Tulsa's Appraisal System Recommended for Statewide Use

Post date: Dec 9, 2011 3:27:49 AM

The Tulsa World has reported that the state's Teacher and Leader Effectiveness Commission has recommended to the state Board of Education that Tulsa Public Schools' new appraisal system become the state's primary qualitative assessment model for teachers under the requirements of SB 2033. McREL's Principal Evaluation System was recommended for administrators. The state Board of Education will consider the recommendations at its meeting on December 15, 2011.

Damon Gardenhire, spokesman for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, said if final approval is given by the state Board of Education next week, 75 percent of the pilot year funding would be dedicated to implementing TPS' evaluation in school districts across the state, and the other 25 percent could go toward implementing the other models considered, which were Marzano's Causal Teacher Evaluation Model and Danielson's Framework for Teaching.

The Tulsa system was developed with participation from the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association and with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One noticeable difference between the systems is that Tulsa's system includes 20 elements for ratings, while the Danielson system has a staggering 76 elements and Marzano's has 41 classroom strategies.

Bartlesville has a 10-member committee composed of five BEA representatives and five administrators and school board members which will consider possible changes in our appraisal system after the state Board of Education has made a decision. We are not required to switch to TLE until 2013-2014.

Note that the proposed system only comprises the qualitative aspect of the state-mandated TLE system, with the remainder being quantitative. This is far more controversial, with 35% of the appraisal supposed to come from student academic growth using multiple years of standardized test data. As previously reported, the Commission has already recommended that a "Value Added Model" be used for that area. But many subjects and some grade levels have no standardized test data and  in its absence the law requires that objective measures, including student performance on unit or end-of-year tests, be used. The Commission failed to recommend how to implement that requirement, only saying further research should be conducted. The final 15% is to come from "other academic measures" and here the Commission also failed to make a recommendation other than for additional study. 

Tulsa Public Schools TLE Observation and Evaluation System: web site