From left, Pennsylvania Department of Education Secretary Ron Tomalis answers a question during a Q & A at a forum on teacher effectiveness in Philadelphia as Nate Brown, Senior Program Officer, Empowering Effective Teachers, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Steve Lipscomb, a researcher with Mathematica, Carolyn Dumaresq, Deputy Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, PDE, and moderator Matt Zieger, Team PA President and CEO, listen.

PHILADELPHIA – Research shows that what matters most in a students’ educational experience is the effectiveness of their teachers.

Pennsylvania is now in the midst of dealing with the challenges and leveraging the potential of redesigning an evaluation system that is both fair to teachers and effective in positively impacting student learning.

Building a fair and effective teacher evaluation system was the focus of a Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE)-led discussion here with about 35 education experts and other stakeholders in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Team Pennsylvania Foundation and the Delaware Valley Grantmakers sponsored the event on behalf of PDE.

PDE Secretary Ron Tomalis told the guests the current evaluation system is flawed when 99.4 percent of teachers in Pennsylvania last year received a “satisfactory” performance rating.

“It’s kind of hard to think that in any industry that you would have 99.4 percent of employees to be found satisfactory,” Tomalis said.

Tomalis said 50 percent of Pennsylvania’s proposed new teacher evaluation model, which is being piloted in 110 districts, charter schools and Intermediate units this year, will be based on student test scores and the other 50 percent based on classroom observations and other factors.

Tomalis said having an effective teacher evaluation is important because education is a labor-intensive industry.

“We spend between $300 and $400 million a year on professional development, which is about 1.5 to 2 percent of our budget,” Tomalis said. “We need to focus those resources exactly where they are needed. But how can you do that unless you have a measurement that tells you where your strengths and weaknesses are? When you focus your attention on those areas where they are needed the most, then a lot can happen.”

Concerning the new model, Carolyn Dumaresq, Deputy Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, PDE, said Pennsylvania is looking to implement a system that will give teachers one of four evaluation ratings: unsatisfactory, needs improvement (or progressing), proficient and distinguished.

Dumaresq said the purpose of building a more effective teacher evaluation is not based on expelling teachers from the classroom, but to remove the subjectivity out of the evaluation process to help make teachers even better professionals.

“What we’ve done is to start describing (teacher) behavior so we can help them,” Dumaresq said. “It’s not just about an evaluation model, but about building a more effective teacher model that is the complete package and builds supports, improves performance and changes behavior so they can be more effective in front of our children.”

In opening the discussion, Steve Lipscomb, a researcher with Mathematica, said the most important school-based factor affecting student achievement is teacher effectiveness, noting “above-average” teachers have been shown to raise a median student’s test score by 5-8 percentiles, which for most PSSAs is about 30 to 40 scale points.

Lipscomb said research has shown teacher effectiveness is unrelated to certification.

“The criteria currently used by most schools to evaluate teachers are the years of experience and credentials, classroom observations and use of student performance data,” Lipscomb said. “And the most widely used method is classroom observations.”

Lipscomb said no individual evaluation process is perfect and said the most effective evaluation models use a mix of measures to get the best information to judge teacher effectiveness.

Nate Brown, Senior Program Officer, Empowering Effective Teachers, a program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, gave an update on his organization’s work. He said his organization has a goal of having every child be career- or college-ready by the year 2025.

The Gates Foundation funded the Pilot I test program, which was conducted in three school districts and an intermediate unit earlier this spring.