Overview of the Evaluation System & Pay
This is for all you NEW teachers to Brevard. You’ll get a detailed explanation during pre-planning. But let me try to overview this complicated system. The state gave us a whole bunch of requirements for our evaluation system back in 2011. We’re still dealing with it as best we can. Here are the basics:
The evaluation is broken into 2 sections. They are called “Summative Part 1” and “Summative Part 2.”
Summative Part 1 is made of 4 parts:
PGP – “Professional Growth Plan,” a plan for you to professionally grow during the year. You’ll get points for the quality of your plan. This is submitted and graded in the fall.
PGP Implementation – This is your score on how well you implement the plan you wrote. You actually get to score yourself. Your evaluator also gives you a score. Those scores are averaged. This score is figured in the spring.
CMA – “Collaboration and Mutual Accountability,” a score given by your teammates, based on your willingness and helpfulness with collaboration. This score is figured in the late fall or early spring.
Instructional Practices – This is the most heavily weighted part of Summative Part 1. Your evaluator will observe you multiple times during the year and give you feedback. If there are issues, you should be told and given support to improve. You’ll be given scores for 25 elements of teaching across 5 dimensions. Towards the end of the year (around mid April) you’ll get summative scores for each dimension.
Based on the scores of each section above, you’ll get an overall rating of Highly Effective, Effective, Needs Improvement or Unsatisfactory.
The terms (Highly Effective, Effective, Needs Improvement and Unsatisfactory) are actually legal terms.
Here in Brevard, we sprinkle in synonyms for some of these terms.
Anywhere you hear “Distinguished,” that means “Highly Effective.”
Anywhere you hear “Proficient,” that means “Effective.”
Anywhere you hear “Developing,” that means “Needs Improvement
When you go home for the summer, all you will have is a Summative Part 1 score. This does not include a state calculation of your standardized test scores.
Summative Part 2 is based on student test scores. . . This gets complicated, and controversial.
The state will make a projection for each student’s score, based on the past 3 years of scores (where available). Then, they will take the actual student score and give the teacher a score for credit or blame for the student exceeding or missing the projection. This score you get is called a "Value Added Measure" or VAM. The summary of all students you taught is called your VAM score. That's what is used for Summative Part 2.
Various tests are used for students who do not take FSA. In some cases, we use district tests and the scores are calculated locally.
These scores for Summative Part 2 are not available until mid-fall of the next school year. At that time, your evaluation from the previous school year can be finalized. That final, overall evaluation becomes a public record. The final evaluation is weighted as two-thirds of your Summative Part 1, and one-third of your Summative Part 2.
About your pay. . .
By law, we have Pay-for-Performance. The law is very specific about how we issue raises.
Last year we based the raise on your Summative Part 1 score only.
We gave a raise for Highly Effective teachers.
We gave a raise for Effective teachers, but it could only by 75% of the Highly Effective raise. (by law)
We gave a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to everyone, but that was half the Effective raise (by law)
We also did an across the board adjustment. The COLA and across the board were so that newly hired teachers could get something, since they obviously didn't have an evaluation from the year before.
We haven’t finished negotiations for this year yet. In addition to figuring how to divide up money, we have to agree on how much the district has to spend. That’s usually the biggest challenge of bargaining. (If things break down, it is usually over Once we agree on how much the district has to spend, we can get to the rest.
Hey, that all made sense, right?
Questions? dan.bennett@floridaea.org
