When Tennessee teachers return to school this month, they’ll face a brand new way of being scored on their performance. Classroom observations will make up about half of that score, and the state plans to make the results of those in-class critiques available almost in real time.
State law now requires at least four classroom observations a year to judge teachers in action. The state hopes scores will be posted to an online database within a week of each classroom visit. Teachers, principals, and state officials will all have access to the database.
Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman told Congress last week that once completed, the state will use the database to monitor teacher progress.
He said it should help address one of the biggest challenges of the new evaluation system—making sure that teachers in different counties get assessed the same way.
“So for instance, in November we would, at the state level, be able to see that this is the average observation score in county X and this is the average observation score in county Y,” he said, “and if there’s a massive difference and if that difference didn’t correlate to actual student achievement results we would be able to go into county Y and provide re-training to sort of re-norm the system.”
Huffman says consistency across districts in evaluating teachers is particularly important since the scores now help determine whether teachers will get tenure or not.
A Department of Education spokesman said the state isn’t sure when the database will go live.
Tennessee has trained about 5,000 teachers, principals, and administrators in how to conduct classroom observations, in which teachers will be scored in 19 different areas.
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