Elizabeth A Fuller

EDUC 650
6/26/21
Standard Activity 6.29 A- Faculty Evaluation

I decided to give a couple of my colleges some questions regarding teacher evaluations

and their thoughts on the fairness, relevance, and validity of the evaluation instrument on
WVEIS. I also asked their opinions on gathering evaluative data, observations, and student test
scores. These are “hot topic” questions this year, and it seems there is yet another divide in the
staff due to this issue. So, I found it very helpful to get these answers (while teachers will still
tell me how they really feel). The three questions I asked are:

 Do you think teacher evaluations are fair?

 Do you think teacher evaluations make progress for individual teachers or is it just a
hoop that administrators have to jump through because it is a state requirement?
 What recommendations do you think need to take place to make the evaluation
system better?

The first teacher I asked was Lisa Williams. She is the honors English teacher, and the
department chair for English. She is fiercely loyal to her department and is not only an excellent
teacher, but a great leader and role model for the staff. She had the following to say in regard
to teacher evaluations.
1.  Do I think evaluations are fair? 
 
Whether or not evaluations are fair is completely determined by the person evaluating you.  So
basically my answer is no.  If you have someone who is intelligent, who doesn't have a beef
with you as an employee, who understands how to read a rubric, then you can get a decent
evaluation, but God help you if you are being evaluated by someone who isnt' all of those
things. 
 
Examples from just this year and this isn't anything personally towards our admins.  It's just
facts.  Many of our admins this year marked people as emerging with absolutely zero evidence
to indicate that's true (also during a pandemic when teachers jumped through a million hoops
and did an amazing job for their students under extreme circumstances...THIS is the year
admins decided to mark people as emerging).   
 
There was no explanation as to how or why people who had been marked accomplished for
several years (or decades) were now suddenly this year emerging.  No one met with these
teachers in December to talk to them about weaknesses they were seeing so that they could
work towards improvement in order to receive accomplished on their evaluations.  None of
that is fair. 
 
Also, many admins didn't follow the WVDE rubric.  For example, some people were marked as
emerging in the category of professional development.  To be accomplished, you only need to
have completed the required hours of professional development.  We have some teachers who
were working on their Masters' degree marked emerging; we have some teachers who were
involved in book studies during the school year and over the summer to prepare for the
upcoming year marked emerging.  We have a teacher who at one point was a Fullbright
recipient marked as emerging.   
 
When confronted about not following the rubric, one admin stated, "Well, the rubric is
ambiguous."  Ummm...no it's not.  That's the entire point of the rubric.  A rubric outlines the
criteria needed to fall into certain categories.  If you hit the criteria, you should be evaluated at
that level. 
 
One year we had an admin mark a teacher as emerging on Community Involvement.  This
teacher goes to every athletic event, band concert, play, etc.  This teacher is on the hill more
than the evaluating admin was.  This teacher has an outstanding reputation in the community
BECAUSE of all the events they attend.  This teacher also worked on his National Board
Certification and received a perfect score on Parent and Community Involvement.  When you
look at the rubric, this teacher fell into the Distinguished category, yet he was marked
emerging.   
 
 
 
2.  Do you think teacher evaluations “do anything” or matter to them or do they feel it is just
a state requirement? 
 
To most teachers I would say, “Hell yes it matters to us.”  We pour our blood, sweat, and tears
into this job and we get very little praise or recognition in return so we would like our
evaluations to reflect the fact that our admins SEE how hard we work and appreciate all that we
do, but unfortunately that often isn’t the case.  Most teachers take pride in the work they do
and receiving a negative evaluation is soul crushing. 
 
For other teachers, they care about their evaluations because they need them to get different
jobs at other schools so they ARE important. 
 
And yes there are some teachers, I guess, who don’t care about them. 
 
3.  What recommendations do you think need to take place to make the evaluation system
better?   
 
Admins need additional training on how to use the rubric and then they should be forced to use
it correctly.  Even if you don’t like a teacher, if they hit the criteria for Accomplished, that
should be what an admin marks. 
 
I also think there should be more teacher input.  For example, if I go for my evaluation
conference, and the admin has it already filled out without talking to me, how do they know
how much PD I’ve had this year???  How do they know what community involvement I’ve
done???  I think teachers should be able to talk about everything they’ve done and admins can
discuss what they’ve seen in observations, and then together, they decide what level they
should mark for that teacher. 
 
But honestly I think this is a top down problem.  I think currently in this county and maybe in
this country, I don’t know, admins are taught and encouraged to be mean.  There’s a whole “us
against them” mentality that I think is cultivated from the state department to the board to the
local schools.  There is a “gotcha” mentality (for example, instead of talking to teachers in
December about weaknesses, admins just wait until the end of the year to sucker punch
teachers on their evaluations; if they really cared about helping their teachers become stronger
and helping their school become stronger for students, they wouldn’t let demonstrated
weaknesses go all year).  And don’t get me wrong; I think all of our admins at HHS are
wonderful human beings, BUT I think kindness and caring and compassion for their teachers
would probably get them ridiculed from their superiors.  I just don’t think it’s something that’s
encouraged….which is really sad because happy employees who feel safe and cared for and
appreciated will work FAR better and harder than those who work in fear. 
 
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like the entire profession of teaching has just become a breeding
ground for meanness.  People are constantly being called on the carpet, getting in trouble, our
social media is monitored, we’re often ambushed with a disciplinary action or tone.  It just feels
“mean.”  I used to feel like admins and teachers were on the same side working for the good of
the school and the students.  Now, I just feel anxious, worried, scared, etc.  This probably also
has to do with the fact that parents are so mean now as well and instead of protecting
teachers, our PR departments want to appease parents so they hang teachers; whereas in the
past, admins used to protect their teachers. 

The second peer that responded to me was Randy Snyder. He works in the social studies
department and has a different evaluator from the previous staff above. His answers are below.
1) It’s a basic reality. Evaluations are subjective tools. Scaling the number of observations
according to years of service negates the real value of a summative evaluation of how teachers
truly perform. Does this mean I’m an awesome teacher because administrators no longer need
to sit for an observation? In previous years, administrators entered comments that helped
validate my work in the classroom or provided feedback on areas I should consider developing.
Unfortunately, Lance, a first-year principal, simply checked the boxes and provided no
feedback. This basically supports why I don’t think they’re really “fair.” I won’t even try to
address tying student test performance to the final rating.

2) Evaluations as currently conducted can be useful instruments when guiding teacher

development, however the categories and standards are unnecessarily convoluted. More
importantly, is there no extrinsic value to receiving a Distinguished rating? You don’t receive a
merit increase.

As a first-year teacher in McDowell County, my mentor, a teacher with 20-plus years

experience, told me the principal was hounding him about setting goals for Distinguished. He
told the principal that it wasn’t worth the time, because he would not receive a pay raise. This
same year, he was voted Teacher of the Year at the school and county levels, and he received a
brand new vehicle to use for one year. He received Accomplished on his evaluation.   

3) Provide real training on how to complete evaluations in a manner that’s mutually beneficial
to both parties. Create monetary incentives. 

My idea that will receive fewer endorsements includes disrupting the “tenured” philosophy by
conducting the same number of random observations, maybe once per quarter, for all teachers.
Do not alert the teacher prior to it being conducted, however also recognize times when an
observation during test taking or independent work provides little opportunity for a true
evaluation. Personally, I believe I offer the best 9/11 lessons in the building. It’s multi-faceted
and the students are required to provide written responses. We evaluate news images from
that day. We discuss an interview I conducted with the mother of a United 93 flight attendant
who perished in the crash in Pennsylvania.  Other areas are covered, too. I should be able to ask
for an observation for that date, but it should count as an additional opportunity. 

Unfortunately, the third person was unable to comment because he and his family were
at the beach. (So, I let him off the hook). In the case of my evaluations, they have all been good
and fair throughout the years. I do know that there are a couple of administrators in the
building that have received less than positive feedback after the staff has received their
evaluations this school year (one has even filed a grievance against the administrator). Staff
have told me in confidence that “evaluations are crap”, and that it does not matter what kind of
job you do. What matters is WHO evaluates you. There are no real guidelines for what they
mark or say. I read and take my evaluations very seriously as I feel it is a documented reflection
of my job performance and I would not sign mine if I did not feel it was fair or truly reflected my
work ethic and daily performance of my position.