Review Teachers’ Lesson Plans

• Lesson plans show how well prepared teachers are to deliver content, develop student skills, and manage the classroom.

• The level of planning has been shown to correlate with student learning.

• Lesson plans are often adjusted as the lesson is taught; thus, the effectiveness of a lesson cannot be evaluated simply by looking at the plan.

Classroom Observations

• This is the most commonly used tool because it is able to capture information about instructional practices.
• This can be used as both a formative and as a summative assessment tool. When used in formative evaluations, the observer can track a teacher’s growth and suggest needed professional development and then later observe whether changes in teaching have been made.

• Poorly trained observers and/or inconsistent, brief observations can lead to biased or inaccurate results. However, when observations occur more frequently, their reliability improves.
• Observers often are not aware of the teacher’s lesson plan. If, for example, the plan requires student accommodations, it would be difficult for the evaluator to know if the accommodations were implemented appropriately.

Self-Assessments

• Self-reflection during grade- or subject-area meetings, debriefings, or developing a portfolio or individual professional development plan may encourage teachers to continue to learn and grow. Videotaping class sessions allows teachers to review their performance.

• Requires large amounts of time from the teacher.

Portfolio Assessments

• Combines the usefulness of a variety of other evaluative tools, such as review of lesson plans, a video of classroom teaching, reflection, and examples of student work and teacher feedback.
• Promotes the active participation of teachers in the evaluation process.
• Allows evaluators to review nonclassroom aspects of instruction.

• No conclusive findings exist on the reliability of portfolios as part of an objective evaluation system.
• Time consuming for both teachers and administrators.

• May be able to identify which elements of teaching have a positive effect on learning better than standardized test scores.

• Reviewing samples can be time consuming.
• More prone to issues of validity and reliability than test items that have been validated for similar comparisons across different students in different schools answering similar test items. However, a way to reduce such subjectivity would be to develop a research-informed scoring rubric and train those who use it.