basic and proficient range and that the unsatisfactory and distinguished categories should seldom be used. Additionally Danielson noted that only domains two and three (classroom environment and instruction) can truly be observed during a classroom observation. She indicated that in order to evaluate someone in domains one and four (planning and preparation and professionalism) a meeting must occur with the teacher where the teacher brings evidence as prescribed by the points under domains one and four. The form that Spring – Ford uses has five categories for rating (NA, O, S, NI, and US); the Danielson rubric uses the language of Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Distinguished. Danielson stated that administrators should be focused on improving teaching. She said “we are not going to fire our way to Finland”. Currently many countries look at the educational success Finland has had and use the country as a measuring stick. Danielson pointed out by simply firing teachers for poor performance we are not going to improve our schools. She stressed the point that we need to focus on improving instruction teacher by teacher. The State evaluation form that is used is also modeled after Danielson’s Framework for Teaching. Pennsylvania uses two forms; one for Level I (426) and one for Level II certification (428). A teacher who has a Level I certificate will formally be evaluated two times per school year. A teacher with a Level II certificate receives one end of the year evaluation. One main difference between the observation form and the evaluation form is how they are used. The observation form is a reflection on a particular lesson that was observed. The evaluation form can contain information on things that occurred during the entire school year. For example if attendance was an issue it would be noted in the evaluation form. The current State form does not address areas of growth needed. Under the current State form a teacher is rated as satisfactory or unsatisfactory. The state is piloting a new evaluation form which will be addressed later in this paper.
PART II. SFSAD and its practices surrounding teacher ratings
The Spring-Ford Area School District maintains commonalities across the district in terms of the practices which surround teacher ratings. Generally speaking, each building administrator (principal and/or assistant principal) utilizes a clinical supervision model when formally observing, evaluating, and rating a professional teaching employee. As designed, the clinical supervision model consists of five stages: pre-observation conference, observation, analysis and strategy, supervision conference, and the post-conference analysis. However, it is consistent throughout the district that all five stages of the clinical