Peer Assistance and Review: Challenging Conventional Wisdom About Teacher Evaluation

Susan Moore Johnson and her Next Generation of Teachers Project (NGT) colleagues have just launched an impressive array of evidence and resources for policymakers and practitioners to use in rethinking conventional wisdom about teacher evaluation. Dr. Johnson’s website on peer assistance and review (PAR) — a district-union collaborative where expert teachers assist their colleagues, assess them, and can make recommendations for dismissal — offers compelling facts, carefully crafted research papers, and practical tools.

No doubt teacher evaluation is a problem — one that has been well documented for generations. At the risk of some overgeneralization, most evaluation systems are comprised by perfunctory classroom visits performed by overburdened and/or ill-trained principals who generate little relevant feedback for the struggling teacher or opportunities to identify and spread the skills of the expert one.

Researchers have documented that fewer than 1% of all teachers are terminated through a formal dismissal process. As a result, policy analysts are given fodder to point their fingers at the unions, whom they claim, protect their less than competent members through ironclad collective bargaining deals that easily hand out teacher tenure and make it almost impossible to fire incompetent educators. For example, Mike Podgursky (who is a college professor with tenure at his university) often calls for teacher tenure laws to be rescinded and for building principals to be given the sole authority to hire and fire teachers with ease. State tenure laws – designed to protect teachers from administrative abuses and support academic freedom — may in fact be very outdated, but the NGT researchers have documented that principals rarely dismiss even (non-tenured) novice teachers with temporary contracts. 

Other researchers, including Jennifer Goldstein, have recently shown how “peer assistance and review results in dismissal rates significantly higher than those stemming from traditional teacher evaluation by a principal (while also supporting the retention of strong beginning teachers).” This is no surprise to me — the best teachers are going to be better at documenting their colleague’s strengths and weaknesses.

Although PAR can be expensive (approximately $4000-7000 per teacher), in a recent NGT report on the costs and benefits of PAR, the Montgomery County, MD, Superintendent called the approach “priceless.” While school district HR directors often lament the cost of firing a tenured teacher, the NGT researchers show how PAR “limits the legal expenses associated with dismissing tenured teachers.” PAR programs have not been implemented widely, but they offer a way to transcend the rancorous debates over tenure and implement a rigorous evaluation system that makes sense for retaining the teachers that students deserve.

Comments

[Matthew Brown]

I couldn't agree more on PAR. My only concern is that it seems to run smack into the trend towards principal control. When I think of my own workplace - a fairly cutting edge charter school - I know that PAR would absolutely not fly with our the leadership structure and vision of the school.

In implementing PAR, I think it would be interesting to see whether it became a matter of admin. preferences in hiring/firing versus teacher preferences in hiring/firing.

[Barnett Berry]

I could not agree more with you Mathew. One reason that the administrative elite (and labor economists like Podgursky) resists PAR is that they do not want teachers to have more control over their profession. There is a long and sordid history of this hierarchical administrative-teacher divide. I wonder what would happen if only excellent teachers became principals and then they would have to teach children as part of their load.

[Anthony Cody]

Given the costs associated with leaving an ineffective teacher in place, I think the pricetag for PAR is well worth it.

When done right PAR adds a great deal of value to the traditional evaluation system. I served as a PAR coach for two years in the Oakland schools. PAR serves as a quality control check on the entire evaluation process. Before a teacher is taken into the PAR program, their evaluation is carefully reviewed to ensure their principal followed proper procedures according to the contract. Then the PAR coach engages that teacher in a process that can last up to two years, which includes frequent documented observations and extensive coaching. It is really up to the teacher to take advantage of this opportunity to improve.

At the end of the year, the PAR coach authors a report documenting the evidence that shows where the teacher has met standards, and where they still fall short. The PAR Joint Committee, composed of a majority of teachers, then makes a recommendation as to whether the teacher should be exited successfully, continue in PAR, or be flunked out. This is then used as evidence for their new evaluation, and can lead to their termination. This entire process serves as a quality control for the administrator's evaluation. When a teacher has been through PAR, and not succeeded, you know that they have had the opportunity to improve and not taken it, and that the administrator's evaluation is supported by a team that includes a majority of teachers. I think this adds a great deal of legitimacy to the entire evaluation process. Termination should not become an easy way for an administrator to deal with inconvenient teachers. Teachers should be encouraged to invest in their careers knowing they have some security, but they must also be willing to have their performance examined to be sure they are doing a decent job.