Introduction

As part of the federal requirements for states’ receiving funding under Phase 2 of the State Fiscal Stabilization Funds Program, all school districts in New Jersey are providing information to the public on the procedures they use to evaluate teachers and principals.  The information presented below will help you understand Teaneck’s policies and procedures for evaluating teachers and educational specialists such as librarians and counselors.

Confidentiality concerns: To protect the confidentiality of individual evaluations, districts are not required to provide a district-level statistical summary of teacher evaluation outcomes in those cases where there are fewer than 10 teachers in an entire district. Similarly, districts are not required to provide a school-level statistical summary of teacher evaluation outcomes if there are fewer than 10 teachers in a school.

Description of Teacher Evaluation System

Non-tenured teachers are required to receive a minimum of 4 formal evaluations each year (3 classroom observations and 1 annual), with tenured teachers required to receive at least 2 formal evaluations (1 classroom observation and 1 annual). Periodically, tenured teachers are assigned to be evaluated in depth, or at least four times each year. District evaluations are in the form of checklists, narratives and conferences. Observation checklists of classroom instruction are based on the following indicators: planning, provision for developmental levels, support for learning and evidence that the classroom supports the development of independent learning and decision making. Observations include a narrative lesson description and suggestions. Final evaluations include ratings for: the teacher as planner, implementer, innovator, relater and learner. Final narratives include student achievement data. An overall summary rating is assigned for both an observation and an annual evaluation. Both non-tenured and tenured teachers are evaluated as satisfactory, needs improvement or unsatisfactory.

Evidence collected for the annual evaluation can include formal observations, walk-through observations, pre/post observation conferences, and indicators of achievement of objectives of the prior year’s professional growth plan.

Results from the evaluations are used to plan professional development, to inform a teacher’s professional growth plan, to inform tenured decisions, to inform compensation decisions, to provide recommendations for continued employment and to inform the placement of teachers.

The district has modified the teacher evaluation form for 2011-2012. The checklists have been changed so that checklist components are arranged under the categories of planning and preparation, facilitates learning and evaluating student learning. A rubric was prepared to assess each of the indicators under those categories.