Teachers need to learn what their rights are under the contract they have with the city. I have to admit I don't fully understand or appreciate this issue myself. However, I feel if I knew better I would have more time to do the basic things I need to do for my students and myself to be a better teacher. I believe in unions, in the UFT, and in the idea that by fairly and reasonably considering our rights under the contract we can do a better job all around. I know this is not normal feedback, but it would help me. (And I am 12 years in - - imagine what the new teachers are going through...)

Parent feedback reviews of teachers. Make the feedback valuable by providing general topic areas and offering parents with open-ended questions and an "anything else?" section -- not just a multiple-choice questionnaire.
Hold parents accountable for staying productive by forbidding parent anonymity. Use the feedback questionnaires as 1/2 of the basis for parent-teacher conferences, which by law should be more than 5 minutes.

Imagine if your peers and principal were to hear this from parents: "Although the teacher is a favorite of the administration, I spend 4 hours a night on homework with my child teaching reading and math that hasn't been effectively taught in class. I tried to help my child learn how to read initial consonant blends such as bl--, dr--, and so on. But my child told me the only thing the teacher taught about reading today was to read a script that went like this:'Class, what do readers do? Readers read. Readers look at the title of the book. Readers look at the first word in the title. Readers look at the first letter of the first word in the title.' But by that time, since I'm 4 years old and had already been sitting at a desk for 3 hours doing math worksheets and something called "consensus desk-based play time with learning toys for building," I couldn't really understand anything else the teacher said."

Here are some responses we received via Twitter:

Erin K. Quigley (@ekquigley) wrote, "Evals should involve ongoing conversations...not once-a-semester observations."

Jessica Saratovsky (@JSaratovsky) tweeted, "Evaluations need to be meaningful and tied to goals. They also need to be linked to providing relevant PD."

Swayne Harris (@swayneharris), gave advice to teachers, "If you teach in a poor area, try to understand those students and their needs with sensitivity." Harris added, "Make sure you are there for the love of teaching and not just for the vacation time."

Finally, David Hochheiser (@DavidHochheiser), answered, "Too much variety anywhere "Current evals" probably not all equal. Respected admin + viable feedback + implement time = validity."

What about peer review? It's often very helpful to hear from other teachers working with the same (or similar students). We we see each other working with those students in different contexts, we can help each other become better at addressing those students' needs.

A combination of scores, formal observation, and asking students about what goes on in class has been shown to be the most effective way of evaluating a teacher's effectiveness.

http://www.reuters.com/articl...

In order to have an effective evaluation system, the evaluators must be experts on what they are evaluating. Being a "highly effective" teacher should be a prerequisite to obtaining a position as an administrator. If I were asked to evaluate and assign ratings to plumbers, I'd have a tough time doing it, and I'd probably do a lousy job since I have no experience in plumbing, so I don't really know what being a good plumber involves. The same holds true for teaching. Under our current "leadership" (pun intended), little or no experience in education is actually a preferred quality in prospective principals. Having master teachers as administrators would not only make evaluations better, but it would also put people who can actually help to develop their teachers into the right positions.
If you want to make test scores part of the equation, then tests that actually measure teacher quality need to be developed and implemented. There also needs to be a variety of evaluation measures; surely you can't rate a Pre-K teacher, a middle school special ed science teacher, and a high school gym teacher with the same system.

Many times teachers do not have a choice how to teach a subject, but instead are given a pre-scripted curriculum that is imposed upon them and their students.

Many (most) NYC classrooms are overcrowded, and some don't even have textbooks.

The standardized tests have proven to be poorly constructed and inaccurate.

There are children who attend school who have obstacles outside the school, like poverty, disabilities, ELL, that will affect how they perform in schools.

Not all people are good at everything, not all students are good at everything. We need to acknowledge there are difference in children and their abilities whether academic, artistic or athletic.

So how does one devise an evaluation system that all these conditions are taken into account when measuring the effectiveness of a teacher?

Because Mayor Bloomberg was unwilling to negotiate a routine teacher evaluation agreement, Governor Cuomo wants to withhold educational funds.

Thereby punishing the children.

I don't know which one is worse.

Many evaluations are useless and because the results they produce are meaningless. I was just asked to fill out a survey at my kid's middle school. One single question addressed teacher quality? Were we as parents very satisfied, satisfied, unsatisfied, very unsatisfied--One question? Hello, my kid has six different teachers!

True there are a few teachers that don't teach well, and there are many people in the world that don't do their job well. A manner to evaluate everyone in whatever they do has to be done, but fairly. A parent who spends hours trying to teach their child reading and math is part of being a parent. If you spend hours teaching your child, then imagine how can a teacher do that, they have 30 kids in a class, they set the lesson and kids who don't get it, that is where a parent steps in. Kids who don't get it must have the parent help. The city cannot afford to spend millions on teachers aids to help those kids who just don't get it because a parent is in denial that they child is not up to the grade level. Parent must help. Parents who don't, are the ones who are in denial, and are too lazy, and expect and blame a teacher on a problem with their child. I love it, parent spends 4 hours on homework, why 4 hours, because, her kids have learning problems. I had sons, one was easy, the other was smart but lazy, we worked hard to make sure he kept up in school, we understood the teacher could not spend that kind of time making sure he kept up. All we asked of the teacher to inform us of any problem with him keeping up so we could work on our problem, not hers. Bottom line, parents help the teachers by understanding that not every child can keep up with the class.

The same way we complain about the value of testing measures for students, teachers need to evaluated organically too. There is no simple way to do it. It will take time to make it meaningful.

There should be several observations with immediate feedback and recommendation and praise with not just assistent principal and principal but intervisitiation or outsiders who don't the teachers so that objectivity can play into the equation.

The measure and standards for which we are being evaluated need to be made clear before being assessed to eliminate the "gotcha" mentality. Transparency is key.

There needs to be flexibility to account for individual teachers and their success based on their own personality. Not a cookie cutter, everyone should be doing the "workshop model" everyday mentality for example.

I wouldn't be opposed to parents having a voice in this process too as theirs is an important voice a child's education and relationships build between schools and families are essential to whole student/person success.

Students should be allowed a voice as well... they are, afterall, who we serve as teachers. If we are truly catering to them in a multifaceted, differentiated way, we shouldn't fear their feedback, we should welcome it.

Maybe the final piece is portfolio - maybe teachers should put together a portfolio of best practices/lessons/assignments - examples of student exemplars on those assignments - examples of feedback and assessment measures as well as self-reflective pieces. Parental outreach and professional development measures should be in there too.