Teacher Evaluation

                 ---Yanhua Wang

"...teacher evaluations must be about improving teaching, not just rating teachers." —AFT president Randi Weingarten

The success of any evaluation system—no matter how solid its design—ultimately depends on how well it is implemented.

Schools, like companies, should have an evaluation system to evaluation teacher performance. As a teacher, I don’t mind to be evaluated because I believe it will motivate teachers to better do their job.School leaders should evaluate every teacher once a year.  I think that teacher evaluations are of utmost importance to the quality of education.It’s a way to provide teachers with some feedback on the success of their teaching in light of their “lesson plans.”Evaluation concerns itself with more than how well a teacher teaches. It is also about how a teacher works with the classes of students that make up a teacher’s teaching assignments. Proponents of evaluation systems that include high-quality classroom observations point to their potential value for improving instruction. An effective teacher evaluation system supports high-quality teaching and improved student learning in many ways.

In the school district I teach, teacher observations, student learning outcomes, and feedback from parents compose the teacher evaluation system. It’s a fair, accurate, and comprehensive picture of a teacher’s performance. Here is the combination of teacher evaluation:                        

Teacher Performance and Practice(40%)

Parent Feedback(10%)

Student Growth and Development(45%)                    

Whole-School Student Learning Indicator and/or Student Feedback (5%)  

The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing. Teacher performance and practice with student growth and development account for 85% of teacher evaluation, which I think is very reasonable. As a teacher, I care about what my students learn from me. I want to set up a good example for my students. The ways I can achieve these are doing the best of myself as a teacher, preparing my lessons well and making the most out of it. I also like to listen to feedback from parents and students. Because I always want to make improvement every day.

As the person being evaluated, I think it’s very important to hear my voice of the evaluation system. It’s really necessary to ask teachers’ opinions when making the system. Somehow, teachers are working on the front line of education, we deserve the right to know how we are going to evaluate.