What Should Teacher Evaluations Look Like?

Ryan Niman

I wish for an evaluation system that is based on research.

Why? Two reasons:

First, everyone knows that trends in education are, well, trendy. New movements telling us how we should teach come along each year. In my eight years I've seen Understanding by Design, curriculum mapping, and CFGs come and go as areas of focus in my school or district. I've seen a district-wide evaluation system sputter and fade when one coordinator left the district. But perhaps worst of all is the weariness that I've seen from other teachers as a result of all these changes.

Whenever something new is introduced, teachers start down the path I was just on. "I remember when we had to...", "That sounds a lot like...", and "Do you remember so-and-so who wanted us to..." become frequent sentence starters. It doesn't tend to matter whether the idea came from a fellow teacher or was dictated from above; 20 to 30 minutes later everyone is a skeptic and many have dug in their heels. None of it is based on data regarding actual student learning. Instead, the only data anyone has to work on is how long the trend lasted and how painful it was to go through.

The solution? An evaluation system that identifies whether teachers are putting their effort into skills and practices that are proven to result in improved student learning. Because let's face it: Most of us know that we're effective teachers, but we are constantly plagued by the fear that there's a better, faster way to get the same outcome.

Luckily, states have started to make progress in this regard. I can only speak for Washington where Senate Bill 6696 mandated an improved evaluation system be in place by the 2013-14 school year. Key to this system is that every district in the state must adopt a research-based instructional framework that will be linked to the evaluation system. Through a pilot project, three frameworks were chosen. Each district in the state is now choosing one of these frameworks:

• The Center for Educational Leadership's 5 Dimensions of Teaching and Learning

• Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching

• Robert Marzano's The Art and Science of Teaching and Effective Supervision

As we started to evaluate these three frameworks in my district, we began to wonder if one was more clearly based on research than the others. We are in the process of figuring this out, and I hope to write more about our findings either here later in the month and/or back over at my normal blogging gig on transformED.

But I can at least share our biggest 'a-ha' moment: Even the best instructional frameworks had holes in them or promoted to critical instructional techniques that might sound good but which aren't grounded in the research.

Regardless of which framework we choose, we have a lot of work ahead of us. But all three of them feel like a step in the right direction. By adopting a framework and new evaluation system we have the potential to create a system in which instruction, evaluation, and professional development are working together for the same purpose and using the same approach. I have a feeling it would be a first for us just as it will be a first for many other districts.

Ryan Niman teaches English and Social Studies in the Edmonds School District north of Seattle.

Posted by Ryan Niman at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Renee Moore

My colleagues here around the table have raised some important and intriguing issues about teacher evaluation.

Like Ryan K., I sense (and hope) that teacher evaluations ten years from now will look very different from the haphazard, ineffective methods in use in most American schools today. His vision is echoed in Jessica Hahn's portrayal of the power of collaboration among teachers even today and the importance of extending that collaboration throughout the district and into the community.

I'm thrilled that Jessica K. brought to the table the role students could play in teacher evaluation. I strongly second that view. Some of the best teaching advice I've ever gotten—and some of the most needed criticisms—came from students.

Michael is absolutely spot-on with his warning about the danger of ignoring context in teacher evaluation. In fact, we have known for some time that teaching and learning are highly contextual, even in virtual settings. This is just one aspect of the rich complexity of teaching, as Ryan N. explores. Teaching is the consummate profession, and those who practice it deserve an equally robust evaluation system.

That's why enlightening work such as the "Student Learning, Student Achievement" report that Patrick discusses deserves greater attention. Using standardized test scores as a primary indicator of whether students or their teachers are successful, like the sloppy walk-through observations of some administrators, makes a mockery of real professional evaluation and is a gross disservice to the students we serve.

As a group, I believe this roundtable is representative of the desire of the majority of teaching professionals to have truly effective, accurate, and helpful teaching evaluation.

And that type of evaluation system can only come when teachers ourselves demand it, design it, and implement it as part of a much more profound shift within the teaching profession itself.

Renee Moore has taught English and journalism for 20 years in the Mississippi Delta region at both high school and community college levels.

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Ryan Kinser

It's Oscar season, and during these long winter evenings, I'll be renting some Academy Award contenders. This month's Roundtable posts and discussions prompted me to grab a past favorite, A Beautiful Mind, because it shaped the view of teacher evaluation I described in my first post. I'm thinking of the bar scene in which John Nash has his epiphany about the incomplete theory of governing dynamics. He and his friends try to decide who will approach an attractive blonde who keeps glancing at the group. To paraphrase Russell Crowe's Nash, "What if each of us does not what's best for himself, but what's best for himself and the group?"

What if the future of teacher evaluation gave us a system that followed Nash's advice?

I'm talking about evaluation systems mirroring professional learning communities. In my future utopia, I am evaluated as an individual and a team member. Isn't this part of the fabric of highly effective PLCs? They meet often, look at group and individual data, and then reflect on how to better instruct students. Doesn't this also describe the philosophy behind effective evaluation?

Teachers are concerned about the credibility and motives of their evaluators. We disagree over answers to several questions like, should that evaluator be a peer, a stranger, or a self-selected partner from another state who might teach under similar conditions? How can an observer get an accurate, objective picture of one's teaching from snapshot visits? One answer: Take information from that snapshot back to your PLC.

We don't need teacher evaluation systems hindered by cronyism, arguments over evaluator credibility, or the clouded judgment of a friend observing us. We need to simply reflect on shared goals like those Jessica Hahn described in her post. Impressed by her school's sense of "collective responsibility" regarding low test scores, she notes, "...action and reflection rather than punishment should be the motivation behind any kind of teacher evaluation." If we can find a way to establish positive interdependence among teachers observing each other, then it doesn't matter as much who is conducting the observation.

It seems like Alpena Public Schools in Alpena, Mich., wants to prove this point. The district allows teachers to forgo a formal evaluation in favor of a PLC learning goal.

If this is a step towards the future I envisioned, where else is this an emerging reality? And more importantly, is it working?

Ryan Kinser is a 6th grade English teacher at Walker Middle Magnet School for International Studies in Tampa, Fla.

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Jessica Keigan

My class was doing a collaborative project that required students to move from station to station for conversations about quotes from the novel we were reading. Yes, the students were loud and the classroom chaotic as the teenagers moved about. I'm sure that there were side conversations and a little bit of typical teenage behavior mixed into the clamor, but the majority of the noise was a direct result of the learning that was happening in my classroom.

My site professor was a science teacher who had retired from the classroom many years before. His definitions of classroom management and effective teaching were limited by his experience in a different field (and an earlier era), and were very different from my own.

In my first post, I spoke of the strong need for teacher and student voice in the ideal evaluation systems of the future. I would add that the ideal system would also ensure that those who are providing observational data are masters of the teaching craft and, even more ideally, the content that they are observing. Had my professor been this kind of evaluator, he would likely have recognized that the noise and chaos were indicative of an engaged and active group of learners.

Most systems today tend to rely heavily on administrative observation. Thankfully, I have a great deal of respect for my administrative team. They strive to support sound instructional practice through their observations and feedback, which strike me as honest and meaningful. However, they are limited to their administrative perspective.

To have a truly ideal system, administrative voices need to be coupled with the voices of peer observers/evaluators who can provide the specialized perspective of a master teacher who is firmly planted in classroom practice.

This calls for innovative hybrid roles: teacherpreneurs, for instance, spend half their time working with students and half their time on efforts to improve teaching and learning. What if schools tapped master teachers as teacherpreneurs who could remain grounded in classroom realities while spending half their workweeks as peer evaluators?

The ideal evaluation system should employ the expertise of our best teachers in roles like these to help all teachers improve.

A member of the Center for Teaching Quality's Denver New Millennium Initiative team, Jessica Keigan divides her time evenly between teaching English at Horizon High School in Denver and supporting results-oriented efforts to improve Colorado's schools.

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Michael Moran

Furthermore (as if all of this wasn't already difficult enough), massive cuts to state education budgets across the country make implementing relevant, contextual, and fair teacher evaluations harder than ever. In a climate where states are seeing millions of dollars in funding disappear from K-12 budgets and many important programs perish under the tracks of the relentless freight train that is the economic recession, how can we reconcile the need for enhanced and meaningful teacher evaluations with a mandate to use an out-of-touch, ineffective evaluator severely strapped for cash?

I hear an awful lot about Finland's education system these days (or as I like to call it, Marcia Brady) and how the United States (Jan Brady) can replicate some of its successes. Despite the obnoxious comparisons and incessant news coverage, I'm a fan of Finland's education model, especially its inclusion of the "human factor" in teacher evaluations. I also find the argument that Finland's ethnic homogeneity allows their education system to work in ways the US's diverse population could not realistically adopt to be deplorable. However, there are so many key components to making the machine work that are neither politically nor fiscally possible for the United States to replicate in our current economic situation.

So then, what is actually possible in the former land of "anything is possible"? As is often the case with any meaty discussion, I am left with more questions than answers; however, I am more empowered with the knowledge that continuing to ask these questions can lead to the development of a teacher evaluation model that is fair, effective, and sustainable. I wish that those actually developing these evaluative models thought in the same way.

Michael Moran is a former 6th grade teacher currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs.

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Patrick Ledesma

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) had some benefits. We finally had concrete data that some subgroups were under performing. The collaborative school cultures created to analyze data reduced the classroom isolation and bunker mentalities that limited previous individual and organizational development.

But there were unintended consequences. In some states, the curriculum was narrowed, standards were lowered, emphasis on non-tested subjects decreased, and activities and strategies that could increase test scores became the focus.

As we have this discussion on teacher evaluation and the likely integration of standardized test scores in the evaluation process, what will be the unintended consequences of including test scores under a growth model?

On one hand, teachers of students with diverse learning needs may be able to show significant growth.

On the other hand, the literature is emerging that growth models are unstable when used for decisions for individual teachers. Educators will have to define what is considered appropriate growth at all levels of the scale, from teachers showing growth for students significantly below grade level, to understanding what can be expected for teachers showing "little growth" for students at the very high levels of achievement.

These will be the next challenges that any teacher evaluation system using the growth model will have to confront.

How will the expectations for demonstrating growth influence teacher behaviors? Will this lessen the role of testing, or will this lead to an increase in a testing focus as teachers try to maximize points for evaluation purposes when salaries are on the line?

On the larger scale, what will be the effects of the continued publication of test scores as part of school profiles? Without other visible representations of what goes on in schools, how else will schools demonstrate to the public that theirs is a quality school?

Lots of questions. Policymakers and leaders will have to look out for the next set of unintended consequences.

If the saying what is tested is what is taught is true, then it may be inevitable that what is evaluated and publicized is.... what we will see in schools and classrooms.

Patrick Ledesma is a middle school technology specialist and special education department chair with Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

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Jessica Hahn

After reading the posts, it seems that the ideas and tools for effective evaluation are out there. Educators are advocating for peer review and the use of multiple measures of student achievement, NOT just standardized test scores. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has outlined standards for teacher performance in multiple areas. And teachers are suggesting videotaping themselves and their colleagues in order to critique and improve their practice.

I believe the disconnect between what is available and what is actually happening is in our mindset around teacher evaluation. Currently, our motivation behind teacher evaluation (and particularly linking it to test scores) seems punitive. Because accountability is such a huge component of the government's role in education, evaluation is used to place blame. Teacher evaluation, however we choose to do it, should be done in the spirit of improving teachers' practice and their students' education.

Jessica Hahn has taught elementary grade children for six years in Phoenix and New York City.

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Ryan Niman

Here's my first: "I wish for an evaluation system that measures the full set of skills necessary to be a teacher."

In my second year of teaching, my evaluator (the vice-principal) offered some sound advice: "Get rid of some extra desks and tables." My students had been bumping into each other as they moved around the room during group work. And somehow, until my evaluator mentioned it, I had never realized that I could actually get rid of some of the furniture in my classroom. This feedback helped me realize that I could be much more effective in advocating for myself and the needs of my students.

But, even at the time, I knew that this was lackluster evaluation. That vice-principal had come into my room to check on two things: my ability to keep my class under control and ability to run a decent lesson. Having confirmed that I could do both, he was looking for some other way to be of use.

And 'looking' was the key word. In most states, teacher evaluation has been based on one or two observations in a year. These observations can provide an impressive amount of feedback on a teacher's classroom management, in-the-moment teaching, and relationships with students.

But they cannot provide a complete picture of what a teacher does. Tasks that are difficult or impossible to see in the course of two observations include curriculum design and scaffolding, collaboration with and mentoring of peers, communication with parents, involvement with the community, and interactions with students before and after school.

Here's what a more comprehensive evaluation system could do:

• Yield more information to help an individual teacher improve--which in turn results in improved student learning.

• Inform decisions about professional development and staffing. And no, I don't mean the current fashion of identifying the lowest performing teachers in order to fire them. Instead, this data could drive efforts to help all staff to perform at a higher level--and it could inform hiring decisions, ensuring a well-balanced staff. This too would result in improved student learning.

• Communicate the complexity of teachers' work. If others perceive the work of teaching as merely controlling a classroom and delivering a lesson plan, then we will never be treated as professionals but as cogs in a machine. By doing more to enhance the image of teaching, we will ensure that highly qualified professionals are in classrooms with students. And this too will lead to improved student learning.

What would such an evaluation system look like? My colleagues in Washington NMI (a group of teacher-leaders supported by the Center for Teaching Quality) and I tackled this question in our report, "How Better Teacher & Student Assessment Can Power Up Learning." I'll share details in my next post.

Ryan Niman teaches English and Social Studies in the Edmonds School District north of Seattle.

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Jessica Hahn

This story begs three questions:

1. What is good teaching?
2. How do we evaluate it?
3. What is the purpose of evaluating teachers?

I'd like to address briefly the purpose of evaluating teachers and the way we do it.

As a classroom teacher, I want to be evaluated so that I can become a better teacher. I want a team of leaders and peers who are knowledgeable, experienced, and nuanced looking with me at my practice itself, at my kids' attitudes toward school, and at my kids' social, emotional, and academic growth using a variety of tools. I want the lens through which I am evaluated always to be, "How can we develop her as a better teacher?"

The key word that I have used is "we." While the classroom teacher is a critical factor in student growth, we do not work in isolation. Therefore directly tying a student's standardized test score to the classroom teacher's effectiveness is dangerous. For example, I have been told by supervisors, other teachers, and all kinds of data, that I can be an effective teacher. But do not ever tell me that is all because of me. My students last year succeeded because their teacher was part of a highly effective team. My students grew in reading because three of them worked daily with BK, the brilliant and reflective reading recovery teacher. My lessons were stronger and more engaging because I planned with KR and KD, two of the best teachers I have ever worked with. I watched these women teach and I became better. My students loved math and got better in it because AC is, well, my colleague calls her a "child whisperer." My students were held to high expectations in a safe and welcoming environment because CS and RJ held them to these expectations in our school. I haven't even mentioned the willingness and dedication of the children and their families.

So if schools and governments want to evaluate me primarily on my students' standardized test scores, they will have to find out using some statistical method the value and percent contributed by each teammate to each student's growth.

Or we could shift our framework from "your students' success" to "OUR students' success."

Jessica Hahn has taught elementary grade children for six years in Phoenix and New York City.

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Michael Moran

That said, evaluation is important and, when implemented correctly, has the potential to truly transform teacher effectiveness and enable teaching professionals to help close academic achievement gaps between students. As it stands, however, most teacher evaluations neglect to take into consideration the specific context in which teachers actually work. Many teachers are evaluated on subjects they do not even teach, uniform standards that are not always applicable, and fleeting observations that try to project the performance of a few hours onto an entire academic year.

So, what should teacher evaluations look like? They should look like the teacher. They should look like the students and the classroom in which those students learn. Teacher evaluations should look like the grade level, content area, and community the teacher teaches. They should look like the goals that teachers, students, and administrators set for themselves, their classes, and the school as a whole.

The point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of the evidence that indicates teacher effectiveness is dependent on context. Sure, great teachers are great leaders, and great leaders can lead anywhere, but you run into a problem when an art teacher is evaluated on the standardized test results of one grade level in mathematics. Evaluations need to be multifaceted, taking into consideration not only student performance on standardized tests, but the academic growth of students as demonstrated by a portfolio of artifacts, the relationships that teachers build with students and their parents as demonstrated by student and family evaluative surveys, and observations from not only administrators, but peers and master teachers.

Taking context into consideration when evaluating teachers should not be seen as a crutch. Rather, it should be seen as a pedestal for heightening the issues that matter most to a teacher, his students, and the school. In the end, by tailoring evaluation, and thus treating teachers more like professionals, we can show teachers that we trust them and that evaluative tools are meant to help, not hinder, their effectiveness.

Michael Moran is a former 6th grade teacher currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs.

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Jessica Keigan

The most informative conversations I have had about teacher effectiveness and evaluation haven't been with politicians or policy leaders, however. These conversations have instead involved the most deeply-invested stakeholders in the system: students and teachers. They have helped me to realize that the benchmarks of the best teacher evaluation systems of the future will find a balance of objective data gathered from teacher-created assessments and subjective data gathered from a variety of observations.

I am often struck by how insightful my students are about the educational system. I suppose this shouldn't surprise me, given they are the consumer of the product we create. According to my students, the best teachers are experts of their content and craft and those who provide challenge and support to each student. The ideal evaluation system would recognize that students can provide data about what they are learning if we ask them to share, either verbally or through the tasks we set before them each day. We can apply this truth to create an evaluation system that measures students' daily learning experience through formative assessment and provides more authentic measures than the limited and often untimely data gathered by standardized tests.

Teachers who are effective can also speak with eloquence about how they know they are effective. The best teachers I know are reflective about their craft every minute of the day. They are practicing effectiveness according to my students' standards by differentiating instruction and delivery for each student they teach.

In an ideal evaluation system, there would be ample opportunity for teachers to reflect on their craft by creating goals for and taking part in all stages of the observation process. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification process is the place to look for this design. Teachers who are working on their National Board certification are asked to reflect on recorded lessons, so that they watch themselves teach.

While there is room and a strong need for observations by highly qualified peer or administrative observers, the ideal evaluation system would also recognize the value of allowing the teacher to self-assess.

Ultimately, the ideal evaluation systems will recognize the need for teacher and student voice at all points of the process.

A member of the Center for Teaching Quality's Denver New Millennium Initiative team, Jessica Keigan divides her time evenly between teaching English at Horizon High School in Denver and supporting results-oriented efforts to improve Colorado's schools.

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Ryan Kinser

My next peer evaluator arrives in a few minutes. Each period, I will be observed by another 6th grade Language Arts teacher. Our principal has assigned one substitute to rotate through their classes as they each take a period to act as my evaluator.

My peers already conducted a pre-conference where we discussed my lesson. How do my strategies address our year-long department and team goals? Which rubric domain did I select as my individual goal? Our department has decided to focus on student engagement this year. I explain my cooperative learning strategies to the team and point out my individual area of need: higher-order questioning techniques. I ask the team, "Will you focus on how many of these questions are student-initiated?" We schedule a post-conference first thing tomorrow to debrief and suggest next steps for me.

A small 360-degree camera films the lesson. In our post-conference, the peers and I will discuss our findings, pointing to specific video evidence. While I initially found the camera intimidating, I've grown to love reviewing the tapes, seeing myself as the students do. The peers isolate student responses and point out where I could have helped them probe with higher-level questions. It's transformative, not punitive.

We have built mutual trust. We will be evaluated as a team and as individuals. Once a week our school conducts instructional rounds, where my teammates and I check out best practices in the upper grades language arts courses. During our planning period, we spend about 10 minutes in each class. Then we debrief about the positive things we saw. Finally, we identify some possible next steps for our group. We submit demonstration lessons via video to a shared workspace when schedules tighten.

By 2021, these practices are aligned with school improvement goals and will culminate in a cooperative National Board-style portfolio reviewed by a panel of district mentors. Our evaluation system now includes more financial incentives, which we earn in up to three categories: school, team, and individual teacher performance. All three are still based on student achievement, with student test scores as one component and teacher performance assessment scores as another, but our final project includes multiple authentic measures.

What else has changed over a decade of honing teacher evaluation? I invite you to ignore bureaucratic obstacles for a moment and imagine: How would you like to be evaluated in 10 years?

Ryan Kinser is a 6th grade English teacher at Walker Middle Magnet School for International Studies in Tampa, Fla.

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Patrick Ledesma

From this accountability perspective, perhaps it was just a matter of time before standardized test scores would be part of the teacher evaluation process.

My home state of Virginia joined the list of states seeking to use test scores in teacher evaluation, recommending that "40 percent of teachers' evaluations be based on student academic progress, as determined by multiple measures of learning and achievement, including, if available and applicable, student-growth data from Virginia Department of Education."

In this discussion on the role of test scores in teacher evaluation, I am reminded of a recent conversation with an educator working in a school with a diverse socio-economic student population:

This educator remarked, "My school had a 93 percent pass rate on the standardized test. We have over 55 percent of our students on free-and-reduced lunch. Another school had a 98 percent pass rate on the same test, but has only 8 percent of their students on free-and-reduced lunch. ... My teachers worked harder for their test scores."

It's statement a that deserves consideration.

Will the use of test scores in teacher evaluation unfairly challenge or penalize teachers who work with students with more academic and social needs?

After all, teachers in high-needs schools have to overcome the effects of poverty and other socio-economic factors to produce their high score results. While teachers in schools with more privileged students have different challenges, their students may come to school with a level of preparedness that gives them advantages on standardized tests.

So, any teacher evaluation that incorporates student test scores will need to be sensitive to environmental contexts in which teachers help all students learn.

Failure to consider the contexts could result in misleading evaluations. Test scores may artificially inflate or unfairly constrain a teacher's rating. Given the emerging literature that questions the use of growth and value-added models, teachers are rightfully concerned how scores may be an inaccurate and unstable measure of their teaching.

Despite these concerns, policies advocating for the use of test scores continue; therefore, it is important for classroom teachers to advocate for how tests can be properly used as part of an evaluation process.

Last March, I was part of a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards webinar panel that discussed this issue. An ensuing report, ""Student Learning, Student Achievement," outlines the essential criteria on how large-scale standardized assessments can be used in teacher evaluation systems:

Standardized tests should include the following elements:

1) Curriculum-related scale with equivalent unit of measure along a considerable continuum of achievement.

2) Information on validity of tests for assessing special populations.

3) Data systems that track students and link to teachers.

4) Curriculum alignment

The report goes on to state that:

"Teacher evaluation systems will need to incorporate additional evidence of teacher practice in order to correlate any student learning gains with specific classroom activities. ... Gains in student learning are not just the function of the classroom teacher but of many other factors as well, including teaching conditions and supports, past learning experiences, tutors, parents, student attendance and participation, and other external student and family factors."

The point is that if the public wants to use standardized test scores to evaluate teachers, then we need better standardized tests.

And as states expand the use of test scores in teacher evaluation, educators will need to help the public understand what is needed to make their convenient and preferred method of teacher evaluation meaningful in judging the teachers and schools that serve them.

Patrick Ledesma is a middle school technology specialist and special education department chair with Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

Posted by Patrick Ledesma at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Renee Moore

I spent two years engaging with some of the best teachers in the country about what teaching should look like by 2030. We fully expect, and our students deserve, an expansion of the learning environment beyond the 19th-century structures we have inherited. These changes have already begun: Learning extends beyond classroom walls, beyond brick and mortar buildings, beyond the 55 minute period, or the seven-period day.

As part of this evolution, teaching must change also, and, fortunately, evidence that it is in fact changing grows daily. Teachers are using a broader range of mediums and tools with increasing levels of sophistication; they are working in increasingly effective teams that multiply the talents and resources available to their students. Some teachers have already distinguished themselves as trendsetters in digital pedagogy; others have an intricate understanding of a range of cultures and social conditions from which our students now come. Still more teachers have demonstrated strong competencies as coaches and mentors to colleagues; others are developing curriculum, software, assessment tools, and networks. And there is more to come that we can't even describe yet.

How can we evaluate such rich complexity with all the varying levels of performance and experience they represent across the largest profession in America—with a few five-minute walk-bys and a checklist? Hardly. The old factory evaluation model, which was never a good fit for education, will be even less so as we move further into the potential of immersed learning and interconnected teaching. One principal trying to evaluate an entire faculty whose members practice a dizzying variety of pedagogical skills will be painfully ineffective. Like our students, teachers need assessment of our work based on a combination of measures and reviewers, with teachers taking responsibility for our own professional growth based on mutually established, student-centered goals.

To get there from here will require transformed thinking and some significant power shifts, neither of which, history reminds us, come easily. But I believe we are on the verge of such a shift as teaching finally morphs into a true profession. One of the trademarks of a profession is peer review of each others' work against high standards established by the profession.

The necessary components for this transformation are already in place. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has painstakingly created rigorous performance-based standards for almost every area of teaching, as well as counseling, media specialists, and now principals. Soon, we will have a critical mass of highly accomplished teachers as measured by those standards (we're at nearly 100,000 now). Meanwhile, the two national teacher-education accreditation agencies have merged, and have put their support behind the sweeping recommendations for overhauling American teacher preparation put forward by the Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for Improved Student Learning. That panel represented a broad cross-section of education stakeholders, including parents and teachers.

Most recently, a commission made up of outstanding teachers and teacher leaders gathered by the National Education Association has laid out an ambitious, but doable plan to move our profession to the next level, including how to create and maintain a highly effective teacher evaluation system.

American public education is at a critical juncture, and it will be our shame and our children's loss if we don't complete the journey.

Renee Moore has taught English and journalism for 20 years in the Mississippi Delta region at both high school and community college levels.

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