The local chapter of the Professional Educators of Tennessee in Bradley County conducted an brief survey to see how the new teacher evaluation system was impacting teachers. These are the results.

1. The Results of a Teacher Survey Concerning the New Evaluation Model The Results of a non-scientific survey sent to Teachers and Evaluators within the Bradley County School System* *A few respondents may be from Cleveland City Schools

2. By The Numbers 104teachers completed the survey 84 teachers had already completed the Lesson Plan Evaluation process 14 teachers were writing their plan, but had not yet finished the evaluation 33 teachers indicated that they had completed the Formal Classroom Observation

3. The first set of questions we asked pertained to the formal Lesson Plan Evaluation

4. 8% 13% 5+ Hours – 51% 18% 9%

5. “I am spending so much time on this process my students are not getting my best in the classroom.” “I can't continue in this manner. I spend at least 15 additional hours each week working on school matters, more during the weeks when I have observations. I can't keep this up year after year.” “Most teachers I know spent at least ten hours on their lesson plan. This is in addition to the typical planning and assessment that's required every day. Subsequently, the administrators are never available because they are constantly in classrooms evaluating. “ “It is so time consuming. We already had enough stress with our job now this just adds more on top of it.”

6. 49% Yes 40% No

7. “I was allowed to revise the lesson plan twice, so I was pleased with my score.” “I thought when we turned in the plan for pre-conference, we would be given feedback if we needed to change something. I wasn't.” “I feel like if someone had looked at my lesson before it was presented, they may have caught my mistake and could have changed my whole score.”

8. 88% are Satisfied to Extremely Satisfied

9. Some have expressed concerns that they were told no one could receive a 5. A few expressed that they were told at the county-wide in-service that only “Jesus Himself” could receive a 5. About half stated they were not allowed to revise their lesson plan while they other half were allowed to do so. Teachers are expressing a lot of frustration and angst about the process itself, but in the end the vast majority feel that they were evaluated fairly. Certainly, some improvements in the consistency of the process would help. But, by and large, the number one complaint among teachers appears to be….

10. The process takes far too much time

11. The second set of questions we asked pertained to the Announced Classroom Observation

12. 33 Teachers Have Been Observed

13. We knew this survey was sent out rather early for many teachers to have had their Announced Classroom Observation. As a result, most of the remaining observations are based on the experience of the 33 teachers that are in or have finished the process for the observation.

14. 16 17

15. The preceding chart again shows an inconsistency between evaluations. Because this survey was meant to be totally anonymous, no disaggregation is available for whether this is happening more or about the same in elementary, middle, or high school. In addition, we don’t know if this is slanted more one way or another toward experienced teachers compared to newer teachers. The next slide includes those that have not yet had their observations, but already know whether they are to use the same lesson from their Lesson Plan evaluation or not.

16. 19 30 53

17. 86% are Satisfied to Extremely Satisfied

18. As with the Lesson Plan evaluation, although there is inconsistency between evaluators in the way the process is conducted, the vast majority of teachers are Satisfied to Extremely Satisfied with their score.

19. Final Thoughts

21. We recommend that the 15-minute mini-observation be tied directly to the lesson plan being evaluated

23. Questions? tim@bcape.org