D211 program helping teachers improve students’ growth

Township High School District 211 celebrated its success using a new way to evaluate its teachers Thursday.

The Teacher Evaluation Pilot Program has helped several teachers to improve their teaching and the academic growth of the students in their classes, board officials said.

The pilot program of the evaluation was used by all teachers in 2010, and focuses on these key domains: planning and preparation; the classroom environment and instruction; and professional responsibilities.

Within each subsection, there are components, which are broken down into elements identified as being important to classroom teaching.

Highlights of how the program is being used successfully were presented to the board Thursday.

One teacher focused on making material highly relevant to students, another on giving students feedback instead of just a score on an assignment, and another teacher focused on giving positive and negative feedback to parents by providing them with a link to a blog about the class.

Illinois Senate Bill 7, an education reform bill, is requesting that teacher evaluation be tied to student growth; district officials are confident that this program will tie in nicely with the bill requirements in the future.

“It is no small feat to make these changes; its been about 30 years since this has been changed. I’m very pleased with the work everyone’s done,” board member Anna Klimkowicz said.

The program is not currently used to determine merit pay for teachers, officials said.

Teachers were pleased to have this new evaluation method, Superintendent Nancy Robb said.

A second evaluation was made based on the pilot program for counselors, librarians, certified nurses, psychologists, social workers, technology coordinators and therapeutic specialists in the district, and will be piloted in the next school year.

Once removed from pilot status, the program will be sent to the Board of Education for possible approval.