Measuring Teacher and Leader Performance

Posted by on November 15, 2010

Building a better evaluation

The recent push to use performance evaluations for critical personnel decisions in education has highlighted the shortcomings of our current systems, and increased the urgency to improve them. A new report from Public Impact summarizes six organizational steps that draw on research and experience from across sectors — including government, nonprofits, and for-profit businesses — that have proven critical to designing a reliable performance measurement system. First, an organization — for example, a school system — must determine the purposes of performance measurement. These are typically professional development, promotions, compensation, retention, and dismissal. Next, job objectives must be aligned with the organization’s mission so that evaluations capture outcomes and behaviors needed from each employee to achieve this mission. Performance measures must then be designed, including what individuals in each role are expected to contribute and the ways in which they are expected to achieve results. Performance standards should be set as a yard-stick for assessing employees, so that both leaders and staff know what good and great performance looks like, and the measurement process should be designed by determining who will organize and have input into evaluations, using what system, and how often. Finally, organizations must ensure that they use measurement results to take action, including making decisions about professional development; promotions and reach extension; career planning; compensation; retention and dismissals; and future recruiting and hiring.

See the report: http://www.publicimpact.com/images/stories/performance_measurement_2010.pdf