Report on Ohio’s Teacher and Principal Evaluation System released
June 16, 2015
As the state of Ohio has moved forward in fundamentally changing the way teachers and principals are evaluated, the new system appears to be more “discerning and rigorous,” but some components need to be improved, according to Ohio’s Student Growth Measures Policy and Practice, a report recently published by the Ohio Education Research Center (OERC).
According to various national reports, prior to the implementation of the new evaluation systems, virtually all teachers were rated similarly and highly. Results from the first year of the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) and Ohio’s Principal Evaluation System (OPES) indicate that the new evaluation is more variable and thorough.
“We would expect to see resistance and uncertainty during such a transformational change, and we did see that through the interviews and surveys we conducted as part of the research,” details the cover memo of the report. “Feedback from teachers and principals is critical to system improvement.”
Originally requested by the Ohio Department of Education, the report closely examines the results of the first full year of implementation of Ohio’s new teacher and principal evaluation systems. Lead researchers, including assistant professor Dr. Marsha Lewis, associate professor Dr. Anirudh Ruhil and senior project manager Margaret Hutzel from the Ohio University Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, provided a detailed analysis of the 2013-14 data from the Electronic Teacher and Principal Evaluation System (eTPES), as well as interviews and surveys with teachers and principals from around the state.
The report suggests that continued research is important, as modifications to the system that have already been made will continue to change the patterns of teacher ratings for the 2014-15 academic year. These include a point rating system that replaces a lookup table and the fact that a number of high school teachers will now move from Student Learning Objectives to Value-Added measures.
“This is the first year of a transformational change in how Ohio evaluates teachers and principals. It would be impossible to execute such a change flawlessly and without need of modification based on initial data. That is why this study was critical,” the report cover memo concludes.
The full report, along with an executive summary, can be found on the Voinovich School website:
Ohio Student Growth Measures: A Study of Policy and Practice [PDF]